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Corsica International Discussion
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| tsmoha |
Posted on 16-11-2018 15:46
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Directeur Sportif
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 Corsica International
The Corsica International has become an inherent part of the MG (PCT) schedule since it's first edition back in 2011, now going into it's 8th edition. A beautiful 3-days-event on this famous island and it's the same route as it used to be in the previous years: a short and fast flat stage is followed by a short prologue-ish timetrial and then the concluding queen stage, that is likely to be the key stage for any GC contenders (as always).
Despite being rated as "only" a C1 event, it's definitely a prestigious stage race for climbers (as obviously the short race distance is quite attractive to all kind of mountain goats) and so the list of previous winners features some big names, really: Fabio Duarte (2017), Rigoberto Úran (2016), Janez Brajkovic (2015), Domenico Pozzovivo (2014), record winner Jose Alacorn (2012 and 2013) as well as Mauricio Ortega (who won the premier edition in 2011, beating Cadel Evans and Rein Taaramäe). Who's name will be added to the honour roll this year?
The Startlist
The GC contenders | Favorites | MO | AC | PR | | Outsiders | MO | AC | PR |  Úran | 82 | 71 | 78 | |  Carthy | 79 | 69 | 63 |  Velits | 82 | 67 | 74 | |  Pantano Gómez | 79 | 68 | 54 | | Henao Montoya | 82 | 73 | 71 | |  Warbasse | 78 | 65 | 74 |  Shikai | 81 | 66 | 76 | |  Rodrigues | 78 | 72 | 67 | | Monsalve | 81 | 73 | 72 | |  Signorini | 78 | 74 | 65 |  Kudus | 81 | 70 | 72 | | Bennett | 78 | 73 | 65 |  Berhane | 81 | 68 | 65 | | Ndayisenga | 78 | 73 | 65 |  Duarte | 80 | 73 | 75 | |  Stetina | 78 | 65 | 64 | | Choi | 80 | 68 | 74 | | Novak | 77 | 65 | 76 | | Ji | 80 | 65 | 69 | |  Senni | 77 | 72 | 74 |  Nazaret | 80 | 72 | 65 | | Borisavljevic | 77 | 65 | 74 |  König | 79 | 67 | 74 | | Augustyn | 77 | 68 | 71 | | Brenes | 79 | 70 | 69 | | Van den Broeck | 77 | 64 | 71 | | Anacona | 79 | 61 | 66 | | Hirschlein | 77 | 59 | 69 |
Two former race winners amongst the GC contenders, so let's begin with Úran and Duarte: the former, Úran, definitely with a good chance to repeat his victory from 2016. One of the best climbers and probably the best TT/prologue rider amongst all GC contenders. After finishing 4th in the GC last season, he surely has some extra motivation to bounce back for at least a podium result - but honestly, the overall win must be his goal.. Duarte took the overall victory last season (as the first GC winner in eight years here, who did not win the mountain stage though) and with no hills around, his combination of climbing and riding prologues should make him a serious podium contender at least.
The same goes for Velits and Henao Montoya (last year's runner-up behind Duarte). While Velits already had some disappointing results this year, he still should be capable to pull a strong result in the queen stage and thanks to his solid prologue skills, he will have an advantage on other climbers here. Henao Montoya should be considered as strong as Úran, but he is likely to lose some time on the second day.
Monsalve, Kudus, Shikai and Berhane as the next best premium climbers then. Kudus obviously a real threat for the podium, as he enjoys a pretty good season with Repsol so far. Also Monsalve is a proven force for mountain stages like this here and except of Berhane, all of those guys are pretty decent prologue riders as well. It should be an interesting queen stage with the possible podium contenders capable to perform on a pretty similar level (when everything goes the normal way)..
Other guys such as Nazaret, König, Brenes, Warbasse, Rodrigues/Anacona, Stetina or Senni would need to overperform, if they want to fight for anything better than a lower Top-10 or Top-20 result.
The Stage Hunters | Sprinters | SP | AC | | | Timetrial Specialists | TT | PR |  Kip | 80 | 82 | | | Ford | 81 | 81 | | Lay | 79 | 81 | | | Sergent | 80 | 80 | | Van der Sande | 79 | 79 | | | Cornu | 80 | 80 | | Hayakawa | 79 | 79 | | | Keough | 58 | 80 | | Keough | 79 | 79 | | | Mottin | 79 | 79 | | Manarelli | 79 | 79 | | | Janse van Rensburg | 78 | 78 | | Krieger | 79 | 79 | | | Úran | 78 | 78 | | Vingerling | 79 | 79 | | | Atkins | 78 | 77 |  Modolo | 78 | 81 | | |  Johansson | 77 | 77 |  Jones | 78 | 78 | | | Cheung | 77 | 77 |  Tewelde | 78 | 77 | | | Haga | 76 | 77 |  Westling | 78 | 74 | | | Van Aert | 68 | 77 | | Perera | 77 | 78 | | | Novak | 76 | 76 | | Tleubayev | 77 | 77 | | | Bookwalter | 76 | 76 |  Jaser | 77 | 75 | | | Shikai | 76 | 76 |
The flat stage should go to a sprinter and it's a perfect stage for Kip, really. It could become yet another stage-win for his amateur team, but the competition is fierce with no top sprinters around:
Lay, Van der Sande, Hayakawa, Keough (who will also aim for the GC lead with the prologue-style TT suiting his skillset), Manarelli, Krieger, Vingerling and Modolo.. we should expect a tight decision if it comes down to a bunch sprint between those similar strong sprinters! A few other amateur teams only with outsider's chances: Jones, Tewelde, Westling or Jaser may at least try to be in the mix for this stage, where weak backup "skills" won't hurt your chances too much.
Úran as one of the more promising contenders for the TT stage, but there's bigger favorites around: Ford, Sergent and Cornu as those riders, who simply have to aim for a stage-win here. As said before, also Keough with a nice chance to grab the GC lead (if he already delivers bonifications in the sprint stage)..
Mottin, Janse van Rensburg, Atkins, Johansson, Cheung, Haga or Van Aert as other possible contenders for the timetrial, where a good daily form can do wonders (as we all know by now)!
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| Vien |
Posted on 16-11-2018 15:52
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Small Tour Specialist
Posts: 2322
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Stalking my relegation rivals here as usual  |
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| dominox |
Posted on 16-11-2018 16:57
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Only one stage, but very important one. I seriously need my riders to overperform. But that's not possible, probably. |
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| SotD |
Posted on 16-11-2018 17:17
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World Champion
Posts: 12188
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This race was selected based on me hopefully getting Kip, so I hope he delivers. We have a good setup for him, and also 3 decent prologue riders to hopefully show ourselves in the GC and the Team competition before stage 3, where we obviously have nothing.
On a good day Tempier can land a GC around 30th, but we really aren’t counting on anything. Some sort of breakaway would be cool.
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| Yellow Jersey |
Posted on 16-11-2018 18:38
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Classics Specialist
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Well, hmm.. Warbasse may not even show on the radar here. Top15 I guess is the goal, not easy though.
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| Marcovdw |
Posted on 16-11-2018 20:14
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Grand Tour Champion
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No Pluchkin, no Keizer. I must be in heaven.
Doesn't mean guaranteed victory though, look at last year. I want the Úran from two years ago in this race.
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| jandal7 |
Posted on 16-11-2018 20:26
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Whilst Ukraine and Cyprus provided two excellent overachieving podiums, we're still behind where we wanted to be points-wise and mostly down to the hilariously unexpected but very tragic inconsistency of Velits. With only one stage to decide it for him this will be all good or all bad  There's a lot of competition among the 80-81 guys (which is where he really sits for climbing) but I want a podium at the least really - we may be five months out from the final rankings but we can't afford misfires and with no Pluch, Keizer, Denifl et al this means a podium. Bennett hopefully with a top 15 but if he sacrifices that to get Velits 1st or 2nd I don't mind. Hopefully Gilanipoor in the points as well.
Very happy to see the top sprinters sleeping on this race, as suspected. Perfect for Tosh to aim for his second win of the year and a day in yellow. Certainly a podium on the stage at least given his strength over other 79 sprinters - undone a little on an easy stage but backups will still play a part.
So a stage win or podium, a day in the top GC rankings, another stage in the points, and a top 3, 15 and 25 on GC. Easy, right?
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant."
[ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT]  Xero Racing
5x  x5
2x  x2
2x  x2 |
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| valverde321 |
Posted on 16-11-2018 20:35
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World Champion
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Choi and Shikai duo again. Hope they can both get into the Top 10 and it does look achievable with their PR being slightly better than most. It will all come down to the mountain stage though.
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| Aquarius97 |
Posted on 16-11-2018 22:18
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Grand Tour Specialist
Posts: 4191
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Not sure of what to expect of this race tbh. Neither of my riders look to be totally suited to the route.
Kudus probably a safe bet for a Top5 in GC, while Novak could be a real issue if he, as expected, is my best rider in GC ahead of the mountain stage, and the IA considers him as the leader. Let's hope that if that happens, it's a superslow climb up L'Ospedale
Really surprised to not see Keizer here (Pluchkin was expected with Popo's "hate" of C1 races), so this really opens the race, though Uran should be a clear favourite anyway
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| Ollfardh |
Posted on 16-11-2018 23:09
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World Champion
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Guess I forgot my sprinter..
Changed my sig, this was getting absurd.
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 22-11-2024 06:58
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| AbhishekLFC |
Posted on 17-11-2018 06:17
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Hope to see the Pico Basile Henao back. Not much hope from the first two stages, so it's all in on Stage 3. We need a pick-me-up here.
Thanks for the preview!
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| Marcovdw |
Posted on 17-11-2018 21:42
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Grand Tour Champion
Posts: 7593
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Decent sprint from Manarelli, picking up some points at least.
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| jandal7 |
Posted on 17-11-2018 21:53
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World Champion
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HELL YEAH  Awesome work from the lads (love that Bennett and Kennett finally combined ) to deliver Tosh to the final kilometre and as in Catalunya he did a long-ish but strong sprint to lead from the front to the line  The GC lead and stage win is awesome, and he can enjoy it tomorrow whilst Velits and the minor GC guys focus up for the TT.
Love that Kennett has lead out two winning sprints in PCT despite being level 2. Bodes well for the future. Special mention to Daniel who looks like he made his first big contribution of his career setting up the train, fantastic to see. Not sure his owning team will be all to happy though given he may have dropped Modolo a bit further behind And doesn't it say it all about my story game teams that when we suddenly need to lead out a sprint our pilot is a climber  I love this team and the PCT. Let's work hard now to keep both of them in place for 2019
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant."
[ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
5x x5
2x x2
2x x2 |
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| Croatia14 |
Posted on 17-11-2018 22:48
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Directeur Sportif
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Awesome work by Tosh, great to see him score here again!
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| Aquarius97 |
Posted on 17-11-2018 23:37
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Grand Tour Specialist
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Obviously without any sprinter this stage was all about not having any problems with Kudus, and he was also the first of the GC riders in the sprint, so that feels good for me, as usually those climbers that get the best stage results in the sprint stage then go to be the best in the mountains too.
Great win for Xero with TvdS
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| valverde321 |
Posted on 18-11-2018 01:55
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World Champion
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Not really sure what Choi was doing there, but in the end not bad from Hayakawa.
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| Luis Leon Sanchez |
Posted on 18-11-2018 05:21
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Team Leader
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Pretty pleased with the effort of Vingerling there! Cornu hopefully to do well in stage 2 and Nazaret to get a good result in the final stage.
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| Tamijo |
Posted on 18-11-2018 06:18
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Team Leader
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For us this is a filler race for some riders having spare days. So any points here is great points. Federico Rocchetti in the KoM 
Thanks for the preview and report
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| AbhishekLFC |
Posted on 18-11-2018 07:09
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Directeur Sportif
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Xero are having the time of their lives in the last few races! Congrats on the stage win Jandal
Quite pleased with Krieger, with his best result of the season so far. Can't complain about that. Now for damage control in the ITT.
Thanks for the report tsmoha
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| SotD |
Posted on 18-11-2018 07:19
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World Champion
Posts: 12188
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Had High hopes for Kip here, as he could have taken the stage and also kept the leaders jersey after stage 2, but Tleubayev really stepping up here to take a great 2nd place. He too is pretty good in prologues, so he might have a shot at keeping 2nd.
Also great to see RodrÃguez in the break to claim 2nd in the KOM even in a stage where we have a pre-stage favorite.
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