The management called me this morning, the course of this year's Driedaagse De Panne-Koksijde has been changed. No cobbles, meaning my chances have gone down. I was a bit disappointed, the Driedaagse without cobbles is just silly.
Not much left for me then, 2 sprint stages and a time trial, that's not gonna work. It'll have to happen on the hilly stage, but I'm pretty sure more people will aim for that stage. It will be a tough battle.
The first mountain stage of the year was upon us, and we sent former GT winner Denis Menchov off to Corsica in a bid to launch our climbing campaing.
A solid if rather unspectacular TT meant that he was in a good position going into the final stage. Patrick Gretsch perhaps slightly disappointed with 12th, it was a course that suited him well and he was looking for a top 10.
Some attacking racing on the way up to the finish meant that Menchov was able to break free from the main group, and finished a good 4th, in front of Cataldo and Kruijswijk. This meant he finished 5th overall, a good result.
Denis Menchov on his way round Porto-Vecchio
Denis attacks out the front of the bunch on the Col de l'Ospedale
The rankings are back!
A couple of months ago we revealed our internal ranking system, designed to see who's the best rider in the team. The winner at the end of the season gets a free WiiU! Here we have an updated version (Up to and including the Crit Int but not Catalunya)
It's been a quiet few weeks for me, I have to admit I didn't have the legs I wanted to. The GP Indurain was a bit too hard for me, while I got cought off guard and missed the split at the Amstel Gold Race.
Back in Belgium, the Fleche Wallon was going really good again, I got in the morning break!
Though after seeing the race on tv afterwards, I tihnk I worked a bit too much, I seemed to be leading the group constantly.
But somehow I survived, and was in the leading group going into the last kilometres!
It was not meant to be however, the Mur de Huy killed me. So steep after so long in the lead. I couldn't keep up with the leaders and even from the background some riders came back and passed me. I finished outside the top 20, meaning all my hard work today was for nothing. Needless to say I'm feeling really bad now, so I'll end it here.
Apologies to all those fans who have been expecting an update for quite some time, we've just been extremely busy over here at Nintendo, trying to finish Pikmin 3. Now that it's out, we've got a bit more free time on our hands to tell you what's been happening. We had a rather disastrous Ardennes so we won't focus too much on that. However JJ Rojas has been on good form, grabbing a couple of podium places in a relatively strong field in the Tour of Norway, and coming out 4th overall, valuable points for us after our season seemed to rather stall after early successes; and at the moment he is doing very well in the Tour of Turkey, already with a stage win under his belt.
Tour de Romandie
This year's Tour de Romandie was an extremely important race for us this year, it was a route that suited our top men Roman Kreuziger and Denis Menchov, so we decided to send both of them there, with some good back-up. We set ourselves a nominal goal of a top 10 finish, but as soon as Jakab Zoltan, Chris Froome, and Sammy Sanchez, amongst others, turned up for the start we knew that wouldn't be easy.
However, Roman scraped through by a few seconds to hang on to a 10th place and Denis finished 15th after missing a key split on the 5th stage. The revelation of the Tour, undoubtedly, though, was Blel Kadri, who after getting himself into a break, brought back a podium finish, 12th overall in the GC, and the points jersey! He has easily been our standout rider this season, he's certainly making a really good bid to be in our Tour team (still under wraps )
Stefano Pirazzi on the attack during the final stage in Romandie, he went on to finish 4th from the break.
Roman Kreuziger was very active during the race, here he is testing the other favourites' legs up the Col de la Croix
Tour de Romandie rating: 8/10
Internal Rankings
We've participated in quite a few races since we last gave you an update on our internal ranking system, used to decide the best rider on the team, who gets a free WiiU, as mentioned in previous posts.
Here are the standings after the Tour de Romandie, but before the Tour of Turkey, Giro del Trentino etc
Not a lot of major change, position wise, but these rankings really indicate how well Kadri is doing for us this season, 3rd overall in Oman, a decent GC placing in Qatar, some points in the Crit Int plus his great result in Romandie put him miles ahead of everyone else. Roman Kreuziger has raced some racedays at last, so he enters the chart at no.5. Verboven is still hanging on in 4th though, great stuff from the youngster!
Criterium International Review 
Denis Menchov off to Corsica in a bid to launch our climbing campaing.
Patrick Gretsch perhaps slightly disappointed with 12th, it was a course that suited him well and he was looking for a top 10.
The rankings are back! 
Anuar Manan
Klaas Boogedal
Tour de Romandie 
Roman Kreuziger and 
