Not even a top 10 this couldn't have gone much worse. I had much hopes for this race, but in the end it's just another race going terribly for me. Should've taken Beltran when I had the chance.
Congrats to Bjartne! Always nice to see Europcar doing well.
Also thanks for some great reports Ulrich, just wish the AI & results would live up even remotely to their quality.
So a weird race, but at the same time, if this was real life, we'd probably all be cheering for the underdog to hold on to the lead after a surprising result in the first stage. Of course we all have stock in the results so it ends up leaving managers frustrated (myself included), but Kinoshita atleast moved up a spot to 7th, so not a bad result for us, considering its PTHC.
Congrats to Bjartne and thanks to Ulrich for the super reports.
Gobsmacked Denz managed to win the White Jersey and finish in the top 10 in GC. Still can't understand how he managed to hang with the main favourites? Happy that he did and got Kraftwerk some unexpected points.
Not quite the result we needed here, but a stage win from Lutsyshyn and great attacking riding by Padun on a course that did suit him less well than I had thought..
Manager of Team Popo4Ever p/b Morshynska in the PCM.Daily Man-Game
This race was the big opportunity for Arndt to prove his worth in the new mo/hil meta after the hilly classics were a massive disappointment in that regard.
There was nothing to gain for us in the first two stages, so I'm happy the major points went to PCT teams.
Stage 3 however could've been amazing for us if the pace had been just a bit higher and consistent throughout the day. Staying s.t. would've gone a long way there, even though finishing as the best climber was decent.
Stage 4 was predictably a fucking joke from us, with so many 70+ sprinters among our puncheurs completely disinterested in setting up Arndt for a finish that ultimately saw clearly weaker sprinters finish far ahead of him. Sometimes I wonder if my thinking is way too theoretical for this game...
Declerq going for the KoM points in stage 5 was nice to see, although inevitably pointless in the long run.
And again we fail to set up Arndt well for the final climb despite the AI obviously considering us a race favorite, so he had to dig in deep to follow the attacks and faded at the very end to leave a bigger gap than necessary.
13th in the GC with just one difficult stage to follow isn't good enough when your team is one of the 3 major teams to work and the stages we could win reliably going to breaks, like in stage 6 right after.
So stage 8 has to be where we make the difference. And OBVIOUSLY WE DON'T!
Sick and tired of this happening again and again.
We had the opportunity to either win the stage or at least take decent time on the puncheurs, and in the end we don't get any of that done and have to settle for one measly 4th place across all 8 stages and a massive s.t. train in the stages that suited Arndt compared to gaps everywhere on the punchy stages to finish an abysmal THIRTEENTH overall and take basically nothing from this race and end up with a complete season wasted for Arndt, our reliable wildcard for massive overperformances in the last few years.
Smelling more and more like relegation here
