With safety all but secured, we could look forward to a relaxing final month of the ProTour, with us surprising most people, including ourselves, by not sucking at a TTT, coming 13th in the Copenhagen - Malmo TTT.
Morgan Kneisky took a fantastic 10th place finish at Praha-Karlovy Vary-Praha, having gone with the break of the day.
The final stage race of the year, the Tour of Tasmania, saw Rein Taaramae lead the team for the final time after his fantastic season.
Unfortunately, he lost too much time on the second stage to challenge for the win, but a 5th place finish in the time trial on the third and final stage gave him 9th overall, a solid end to a wonderful season.
So to the final race of the season, and Jan Bakelants led the team in the classic season ender, the Giro di Lombardia. Damiano Cunego was too good for everyone, coming in solo nearly 2 minutes ahead, but Jan fought well to take 6th overall in the small bunch sprint.
The opening season for the team known then as Bouygues Telecom, and currently known also as Bouygues Telecom was the most successful in the team's history. The team was undoubtedly led by Christophe Moreau, who delivered the most sensational result of the season by winning Le Tour de France by an amazing 6 seconds over Alexandre Vinokourov of T-Mobile, overhauling the Kazakh in the final time trial.
Christophe spent the next season at the Discovery Channel team (Manager: SidGarcia) for the rather measly price of €280,000, but at this point, Christophe was past his best, and he could only manager 17th in the Tour that year. He retired at the end of that season.
Fabian Cancellara was the second team leader, and enjoyed a moderately successful if slightly bizarre 2007, taking 2nd at the Amstel Gold Race and 5th at Paris-Roubaix. He left at the end of the season in a trade with Accumalux (managed by SportingNonsense) (I vaguely remember Cobo, Piepoli and De la Fuente being involved).
However, that was certainly not the end of his relationship with the team, as after two seasons with Accumalux, the Swiss rider returned in 2010 to the team, which at that point in time was known as Unicef RT. This spell lasted three seasons, before he moved to Red Bull (managed by Smowz) in 2013 after the team's relegation to the PCT. He still rides there to this day.
Jose Rujano was our second stage race leader for 2007, and led the team at the Vuelta a Espana, achieving a very credible 10th place finish. He followed this up in the following season (with the team then known as Cycling24 - Honda) with an improved 7th place finish at the Vuelta, before moving at the end of the season to Magenta All Stars (managed by Cristi_M). After that, he spenr two years under p3druh (known as SIC Radical - Timberland then Pearl Adidas), spending two seasons at Pokerstars.com (managed by beagle) and is currently at Becherovka - Kiwibank (managed by Roman).
Our final leader for 2007 in the stage races was Ruben Plaza, whose highlight of the season was a very pleasing 8th placed finish in the Giro d'Italia. He moved at the end of the season to Virgin Media (managed by Smoothie), spending three seasons there until the team was taken over by rjc_43. His next career move was to Jack Wolfskin (managed by alexkr00), where he spent two seasons, before dropping down to the PCT and moving onto Prio - Porto (Gustavovskiy) for a season and finally going to his current team, Team CSC - Orbea (managed by Mresuperstar).
Our most disappointing rider of that inaugural 2007 season was Patrik Sinkewitz, signed from the opening draft to be our team leader for the hilly races. His most notable result was an 8th place finish at Milano - Sanremo. His career saw him become a journeyman, with him having spells at Une Orbitel (Karl_rab), Erste (jolly_antunes), SIC Radical - Timberland (p3druh), Auber 93 - Look (rjc_43). He has had a permanent home since 2012 however, with three seasons spent with our friends at Spyker Cars/Vueling Airlines (CrueTrue).
And finally, we come to the two most important riders from that initial class of 2007. This organisation values loyalty and mindless obedience more than any other trait, and that is shown in no more dollops than in Theo Bos and Oscar Solis. These two riders were obtained in the post draft "swap session" of that year, a process which allowed three riders in the team to be swapped for free agents. Oscar has been an invaluable domestique in the mountains over the years, nurturing and protecting a conveyor belt of team leaders who continually and inevitably disappoint. Theo Bos is Theo Bos. Both riders will be kept until they retire.
Enjoyed the history lesson, Fabian tells me he enjoyed his time at Bouygues and whilst his results have been better at the more professionally run Red Bull squad his favourite rides were for Bouygues. Unsurprisingly he was least happy at the Accumulux team where he found management particularly draconian
In the shiny new team headquarters based in Pyongyang, Bouygues Telecom DS was delighted to announce the team's goals for 2015, delivered via interpretive dance by the Korean People's Army Ground Force.
Goal 1: To the Moon
"But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?"
"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win."
Theo Bos is currently engaged in astronaut training to achieve these goals, despite his fear of flying and the fact the launch vehicle is currently him flapping his arms as hard as possible to try and generate lift. His current record through this stands at 12000 metres of altitiude
Goal 2: Build Fort Kickass
No girls allowed
Goal 3: Deal with "The Incident"
We've sent our best man, Dave, to deal with the unspecified..."Incident".
I mean, the Universe won't collapse inwards on itself if we don't fix this. It's more of a tearing apart of the fabric of time and space, and we haven't tested the effect of this on our riders in the wind tunnel, so we hope to avoid this.
Anyway, good luck Dave!
Goal 4: Breathe Underwater
Several of our riders are currently living underwater in the hope they'll evolve gills, which I don't know, might help if it's raining? No luck so far, and they kinda stopped moving several hours ago. Anyone know if this is how evolution works?
Goal 5: Kill All Cyclists
The most surefire way to win is when you have no competition.
Edited by Crommy on 25-04-2015 16:23
In an exciting transfer period, Bouygues Telecom have seen three riders leave (or are about to) the team:
1. Pieter Jacobs leaves to Swisscom - UBS for a fee of €522,000 after five years of service with the team. He joined the team in 2010, and spent the first three seasons as Fabian Cancellara's top domestique, helping Fabian to multiple Monument podiums (but never that elusive win). It was in this period that Pieter achieved his best result with the team, a 9th place finish in Gent - Wevelgem in 2012 (when the team was Carmeuse - Bouygues Telecom). After Fabian left with the team's relegation, Pieter took up the mantle of leadership of the cobbled squad, but has never pushed on since becoming leader. We wish him luck with his new team.
2. Tony Gallopin leaves to join Sodexo ProCycling for a fee of €75,000, after four years of faithful service. He has been an excellent domestique over multiple terrains.
3. Julien El Fares leaves on a free transfer to Euskaltel – Air France, a slightly surprising move given he had a reasonably successful last year, peaking with taking home the Vuelta al Pais Vasco mountains jersey. Like Tony, Julien also joined in 2011, although he spent the first season on loan at Bacardi - Colt. We wish him well.
A mere 3 months late, and here is the Bouygues February roundup.
The month started with the Omloop Het Volk, now a 3 day stage race featuring 2 dreaded days of cobbles followed by an even more dreaded cobbled TTT to finish with.
Clement Lhotellerie was taken as leader, but it was in fact Bakhtiyar Kozhatyev who featured for Bouygues, getting into the break of the day on stage 2 and managing to finish 5th, putting him 29th overall.
We then continued our fine team time trialling tradition by coming dead last, but Bakhtivar (nickname suggestions welcome, getting pretty tired of typing that out) still held 29th overall, a fine result for the 23 year old.
Then onto the triple header, Tirreno-Adriatico where the sprint team would be led by Jurgen Roelandts, Paris-Nice where Rein Taaramae would try to defend his title on terrain which wasn't as mountainous as he'd normally like, and the Classique du Grand-Duche, where Jan Bakelants would take the hilly team. Three races, three formidbale leaders, three mixed results.
Hugues Mottin took our best result at the Tirreno-Adriatico, with a fine second in the prologue (although he hilariously finished dead last overall), whilst Jurgen could only manage a best finish of 4th on stage 3.
Over to Paris-Nice, and Rein started well with 5th in the opening prologue. However the lack of proper mountains hinded him throughout, and he ended up finishing 5th overall, still a pleasing finish, but a missed goal for Bouygues. Other pleasing performances during the race saw Estifanos Kebede take 5th on stage 6, and Eliot Lietaer come 8th on stage 8.
The final race, the Classique du Grand Duche saw Jan be positive and attacking, which was very pleasing, but finish outside the podium in 4th, which was less so.
So onto Milano-Sanremo, where we sent only Jan instead of the Jurgen/Jan combination that we did last year, because it was highly unlikely to come down to a bunch sprint. It came down to a bunch sprint...
Jan took 10th though, which was nice.
Our other race was our first race of the season outside the PrTour, where we sent a young squad to the Bayern Rundfahrt, led by Warren Barguil, who performed well to take 38th overall.
March, and time for the cobbles. Given we'd sold one of our cobbled leaders though, we weren't exactly looking forward to it.
But first, the Chrono des Herbiers, where things got weird. Hugues Mottin came 22nd.
Then to the Lisbon Classic, where Jurgen Roelandts decided to actually sprint and produced a solid 3rd place.
And so to the cobbles, where we fulfilled our goal of being practically invisible for all the races, apart from the Ronde van Vlaanderen, where Bakhtiyar Kozhatayev continued his impressive season but disobeyed team orders by actually trying. We don't tolerate that kind of behaviour.
He got in the break of the day, and managed to cling on to 20th place, a fantastic and unexpected result, which earned him sullen looks from our actually cobbled leader, Clement Lhotellerie.
And we end the month at the Vuelta al Pais Vasco, where the team was set to support Jan Bakelants in his goal for the GC, despite him not being able to time trial for toffee.
Jan grabbed our first win of the season on stage 3, a stunning win that put him into the race lead, which he then proceeded to immediately lose on the following stage, before falling two more places to finish 4th overall
April, and the first Grand Tour of the year - the Tour of California. We also participated in some tinpot race around Italy, the Gori, or whatever it's called.
To the Tour of California, we took our best on loan rider, Tim Wellens, to lead the team for the first time, and also brought our token American, Joe Hicks.
The good news started on stage 3, where we did a TTT and didn't come last \o/. Mostly this was thanks to Tony Martin and Hugues Mottin.
The bad news was that was our redeeming feature of the Tour of California.
So onto the Giro, which was happening before, during and after California. We took a team of stage hunters, led by Jurgen Roelandts and his sprint train, but also had Oscar Solis for the mountains and Warren Barguil to test himself for the U25 jersey.
We started off in excellent form, coming dead last in the TTT, the only team to lose over 2 minutes to the stage winners Metinvest-Dacia.
We then proceeded to hit the sprint stages, and went with the unconventional tactic of having our sprinter not sprint. It didn't work...
Which meant our first notable result come on stage 11, where Marcio Portela got in the break of the day and managed to take 7th in the finale.
This proved to be the catalyst for a second successive stage of getting into the break and it sticking, as Warren Barguil took 5th on the following stage, pushing him up to 4th in the U25 jersey, which then saw him drop off on the following stage to move down to 9th.
Stage 15 actually finally saw Jurgen Roelandts sprint! And he took 2nd! Hurrah! No, wait, 6 riders were up the road.
Jurgen's Giro reached it's fitting conclusion on stage 20, when he missed the time limit.
Warren Barguil finished 8th in the U25 competition
I thought he would still be over a million.
