SotD wrote:
You decide whether the PT crown should be yours or not through your season planning. Despite Gazelle not really have become a worse selection over the transferperiod, I really can't see a team equal to or better than yours at this stage. Very very impressive stuff! And to have subtop GC riders rather than a potential podium aspirant IMO only shows how well you have built the setup. The fight for the GT wins is fierce, and you have chosen wise to stay out of contention. Yet the GC potential is still there for not only stagewins, but also KOM and top 10GC.

Can't wait to see how you will end up. Anything less than a PT podium position would be a huge dissapointment I'd reckon.

As always, we are very ambitious with our mandatory GT goal. Winning the TDF might sound ambitious already without any context but knowing now that Lopez won't be racing this GT and that we will focus on the green jersey, we will have to find another scapegoat if we dont get this done.

Skujins is constantly delivering in this race, finishing 3rd, 10th, 2nd and 6th since we signed him in 2016. With the help of Lopez who finished 27th last year, this goal looks very achievable.

The last three years, Skujins finished 6th, 10th and 8th in the monument at the end of the season. Lopez who finished 15th last season is another strong weapon for this race so we are optimistic that this goal will be possible too.

Since 2015, we finished this race in the top 7 each year with last year's 7th place by Blythe as the worst ever result in Evonik history. We trust him again to deliver us at least deliver us a similar good result again. Top 10 seems like a very reasonable and fair expectation for him.

When we were done with renewals, we were pretty optimistic about the upcoming transfer window and already felt like a top 5 standings goal would be rather conservative. We still think that is the case after transfers and would be very disappointed if we dont achieve this.

- Double leadership
- Naud and Riesebeek to control the race for the first 180km
- Climbers/Puncheurs to help our duo on the final two laps

- Van Stayen as sprint and GC leader
- Intended leadout: Dzamastagic + Chavanne
- Flat stat, Flat stat, Flat stat
- Stoltz and Chavanne for the epilog

- Lopez as designated team leader
- More climbers for support, depth points and team classification
- Eislers as sprinter for stage 1
- Neilands as protection against echelons

- Lopez should be amongst the favourites
- We want to win the teams classification
- Dzamastagic as our sprinter for the "flat" stages
- Chavanne, Stoltz amongst top favourites for the prologue

- We loved the clash with Portugal
- The 8 riders that don't ride Portugal who were the easiest to free 2 RDs
- Why is this the only race in the "PT" category without finishing points?

- Skujins is the total focus point
- 13 km TTing is ~ 13km too much
- Relying on high Flat/Hi supportdue to very short climbs and clashes
- Possibly the worst lead sprinter we have on a flat stage all season long?
- Eislers first rider in Evonik history to not race in the triple header

- Chiarello captain, Tvetcov
- Vosekalns hopefully attackers
- 7 km prolog!
- Liepins for the two flat stages

- Our most anticipated race in the triple header
- First pure hilly race with Lopez as leader
- Maximum support including rare Van Stayen sighting on the hills

- Top 10 goal
- Van Stayen aims to repeat his 2017 success
- Can Eislers and Dzamastagic deliver a leadout after 294 km?
- You probably havent noticed yet but we love high flat stats
- Tvetcov for additional power over the Poggio

redordead wrote:
Maybe we can fight for last place in Copenhagen-Malmo

- Blythe refuses to call this a cobbles race
- 2019: Blythe (28th) only 3rd best 2020Evonik finisher behind Marzuki (13th - SPAR) and Budenieks (26th - SPAR)
- Our other cobblers will hopefully not wait for Blythe if dropped early
- No expectation on Sakalou - solely racing for support duty in the first half

- Leaderless cycling
- One more proper prologue
- Sprinting would be nice
- Focus on break attempts + KoM points on stage 4
- Since the classic (2015: Dzamastagic 11th) turned stage race, we never finished better than 65th in GC

- No excuses: Time for Van Stayen to deliver
- Leadout: Becis - Dzamastagic - MVS
- Flat beasts: Will Dzamastagic & Co drop Van Stayen?
- Hope that the race jury doesnt screw us again when there are gaps

- Finally cobbles!
- Stoltz is a full-time member of our cobbles squad
- Evonik history: 2nd - 2nd - 1st - 7th

- Copy Paste lineup from Vlaanderen
- Third PTHC race - third good scoring?
- Evonik history: 6th - 2nd - 2nd - 4th