In September we had a stage-race and 2 hilly classics.
Some of our leaders did pretty well in September and we scored some useful points.

Herald Sun Tour(C2) is the first race, and it's a stage-race in Australia, including a TT and a hilly stage. We sent a very strong squad to Australia: Elijzen for the TT, Duggan for the hills and Vingerling for the sprints.
Vingerling grabbed a 4th place in stage 1, but kinda disappointed in the rest of the race.

Elijzen has been reliable in the TTs all season, and was that once again in the Herald Tour, grabbing a second place, like always, behind Stannard.
As a nice bonus, he took a 6th place in the weird fourth stage.
The Queen's stage was stage 5, a hilly stage up ''Arthur's Seat''. Duggan started the climb well, and despite dropping from the leaders, he still got a 6th place, gaining us a nice 4th place in the GC, which is very nice!
Although a critical note is that some of our rivals, mainly Evonik & BoI, did very well here too.

Grand Prix de Montréal(C2HC) was the second race, a (very) hilly classic in Canada. Obviously Duggan is riding it. The field is strong, very strong, with most of the top punchers of the division riding the race.

In the end it was Pozdynakov securing a big win for Ameriabank. TomTom basically didn't feature, our best result was 16th(Duggan).

Last up was another hilly classic, one of our home races, the Cauberg Classic(C2HC).
Again we sent our full hilly squad, obviously we were very ambitious, given it's a Dutch classic, we gotta do well in the Limburg hills.

And Duggan did well. Unfortunately he didn't win, but a 2nd place is very well. Sadly enough we have got to know the 2nd spot way too well this season, some more victories would be welcome.

Now let us take a look at the rankings.

			Team	Total	RD Left
6	6		Risa - Ergon	1393	8
7	10		Evonik - Signal Iduna	1307	8
8	12		Bank of Ireland - Irish Cycling	1298	8
9	11		Team TomTom	1248	8
10	7		Azteca-NBCSN	1247	14
11	9		Sauber Petronas	1187	16
12	8		Siam Cement - Lenovo	1146	16
13	13		Team Nordeus	1057	22
14	18		In-n-Out Racing p/b Auchan	1036	16

We climbed up to 9th, it has been a good month. But unfortunately, it's freaking close around 9th and we could basically still get anything between 5th and 15th(although 6th & 14th are both not likely).

We do not have a lot of racedays left, so there's definitely quite some pressure from behind. Making the Top 10 would be great, not only being pretty much certain of promotion, but also securing our Top 10 rankings goal!

October is the last month of the cycling season, and a very important one for us, in the battle for promotion. After all, promotion has been TTT's goal right from the start of the season, and we're very close to achieving that goal. Although at this point, we didn't know which spot would grant us promotion, since that depends of several factors.
We just decided to go for the Top 10, since that's also an official Season Goal for Team TomTom.

So what did we have in October?
First, we have Clasico RCN(C2), a Colombian stage-race. Just like you'd expect from a Colombian race, it involved a lot of climbing. We sent our mountain squad, Moreno & Gallego were both here. To have a chance in the flat(ish) stage, we also sent Brus.

A break won stage 1, a break involving some decent climbers, making it a bit harder for Moreno's GC ambitious.
Stage 2 was quiet for us, with Moreno just finishing in the pack.
Stage 3 was the flat one, but we certainly showed ourselves there.

Moreno attacked very close to the finish. And actually that was nearly successful! Sadly enough the sprinters caught him only a couple of meters before the finish line. Moreno manages to hold on to a Top 10 position, as does Brus. We get 8th and 9th, but we could've been more lucky there!


But stage 4 gives us true ''Karma'', given that Gallego actually grabs us a great win from a break! That definitely makes up for stage 3 and we're very happy with this win.

In the last 2 stage, both mountainous, Moreno grabs a 4th and an 11th position, gaining him the 9th spot in the GC, which is not bad, but we might've hoped for a bit more. We'll just hope that it's enough.

Then there was only 1 race left. Zuri Metzgete(C2). A hilly race in Züri. We had to get a great result here to grab our Top 10, we calculated.

As you can see, Bekmanis, of all people, is the fastest of the bunch. Sadly enough two riders were ahead, leaving Bekmanis with the final podium spot. Wouldn't it be funny if Bekmanis, the Evonik loanee, secures us a Top 10 ranking, in front of Evonik themselves?

Lets see the final rankings!

		Team	Total	PpRD
6		Siam Cement - Lenovo	1538	10.253
7		Risa - Ergon	1467	9.780
8		Azteca-NBCSN	1392	9.280
9		Bank of Ireland - Irish Cycling	1361	9.073
10		Evonik - Signal Iduna	1326	8.840
11		Team TomTom	1319	8.793
12		Sauber Petronas	1289	8.593

Yes, yes you see that right.
We miss out of our Top 10 goal by 7 points. 7 POINTS
Well, that's a shame, and obviously we were kinda sad when we saw that, however, that didn't take too long, because we got great news afterwards.
Our 11th place was enough for promotion.

TEAM TOMTOM PROMOTES TO THE PCT!

Now lets see how we secured that. Which riders did that for us?

26	Duggan	Timothy	USA	Team TomTom	256
27	Vingerling	Michael	NED	Team TomTom	249
36	Elijzen	Michiel	NED	Team TomTom	218
59	Lebris	Cedric	FRA	Team TomTom	153
64	Gallego	Diego	ESP	Team TomTom	143
94	Moreno	Daniel	ESP	Team TomTom	96
111	Schoonbroodt	Bob	NED	Team TomTom	81
179	Bekmanis	Indulis	LAT	Team TomTom	44
216	Ghyllebert	Pieter	BEL	Team TomTom	28
240	Bulgac	Brian	NED	Team TomTom	24
308	Brus	Marco	NED	Team TomTom	9
332	Toribio	Jose Vicente	ESP	Team TomTom	5
353	Eefting	Roy	NED	Team TomTom	4
405	Van Ooijen	Cornelius	NED	Team TomTom	1
406	Stenuit	Robin	BEL	Team TomTom	1
458	Reinders	Elmar	NED	Team TomTom	0

As you can see, there was not a standout rider that did this for us. Duggan, Vingerling & Elijzen were all good, although not great, all around the 30th position.
We did expect a bit more of Elijzen. Obviously Stannard was a lot in his way this season. But Elijzen is much more allround than Stannard is, and we did hope for him to perform some more outside of TTs, which he barely did, unfortunately.
Some pleasant surprises are Lebris & Gallego. Both bought fairly cheap, Gallego more as a domestique and Lebris more of an emergency option to have someone on the cobbles. Both have had some luck with breaks, but we can say we're happy with both of them and the points they brought in.

You know there's a problem if the domestique scored a lot more points than the leader. This is the case with Gallego & Moreno, Moreno scoring less than 100 points. This is a real shame of course and we can definitely not be happy with that, although we admit he has been a bit unlucky.

Schoonbroodt & Bekmanis were both pleasant surprises as well. We got them as domestiques and they got us a lot of points cheaply. Very cheap in fact, considering they're both on loan.

Brus and Ghyllebert brought in a few points as well, but that's only a few, and we expected a bit more of them, although clearly they weren't our leaders anyway.

There have been ups and downs, and the downs will definitely will get a second thought, we might have to release a few of the downs, who knows.
What is certain is that we'll have to have an active transfer season, considering we'll have to get PCT strength and also considering the fact that a part of our core is getting old.

TheManxMissile wrote:
Have you seen an official confirmation or are you just assuming you'll be promoting

SportingNonsense wrote:
12 teams stood out at the top of the division this year, and those 12 will all be making their way up to PCT next year.

knockout wrote:
Great to see Bekmanis some nice points but why exactly in that last race of the season? Could not he have made the top ten race a bit less exciting?

It's the end of the season and that means it's time for things such as deciding the sponsors for next season.
As you know, TomTom stepped into the team very late, due to the team starting up very late(and even being called ''Team Jesleyh'' temporary).

Still, TomTom expected us to promote, obviously for commercial reasons. And so we did, so we can announce that TomTom most definitely stays as a sponsor for next season!


The Dutch manufacturer of navigation systems upped our budget and therefore we concluded we don't need any co-sponsor. The team name was fine enough so the team will be called Team TomTom in 2015, just like last year.

Nevertheless, the team still got a few new sponsors.
Here's a brief overview of our minor sponsors for 2015, which all will feature on our 2015 jersey.

That's right, the (obvious) sponsor of the Eneco Tour decided they want to take over a team. Eneco is the largest Dutch energy supplier.

Another Dutch brand, not very familiar to cycling. (Although they do sponsor some Dutch WT team in an alternate reality ).
Jumbo is a supermarket chain which is ever expanding, with new Jumbos popping up in NL almost on a daily basis.


Just like last year, Randstad will be a minor sponsor. Randstad is a human resource consulting firm and very active in lots of sports, often, like in this case, as minor sponsor.

Then there are a few small sponsors, sponsoring certain things. Cipollini will sponsor our bikes, Deda Element will sponsor our wheels, Ale Giordina will be our clothing sponsor and at last, our nutrition sponsor will be Born.

As you probably already noticed, our main sponsors are Dutch, meaning the Netherlands will once again be our main focus. If we can't find a Dutch rider suiting specific needs, we'll look in Belgium and Germany first, before looking at the rest of Europe or even on another continent.

Also, our jersey is already finished and our jersey designer(krisa) will present it soon.
Keep an eye on our HQ in the upcoming period, because the jersey is truly astonishing!

We can finally announce the new jersey for 2015. As lead color we chose the red from the TomTom logo (luckily that company didn't call the GuillaumeGuillaume as there woudn't be place enough on the shirt). The secondary colour is orange (the dutchies like that color) but it's also the color of the Eneco logo. In addition we used some stripes of Blue as randstad is the third sponsor. What we hope for this year: Some victories would be nice, promotion even nicer. Jesleyh can't have a hard job to show this jersey as it's really easy to recognize in the peloton. We delivered 145 jerseys in your service course.

If you need more shirts or even NC's you can always contact us here:

Spoiler

Note this e-mail adress is fake so please contact us through PM

Kindly regards

Krisa