E3 Harelbeke and Gent-Wevelgem were taking place at the same time as the Volta a Catalunya and so was the Criterium International, where winning a stage is once again a sponsor goal. With 30 riders this season we can handle three simultaneous races, but it required some compromise.
Unlike P-N and T-A, the Volta a Catalunya was great for breakaways. Young Roland Fiedler recorded a 2nd place behind Gorka Izagirre on the first stage. The big names took stages 2 and 3, the latter was the queen stage with a tough final climb to Port-Aine, won by Quintana. But that left 4 more stages, all of them hilly, for breakaways with riders who pose no risk to the GC. The first of them went to Lemesle, who was able to beat the superior riders Herrada and Gatto. Lemesle attacked from the start and was alone on the road for a long time, the others fought for the mountain points, Herrada wearing the polkadot jersey, and eventually caught Lemesle.
The Frenchman only has HIL 71 and was worried about the steep hill ahead that had to be tackled twice, especially with the other two attacking for the summit, and after the first ascent he already found himself behind both opponents. The good news was that the attacks split the other two and Lemesle had one trump card to play, his descending (DHI 77). He caught Gatto on the final hill, attacked briefly to reach Herrada and then attacked again into the descent and won by nearly a minute. Great result! A day later Goos added a 3rd place, the last hill was a bit much for him, but he beat some pretty good riders. The stage went to Jur Kulpaka. Now here's a newgen we will never be able to afford. At the age of 23 he already has an AVG 77, MON 76, TTR 78 and even SPR 73. In a few years he'll become a Grand Tour winner.
On stage 6 Pomoshnikov represented Aviva in the breakaway, he was up against Coppel and Santaromita and was able to beat them, but not 23-year-old Yonder Godoy who won the stage by 22 seconds. The last stage was less than 120 km long and ended with a fast descent after a short climb. This time Nathan Brown slipped into the breakaway, a climber who brings SPR 69 to the table, if it comes to that.
We weren't too hopeful, the competition in the group was strong and suddely Nibali also joined in. But or hopes grew when Nibali and others started attacking each other before the group had even reached the half-way point, Brown always stayed at the back of the group and conserved his energy for the finale. An E2 had formed and was closing in, so was the peloton. But Brown could keep up on the final short ramp, suddenly found himself at the front and nobody offering to take the lead from him. He started his downhill sprint with 2.5 km to go, Nibali was threatening to overtake him but it was just enough, in a photo finish Brown takes the stage. Two stages and three more podium finishes for Aviva, a very successful outing.
Aviva riders didn't play any role in the GC, of course, Brown was our best man as 87th. Victory went to the best climber in the world, Quintana, ahead of Kreuziger and Rui Costa. Pinot was next, followed by Sergio Henao, Uran Uran, Mollema, Kiserlovski, Barguil and Zoidl.
Race squad: de Jong, De Vreese, Gougeard, Meinert, Thys, Valgren, Waeytens, Wojtasik
Our best best for the little brother of the Ronde was Valgren. COB 67 isn't very encouraging, but he brings FLA 74 and HIL 72 to the table. Thys, as we'd feared when signing him, has an impressive COB 77 but nothing else, HIL 63 simply doesn't cut it. So instead we tried protecting De Vreese and Wojtasik as well as Valgren, but the other two riders struggled across the cobbled hellingen and soon lost contact to the top group.
In fact, so did Valgren a little later, after the last hellingen he was in about 20th position all alone on the road. The best 9 riders were gone, but there was no cooperation in the E2. Valgren caught the group and without much hesitation attacked, wasn't followed and secured a great 10th place. Encouragingly, 4 more of our riders banded together and made the top 20.
Race squad: de Jong, De Vreese, Gougeard, Lammertink, Skjerping, Thys, Valgren, Wojtasik
Gent-Wevelgem didn't see us repeat a 5th place, but in a way it was progress, with three of our riders ending 8th, 9th and 10th. After the final hills the front group was very large, a peloton of 40 riders. It took a while for 7 riders to clearly break free and the rest put their legs up. We waited until the final 8 km for our fittest men to attack and relay at top speed to keep a gap to the others. Valgren finished ahead of De Vreese and Gougeard.
Top 10: Degenkolb, Van Avermaet, Terpstra, Kristoff, Stybar, Breschel, Boasson Hagen, Valgren, De Vreese, Gougeard
@Tamijo: I agree. I may have been too negative in the season preview because I focused too much on the goal races, which didn't go as well as last season. Here's the next example:
March 2017: Criterium International
** goal: Stage Win
Race squad: Aregger, Foetz, Hansen, Hoem, Manaia, Rafael Silva
Some fine results in the WT races, but the sponsor has asked for a stage in the Criterium International, and again we didn't manage that. Three of our riders made the top 10 in the opening ITT, won by the beloved Alex Dowsett. This year the other two stages are hilly.
Hoem had a go on stage 2, but the breakaway was caught very early. 97 riders arrived together, the rest – including all our men – arrived over 14 minutes behind. We hoped that the breakaway on stage 3 would only consist of those riders, but it wasn't to be, most riders were less than 2 minutes behind in the GC. Hoem had to be part of the break again and he decided to attack his breakaway companions early, hoping that if they were caught and only he'd remain in front, no GC threat whatsoever, the chase might subside. Sadly, that wasn't the case, he was eventually caught and finished 6th on the day. Probably, like last year, Aviva could have achieved a top 10 GC result if that had been the goal.
Top 10: Geniez, Vuillermoz, Acevedo, T. Ludvigsson, Bagot, Antomarchi, Soupe, Pirazzi, Roux, Grudzev.
That's 5 out of 6 goals failed so far. And the sponsor still only recorded one notable result, the top 10 in Sanremo, and even that doesn't impress him much. So unlike last season the spnsor confidence is pretty low at the moment.
April 2017: Ronde van Vlaanderen
***** goal: Top 10
Race squad: Tim de Jong, De Vreese, Fiedler, Meinert, Puccio, Thys, Valgren, Wojtasik
Oh boy, this season top 10 results in the Ronde and Paris-Roubaix are 5-star goals, that's a daunting task. Harelbeke showed that we have to throw all our support behind Valgren. The wind was really blowing out there on the day with a speed of up to 70 kmph.
Valgren's position was looking good – until it suddenly wasn't. Already with 70 km to go the top riders attacked and to our dismay it happened to be exactly 10 riders. They slowed down again and eyed each other but by that time they were already 5 minutes ahead. There was one weaker rider among them, Vandousselaere, and he lost contact when the next round of attacks started. Valgren had no choice, he left the E2 behind and frantically tried to catch Vandousselaere, but the gap was too large. The Belgian finished 8 minutes behind the winner, Cancellara, but still over 2 minutes ahead of Valgren. So we narrowly missed the important goal. Still, a fine effort by Valgren, he did get closer and closer to his opponent and didn't run out of steam, 11th is hardly a bad result.
Top 10: Cancellara, Stybar, Degenkolb, Van Avermaet, Boom, Peter Sagan, Kristoff, Breschel, Terpstra, Vandousselaere
@Tamijo: Absolutely, a great result, Valgren only has COB 67. But a miss is a miss, and it was a 5-star goal. And soon we have the next impossible task, a top 10 in Paris-Roubaix, again 5 stars. The sponsor is really working against us with such goals. But first...
All stages of the Basque Tour were hilly and we were represented in every breakaway. It led to winning stage 2 with Waeytens and the mountain jersey with Manaia. Truth be told, Waeytens did absolutely nothing in the breakaway he joined, believing that the group would definitely be caught. But 15 km out the peloton was still a minute behind. Waeytens had the energy reserves to launch an attack the others couldn't follow and while they were swallowed by the best riders, Waeytens won the stage by 22 seconds.
But Kwiatkowski and Rui Costa shared all the other stages between them. More due to positioning at the start of each stage than anything else Manaia was our man in all the breakaways on stages 3, 4 and 5. He certainly wasn't our first choice on stage 3, which was pretty flat. And he didn't have any intentions to win the KOM rankings, either. Rovny had already collected 32 points on stage 1 and added 7 more on stage 3, with Manaia collecting 5 points.
The next day the attacks started as soon as the flag went down and Manaia was the only rider near the front of the peloton. More KOM points were available on the stage and this time he decided to join the fight and collected 28. Now he was within reach of Rovny, so he attacked a third time in a row, Rovny stayed in the peloton, and taking the jersey from him wasn't difficult. No stage results to speak of, but another mountain jersey for Aviva.
Kwiatek won the final ITT, but he'd lost too much time on stage 4, only Quintana was able to keep up with Rui Costa on that day. The final top 10: Rui Costa, Quintana, Kwiatkowski, Ion Izagirre, Mollema, Dan Martin, Froome, Nibali, Slagter and Dennis.
Our lone cobblestone specialist Thys has a very respectable COB 77, but his other stats are weak (FLA/STA 68). Still, he's the man to protect in Paris-Roubaix. The result was very similar to the Ronde. Thys finished 12th, again not enough to fulfil the 5-star goal.
It was a pretty quiet race until the final 40 km, Gougeard and Valgren protected Thys as long as they could. Escape attempts by Sagan and Degenkolb were unsuccessful, they were caught and Thys became part of a group of 19 riders, with limited energy left. 11 riders broke free and Thys got close to catching them before the next round of attacks, leaving those 11 riders out of reach. He was left alone with Demare, who didn't want to work, then Terpstra and Offredo caught the duo, but at least none of them reacted when Thys attacked inside the Velodrome to secure this good 12th place. Like the Ronde, a very good result, but not what the sponsor demanded.
The winner is a little surprising, EBH, followed by another Norwegian, Kristoff. The big favourites Cancellara and Sagan had apparently spent too much energy on their earlier attacks and only finished 9th and 11th. Top 10: Boasson Hagen, Kristoff, Stybar, Van Avermaet, Degenkolb, Boom, Thomas, Breschel, Cancellara, Senechal
@croatia: No shame, really, it was an impossible task. Would have needed a late crash and we don't wish that on anybody.
April 2017: Amstel Gold Race
***** goal: Top 10
Race squad: de Jong, De Vreese, Fiedler, Hoem, M. Lammertink, Puccio, R. Silva, Wojtasik
All three 5-star goals within two weeks. The third and final of these goals is a top 10 in the Amstel Gold Race. Unsurprisingly, the sponsor confidence is negative so far this season, having failed 7 out of 8 goals. The saving grace is Golem, his TdF polkadot jersey and the stage wins in Tour and Vuelta aren't forgotten, and the sponsor couldn't be happier with his reputation.
And I felt we had a realistic shot at completing this next goal. With Hoem (HIL 79), Rafael Silva (78) and Maurits Lammertink (77) as well as good support we should be competitive. But there was a feeling of deja vu as we reached the final phase. We didn't dare to let one of our riders follow a first attack initiated by Gilbert, who was joined by 6 other top riders, instead we helped to reel them back in. But on the steepest hill the best attacked again and got away, exactly 10 men, just what happened in the Ronde, just what we feared.
Hoem, Lammertink and Silva had no choice, they had to set off after them. Thankfully, one rider dropped out of the top group, Arredondo, and the trio caught him and attacked again to leave him behind. Hoem did most of the work, while Lammertink got the result the sponsor asked for, 10th. No more than strictly needed, but an important goal fulfilled nonetheless and our first top 10 result in an Ardennes Week race.
Top 10: Kwiatkowski, Gilbert, Cancellara, Sagan, Dan Martin, Ulissi, Slagter, Geschke, GVA, M. Lammertink
Race squad: de Jong, De Vreese, Fiedler, Hoem, Lammertink, Puccio, R. Silva, Wojtasik
We stuck with the same 8 riders for all three races this week. In this variant of the Fleche Wallone there are two steep hills just before the Mur de Huy and the road is narrow on both of them. That always needs a bit of luck and certainly good positioning.
We didn't have enough luck nor punch for any of our men to join the best riders who broke free on these warm-up hills. But our men were at the front of the E2 of 22 riders fighting for 8th, 9th and 10th. With all sprint energy intact our three top riders were able to contain the others, including many big names like Froome, Ion Izagirre, Rolland, Uran, Moser and Valverde. Hoem, Lammertink and Silva took 8th to 10th.
Top 10: Kwiatkowski, Slagter, Betancur, Dan Martin, Ulissi, Gilbert, Kreuziger, Hoem, M. Lammertink, R. Silva
April 2017: Liege-Bastogne-Liege
Race squad: de Jong, De Vreese, Fiedler, Hoem, Lammertink, Puccio, R. Silva, Wojtasik
We went into the grand finale of the Ardennes Week feeling pretty confident, why shouldn't we get a top 10 result here as well? At least we had nothing to lose and decided to try a slightly more aggressive approach.
Instead of keeping our captains on free effort, the trio went ahead and followed the first major attack by top favourite Gilbert. We soon found ourselves in a group of 14 riders, the other 11 were all captains who had left their support behind. Briefly we even allowed our men to pull the group, before Gilbert attacked once more, already inside the final 10 km. Kwiatkowski, Dan Martin and Rui Costa followed him, our energy reserves were too low for that.
But the others put in the work now, our three riders got as much of a rest as possible. Ulissi and Betancur dropped us on the penultimate ramp, but Hoem, Silva and Lammertink had enough left in the tank for the final uphill sprint. Incredibly, Hoem was able to beat everybody and finished 7th. Lammertink also excelled and took 9th, even Silva can't be unhappy finishing 11th, still ahead of Rolland, Slagter and König. Our best result this Ardennes Week in the monument, our highest finish in a monument to date, Hoem topping his own 8th place in Milano-Sanremo.
Victory went to Dan Martin ahead of Rui Costa and Kwiatkowski. Gilbert, who had initiated the decisive attacks, paid for his efforts and finished 4th, 16 seconds behind. Betancur beat Ulissi to 5th, 1'23'' down. Our group arrived 2'15'' behind, Hoem was 7th, then Jungels, Lammertink and Sergio Henao.
A fine week for Aviva. Worth noting and very promising were the two top 10 results by Lammertink. Our big scorers Hoem and Silva will leave us at the end of the season and we already seem to have a replacement in hand. Silva proved himself to be valuable despite mediocre secondary stats. Lammertink will reach Silva's HIL 78 and end up with (slightly) better secondary stats. It'll still be sad to see Hoem go, he's got a lot more potential and will reach HIL 82.
A minor goal was winning a stage at the Giro del Trentino, three mountain stages should be ideal for that, so we brought some climbers. Of course, Aviva finished dead last in the opening TTT, we had only nominated 6 riders for the race.
So stage 2 to Merano across two big climbs was already a good first opportunity for us. We didn't get a chance to send a rider into the initial breakaway, but that only worked to our advantage. 10 riders had gotten away and the peloton was chasing hard. It gave up just as the first mountain loomed and Bolivar used the opportunity for an attack.
He easily caught the breakaway and cooperated with the group until the foot of the HC climb. ÃŽt contained a few mediocre climbers, but none could match Bolivar's skill and he dropped them mercilessly. He had to created quite the gap, and keep his opponents riding solo, because there was still a long descent and 20 flat km ahead. He won the stage by 1'45'' ahead of Roldan, fulfilled the objective and took the race lead. The group of favourites arrived 8'06'' behind and Bolivar now had to fight for a GC result. He ended 6th overall, only behind Majka, Kiserlovski, Stetina, Cataldo and Talansky and ahead of Yonder Godoy (24, MON 78), Alex Cano, Damuseau and Pantano.
Manaia's breakaway a day later was caught early, he ended up supporting Bolivar on this tough stage, but they still lost nearly 6 minutes to Majka and Bolivar's lead was down to a few seconds. It was gone a day later after the long MTT. But we still had another day for the breakaway, the final stage up to the Plan de Corones, or Kronplatz, as the locals mostly call it. Nathan Brown was still fresh and he was our best performer in the MTT as 14th, he was our man for the breakaway.
The man to beat was De Marchi, he and Brown both had MON 73, but the Italian has a lot more to offer besides that. Thankfully, none of it would help him on the tough final climb. Of course De Marchi attacked early and of course our man set a steady speed and (of course?) Brown won the contest by 45 seconds. Two stages, two days in the lead, 6th overall, an excellent outing.
On the 1st of May Aviva is 14th in the WT team rankings with 122 points. Behind us are Tinkoff-Saxo (119), Belkin (86), Lampre (12) and FDJ (3). So it looks like all relegation worries are behind us already. FDJ's best riders are sprinters, Boivin and Tsatevich, but they're not good enough for WT mass sprints (both SPR 79). Kruijswijk and his MON 78 might be the best they have to offer. Lampre's best rider is Daniel Oss (AVG 77) and he's scored 8 WT points combined in the last three seasons. At the top we currently have BMC (760) ahead of Quickstep (729), Katusha (630) and recently promoted Ag2r (489).
That the "newcomer" is dioing so well is due to their strong captain, Kwiatkowski. He didn't quite manage the Ardennes hattrick, but he still leads the individual WT rankings (412) ahead of Rui Costa (385), Gilbert (352) and Cancellara (350). Expect Kwiatkowksi to challenge Quintana for the TdF crown. Remember, Quintana was leading Froome by 5 minutes last year before when he crashed and had to leave the TdF with a broken rib (so you have seen that before, Tamijo ). But the 2017 route has less climbing, more hilly finishes and and more ITT kilometres.
Our top scorer is, of course, Bjorn Tore Hoem, 29th with 66 points. Next is Vilela (20), then Lammertink (18), Valgren (12) and five riders with 6 points, with 4 more riders on the score sheet.
Of the top riders, Porte with his MON 84 and AVG 81 is the only rider who's not scored a WT point so far. Sky's captain has raced 20 days, he did win the Tour of Oman, currently he's out with a broken rib, though he's expected back soon. This year all the good riders found a team, the best rider who has to pause this season is Ben Hermans, AVG 74, Belgian RR champion 2014.
After Ludvigsson won the prologue, Lemesle joined the breakaway on a hilly stage 2. The group was caught early, Swift won the sprint of roughly 100 riders, Lemesle lost 5 minutes, the rest of our team up to 20 minutes.
The only mountain stage was stage 4. Brown made the breakaway, but so did Contador, we saw him in several breakaways last season. This time, it'd prove decisive for overall victory. Brown couldn't hang on in the end, he finished 4th, behind Mohoric, Contador and Ignatenko. 1'33'' on the day ahead of Quintana and Rui Costa was enough of an advantage for Contador to win the Romandie, Mohoric ended 3rd, Ignatenko 6th overall.
Nothing left for us to do but send Fiedler into the breakaway on the flat stage 5. The breakaway survived and Fiedler did pretty well finishing 3rd out of 5 riders. The last stage was an ITT won by Castroviejo ahead of Tony Martin and Froome.
Porte has recovered from his broken rib in time for the Giro. The defending champion boasts MON 84 which makes him the clear favourite to defend his title and win his third Giro in four years. The rest of last season's top 5 is back as well, except for Kreuziger. As for Aviva, we'll be hutning for stages and we'd love to take the mountain jersey again, though we won't be as lucky as last year, when all it needed were two late breakaway appearances by Del Pino.
The prologue was won by Rigoberto Uran, who was able to beat Talansky and Howson. Next up were two flat stages, won by Zabel and Bouhanni. The first chance for Aviva came on stage 4 from Diamante to Giffoni Valle Piana, a hilly stage, though with the small gaps in the GC chances for survival were slim. A dozen riders attacked, only three survived, Puccio then attacked and was allowed to join the others, Vachon, Bilbao and Rubiano.
With 60 km to go the gap had shrunk to 3 minutes, but at the foot of the last hill, a cat. 2, it was still 1'45'' with just 15 km to go. Vachon and Bilbao, better punchers than Puccio, attacked at this point and Puccio needed every ounce of strength to catch them again at the top and make it into the descent with them, while the peloton had also split into pieces and some co-favourites lost time.
But the threesome would make it, Puccio began the sprint in third position, waited until the final 600 metres and managed to overtake the other two to win the stage! Would he even get to wear the pink jersey? Adam Yates, Uran, Ulissi, Ponze, Henao and Porte arrived 27 seconds behind... and Puccio is one second short, Uran retains the jersey.
After that great start... the rest of the Giro was a total wash, I'm afraid. Flat stages always came after the rest days and were all won by Bouhanni, breakaways needn't apply. And the same went for mountain stages, escape groups were often caught 30 to 50 km out and the stages all won by Porte, his MON 84 was far superior to anybody else's climbing. Bouhanni won stages 3, 5, 7, 11, 16 and 17, Porte was victorious on stages 9, 12, 14 and 15. In between we only saw Sergio Henao taking stage 6 and Zabel beating Bouhanni on stage 10.
So we fast forward to stage 18. There was still a slight chance to win the mountains classification, Coppel had managed to take the lead with breakaway appearances on the flat stages 16 and 17. But he wouldn't feature on the final two mountain stages. However, a pretty strong rider decided he wanted the jersey this year, Tim Wellens. He was up against Nathan Brown and though our Canadian fought like a lion, Wellens beat him by 12 points. Wellens also took the stage, ahead of Pantano and Ormad, Brown was 4th.
A day later Nibali won the hilly ITT from Chieri to Torino, but the GC gaps were already huge at that point for the ITT to matter much. Which left stage 20 to Sestriere, it may have been counter-productive, but due to frustration and to give us the best chance of winning a second stage we let all three remaining climbers attack, Brown, Bolivar and Foetz. We formed a group of 11 men which we didn't even need to lead, though Brown pulled the group up the first long climb while Bolivar protected Foetz, with MON 74 our best climber and also a good descender.
Wellens, wearer of the blue jersey, isn't too impressive with MON 75 and DHI 67. And yet he dropped everybody bar Foetz on the HC climb, who also was just about out of energy despite the protection by Bolivar and then Brown. He stayed behind Wellens on the last descent and should have regained more energy (+9 DHI), but Wellens nonetheless attacked again with 10 km to go while Foetz had no answer. Wellens won his 2nd stage and takes home the blue jersey, Foetz was 2nd, 1'18'' behind, our other climbers had spent all their energy and finished 29th and 30th, 12 minutes behind.
My notes contain a lot of frustration about this stage, I really felt Foetz should have been able to beat Wellens, he had full freshness (while Wellens had been in a breakaway two days earlier), he had protection from two team mates, there were a couple of long descents which should have suited him better, Wellens attacked for the KOM points while Foetz didn't... but c'est la vie.
Aviva at least won one Giro stage, thanks to Puccio. But apart from that we only had the 4th place on stage 18 with Brown and the 2nd place by Foetz on stage 20. Brown was our best man in the KOM rankings as 8th, only Wellens was able to beat the GC contenders.
Porte easily won the Giro 2017, 4'28'' ahead of Uran, 8'32'' ahead of Mollema. Adam Yates was 4th, ahead of Talansky, Sergio Henao, Majka, Nibali, Cataldo and Aru. The three Italians all finished over 25 minutes behind Porte.
Paris-Roubaix: Another close call just missed
Amstel Gold Race: On Target that’s Nice.
Fleche/Liege: Great result with several top 10’s must help a little with the sponsors
Trentino: Brown/Bolivar with a stage win’s and a few days in the lead – congratz that was a great race.
Puccio ohh my - a grand tour stage win
@Tamijo: Yes, sponsor confidence has grown. Top 10 in LBL was a + notable result, but Puccio's stage in the Giro was worth +++.
Hopefully we'll be even more successful now that our two best climbers are finally starting their WT season: Golem and Kirchmair have both improved to MON 77. Golem has now maxed out his core strength, Kirchmair can even improve a little further, though his supporting stats are pretty weak. The Austrian climber will ride the Dauphine, Golem is making his home tour debut.
June 2017: Criterium du Dauphine
**** goal: Stage Win
Race squad: Bolivar, Brown, De Vreese, Foetz, Kirchmair, M. Lammertink, Vilela, Wojtasik
Quintana's time trialling is suprisingly good in this database and he won the prologue of this year's Dauphine ahead of Terpstra and Oliviera. The TT specialists seem to be out of form, possibly getting ready for the Tour de France.
Stage 2 already featured a mountaintop finish on the Col du Beal. Foetz was in the breakaway and beat Santarromita to the first mountain jersey. The breakaway didn't stand a chance, Quintana won the stage, only Dan Martin was able to keep up, Froome lost a minute, the rest at least 1'40''.
Hoping the sprinter teams were already tired Lammertink had a go on the flat stage 3, but was unsuccessful, Tsatevich won a messy mass sprint. Stage 4 was hilly and it was De Vreese's turn to try and complete the sponsor goal. He only had low fitness and still had a real chance to win the stage, he was up against Cherel in a two-man downhill sprint. Sadly, De Vreese waited too long to start his sprint and Cherel won from the front.
Bolivar then made his breakaway appearance a day later, another hilly stage, he's not the ideal rider for that terrain. But the group had no clear favourite. There was a late steep cat. 2 and Bolivar dropped everybody and was able to finish it off on the final flat 12 km, winning 47 seconds ahead of Simon Clarke and 1'35'' ahead of Quintana, who'd swallowed the rest of the breakaway and gained time on all his GC opponents. Goal achieved!
The queen stage came on day 7 with two tough climbs in the end, first an HC climb and then only a small descent followed by a climb to Finhaut-Emosson. Foetz found himself in the breakaway once more. Damuseau and Petilli collected more KOM points on the day, but Foetz still had the lead in the rankings. But he was only 7th at the end of the stage, beaten by Battaglin and Damuseau and the top GC riders. Quintana extended his lead yet again, winning 1'46'' ahead of Froome and Kreuziger.
I admit to restarting the final stage, another mountain stage, less than 130 km long. Kirchmair was too late to make the escape group a day earlier, but now he had his chance... but from the get-go nobody in the group was willing to cooperate with him. And he isn't that strong, AVG 72. So I restarted the stage and gave Foetz another shot. He would have lost the KOM jersey to Battaglin had he not battled for more points, so there was an upside. But the stage went to the GC favourites, Quintana showed a tiny bit of weakness, Froome won the stage, 8 seconds ahead of Martin, Quintana and Rubiano, the last survivor of the breakaway.
Still, Quintana won the Dauphine 2017 by over 4 minutes ahead of Dan Martin and Froome, looking more then ready for the TdF. Next were Kreuziger, Kiserlovski, Rolland, Bouet, Van Garderen, Rubiano and Poels. Aviva celebrates the stage win, which was also a sponsor goal, and only our second KOM jersey of the year.
Race squad: Aregger, Angel Figares, Golem, Goos, Köszegi, Bruno Silva, Rafael Silva, Valgren
Tony Martin won the prologue. Stage 2 to Verbier looked a little mountainous, but was classified as hilly. Goos was the only rider close enough to the front to make the breakaway on a terrain he doesn't like much, but the attempt was unsuccessful and Kwiatkowski won the stage. The next stage finished with a mass sprint won by Nizzolo.
We brought one of our best punchers, Rafael Silva, to the Tour de Suisse with an eye on stage 4. His fitness level was low, but his breakaway companions Boem and Vorganov were no match for him, he dropped them on the last steep hill. But there were still 12 flat kilometres to the finish line and the top riders had attacked and were closing in fast. In a nail-biting finish Silva crossed the line barely a bike length ahead of Sagan. Another objective ticked off.
A couple more flat stages were won by Peter Sagan, then Kwiatkowski extended his lead by winning the hilly ITT on stage 7. Köszegi joined the breakaway on stage 8, finishing up in Arosa. The final climb featured a long flat stretch, he wouldn't have won the stage even if the breakaway had survived, he finished 12th, Simon Yates won ahead of the race leader.
What didn't work in the Dauphine was no problem in the Tour de Suisse. Our top climber Fredy Golem waited until the tough final stage to join the breakaway of a dozen riders, some of them not far outside the top 10, especially Moser. But the peloton did very little, the gap grew up to 15 minutes, Golem passed the two HC summits first. He dropped everybody including Moser and decided against waiting for him, riding up the final climb, the Sörenberg, alone. He won the stage and the polkadot jersey in his home tour. Moser was 2nd, Nordhaug 3rd, the favourites arrived 5 minutes behind. It was enough for Moser and Nordhaug to climb to 5th and 8th in the final GC. Kwiatek wins the race in convincing fashion, Aviva takes two stages and the KOM jersey.
Top 10: Kwiatkowski, Betancur, Uran, Velits, Moser, I. Izaggire, Herrada, Nordhaug, Spilak, Rui Costa
June 2017: National Championships and transfer news
As I said last year, I won't cover the NC races, I like racing them for the jerseys and I don't mind collecting a few more wins. Here are the NC road races we managed to win: Switzerland (Golem), Russia (Pomoshnikov), Poland (Wojtasik), Netherlands (Goos), Denmark (Valgren), Portugal (Bruno Silva) as well as Australia (de Jong) already back in January.
Transfer news: I first noticed it last season with Valgren, something I never realised before in any career – if you get the message that a rider wants to join your team, you can sign him even if you offer him significantly less than he is asking for. This season we got the message from Damuseau and Kudus and they asked for 8.5k and 12.5k. We offered our current limit of 4.5k, and both accepted despite other offers. Though unattractive offers, to be fair, the only other team that offered Kudus a contract was the CT team Roubaix-Lille.
With Kudus I considered cancelling the deal, who in real life would never accept such a low offer, but (my) rules are (my) rules and with MON 75 HIL 75 he isn't outstanding compared to the rest of the team. I could get riders who are only marginally worse inside the current limit. I may have felt like I had cheated if it turned out he had unused potential, but he didn't, MON/HIL 75 was his limit, the same was true for Damuseau.
Having said that, I decided this would be the last time for that little trick, so it only applied to Valgren, Damuseau and Kudus. I would be tempted again a few seasons later when the max wage was 7k and just for fun I made an offer to a young climber with MON 79 who wanted over 20k and actually accepted my low offer. I was agonising over it for about a minute but I stayed strong and dismissed him.
Only 10 riders had a contract for next season. For the first time we offered riders a contract renewal: Wojtasik and Manaia. Wojtasik may have maxed out his potential, but he's a useful rider and will show that in his home tour in August, while Manaia can still improve a little. That left 18 spots to fill with new riders.
While by AVG Kudus will be our best rider at the start of the upcoming season, this time we managed to pick a few really promising riders. Two of them have potential 7, both are Australian, the first Aviva riders with such high potential. Two more will have potential 6. As always, I'm reporting this long after the fact, I never checked the riders' potentials before signing them. So there will also be three new riders who only have potential 3 – including Damuseau.
As always, we'll have a very colourful bunch of riders, whatever your favourite nationality is, we probably have a rider for you. The 2018 squad will consist of 4 Belgians, 3 Australians, 2 Spaniards, 2 Portuguese, 2 Italians, 2 Eritreans, 2 Luxembourgers and one each from Germany, Austria, France, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Kazakhastan, Colombia, Canada and Ethiopia. Still no Brit, though, you'll have to wait until 2020, we'll also add an American rider then.
, a mixed feeling result. 
). But the 2017 route has less climbing, more hilly finishes and and more ITT kilometres. 
