While most teams are racing at the Great Wall of China, Down Under, Cuba and Algeria, we are taking a different approach this season. Our riders are at Pre-season Camp in Russia for the whole month!

Tinkoff Bank - Rosneft OJSC first race of the season will be the Thuringen Rundfahrt (14th of February) with Vasili Kiryenka as leader, Nikolai Trusov as sprinter and Pavel Brutt with a free role!

Artem Ovechkin and Anton Vorobev will play an important role during the 11,3km team time trial (Stage 1), Pavel Korzh will be the lead out man for Trusov (Stage 2), while Petr Ignatenko will have to protect Kiryenka (Stage 3). Brutt is hoping for a breakaway to succeed (Stage 4 and 5), Kiryenka will have to ride a solid time trial without his teammates (Stage 6), and the last stage is Trusov terrain again.

- Smowz -

- roturn -

Tinkoff Bank - Rosneft OJSC didn't race in January and with two team time trials ahead of us, the focus of the pre-season training camp was on teambuilding and time trials.


Finally our season started and we were eager to start scoring points in February. With only 3 races and 1 sponsorgoal (Top-5 Giro del Trentino) the pressure was high on our riders, but they delivered;

Kiryenka just missed the podium (4th) of the Thuringen Rundfahrt, The team preformed really well by getting 5th in the team time trial (Stage 1), during the hilly stages Kiryenka was at the front all the time, and Vasili managed to get 2nd at the individual time trial!


Our team leader Kritskiy sealed our first sponsorgoal of the season, Top-5 Giro del Trentino. Again the team preformed really well by getting 1st in the team time trial (Stage 1), Kritskiy lost his leader jersey to Pozzovivo (Stage 2), defended his second place in General Ranking (Stage 3), but had to let Kiserlovski ahead of him (Stage 4), still a podium place was good enough for our sponsors!


Kolobnev finished 4th last year at the GP di Lugano, this year he was able to get 3rd!

February was a good start of the season, but it wasn' t enough; 15th in the PCT Standing while Top-10 is our goal, so it was time to score some points and get those 2 remaining race sponsor goals (Win Tour of Sochi and Top-5 Corsica International). And the team delivered big time, in fact, it was probably one of the best months ever for Tinkoff Bank - Rosneft OJSC!

Kozontchuk was our leader for Strade Bianchi and kicked of March Madness with a decent result; 15th.


Kiryenka, who already showed his skills during the Thuringen Rundfahrt, was able to beat Boom and Zabriskie at the Volta ao Algarve. Vasili finished 19th in the 48 riders lead group (Stage 1), got on the podium twice on the two hardest stages; 3rd (Stage 2), 3rd (Stage 3), 9th in the flat stage (Stage 4) and with a solid chrono performance was able to win the General Ranking with 25 seconds on Rui Costa.


Kolesnikov is one of our few riders who will be riding outside Europe this year, his first race, the Kenya Mountain Classic, went quite alright, he finished 19th.


The race our sponsors and Timofey had been waiting for; Tour of Sochi, the goal was to win the race and Kritskiy did, in fashionable way, beating Thomas Dekker by 8 seconds. Kritskiy finished 6th in the mass sprint (Stage 1), 5th in the second mass sprint (Stage 2), won the mountain stage (Stage 3), again on the podium, 2nd, during the ITT (Stage 4) and 6th again in the third mass sprint (Stage 5). Kritskiy also won the Point Classification and we were also best Team!


Zakarin and Kolobnev were both protected riders during the Scandinavia Open Road Race, both finishing in the Top-10 was a great result, Zakarin finished 5th and Kolobnev 7th.


Kolesnikov managed to slip into the break of the day at our first ProTour race, Ronde van Vlaanderen. Kozontchuk finished 25th, a great result in one of the hardest races of the season.


Corsica International was our second sponsor goal of the month (Top-5) and again Kritskiy sealed the deal by winning the Point Classification, and getting 2nd in the General Ranking, 26 seconds behind Jose Alarcon. Kritskiy showed his good form righ from the start in the flat stage by finishing 3rd (Stage 1), had a good 8km ITT, 4th (Stage 2) and was best of the rest, 2nd, on the Col de l'Ospedale (Stage 3)

After a great season start, Timofey Kritskiy will take a much deserved rest (month holiday/recovery camp in Monaco), to come back when we need him the most! Hopefully our team is strong enough to keep us Top-5 Europe Tour and Top-10 Overal Team Standings, which is our end of the season target/goal. Kritskiy's 2013 results up until now;

Next to the prestigious hors catégorie race the Tour of Vancouver, we had 4 more (C1) races in April; Hel van Het Mergelland, Duo Differdange, Giro dell'Appellenio and Ostdeutschland Tour.

Timofey got 3rd during the 6.5km mountain prologue of the Tour of Vancouver (Stage 1), took the yellow jersey by winning the mass sprint (Stage 2), 5th in the second mass sprint (Stage 3), extended his lead by winning the mountain stage (Stage 4), finished 13th during the third mass sprint (Stage 5), kept his jersey save at Mt. Seymour by finishing 4th in a group with Popovych, Vasquez, Taaramäe, Alarcon and Pozzovivo (Stage 6), and got 2nd in an exciting GC battle with Taaramäe during the 24.6km time trial in West Vancouver (Stage 7), at the end Kritskiy was able to win the General and Points Classification!


Trusov crashed during Hel van Het Mergelland (no major injury), so Rovny tried his luck at the mass sprint instead of Trusov, he finished 11th, not bad.


A decent ride from Kiryienka and Ovechkin during Luxembourg's Duo Differdange, they finished 7th, one minute behind Oz Cycling Project; Michael Rogers and Michael Ford.


The Giro dell'Appennino ended up in a 48 man group sprint, Kolobnev finished 13th, Rovny was the only rider to not finish the race, being involved in a crash which left him injured for 2 weeks.


The Ostdeutschland Tour started with a 5,6km flat prologue, Kiryenka - our leader for this race - did quite alright by getting 15th, 16 seconds behind Cornu (Stage 1), during the 4 mass sprints that followed (Stage 2, 3, 4 and 5) Kiryenka was able to stay out of trouble and didn't loose any time, his results; 17th, 40th, 13th and 24th, and with a very strong performance, 2nd behind Gerdemann at the final stage (Stage 6) Kiryenka was able to get 2nd in the General Classification, also thanks to another strong team effort we were "Best Team" at the Ostdeutschland Tour!

Thanks to the victory of Timofey Kritskiy at the Volta a Portugal, the sponsor goals and target races are looking really good this season, one more target race to go (Milano - Torino; leader Aleksandr Kolobnev), but it is safe to say that we are heading for a 5 out of 5 with the season goals.

As the above picture shows, Tinkoff Bank - Rosneft OJSC has been leading the Professional Continental Team Rankings for 2 weeks now. But Timofey Kritskiy's (who is leading the Individual Rankings) PCT-season is over (Giro di Lombardia and maybe WC), so it's up to the other riders to keep scoring points!

Kolobnev will be leader during the hilly races; Zagreb - Ljubljana, Grand Prix de Montreal, Milano - Torino, Giro dell'Emilia and Japan Cup.

Rovny, Trusov and Krasnov will be leading the team at Tour of Britain, Grand Prix de Quebec and Paris-Tours.

Kritskiy is already at Bergamo to get familiar with the 2013 Giro di Lombardia route, here're some pictures of him training in 2014 kit? Maybe... could also just be a training kit.


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