Pretty sure, you will achieve your goal Some promising threats on all terrains bar TTs. If Vantomme won't grab a win, i guess De Maar is a good bet indeed. Good luck!
tsmoha wrote:
Pretty sure, you will achieve your goal Some promising threats on all terrains bar TTs. If Vantomme won't grab a win, i guess De Maar is a good bet indeed. Good luck!
Tour de France 2014
Vanbilsen takes stage win on a chaotic day!
Vanbilsen is first to attack on the first road stage of the 2014 Tour!
And is first to finish! Just! What a win for the upcoming Belgian star and the team!
I think everyone at Quickstep is still speechless after today's result, it's particularly nice to come from Belgian with foreigners taking most share of our success this season so far. We expected to fight for few victories along the way, but certainly not quite soon as this. Everything played in our hands, the tough windy day suited Kenneth dropping his companions at the end and finishing it off in style! Time for champagne!
Aside Kenneth, Marquez did well to finish in 2nd main bunch, just over minute behind the main favourites and now 3 minutes back in GC. We are still focusing on stage wins with Marquez so GC is no objective. Vantomme was found in 3rd group on the road, we decided today was too tough and let him ease it up a bit, before the next 3 stages that suit him to perfection.
Well, that wasn't exactly a long waiting. Congrats! New goal: three stage-wins!
Spoiler
Tour de France 2014
Is this PT or ..CT? Vantomme storms to stage win on stage 3!
The three V's in action! Vanbilsen, Van Asbroeck and Vantomme at the end of the train!
And delivers at the end! Back-to-back wins at Le Tour..are we dreaming?
After yesterday's success the team was in high spirits and that spread to all its members throughout stage 3. Chris and Julien working with other team's to catch the break, and then yesterday's winner Vanbilsen, Baugnies, De Maar and Asbroeck ensured Vantomme was in a good position to challenge for the win.
And he didn't only challenge but he won in a tight contest between Guarneri! Yesterday's plan of Vantomme dropping off the peleton early proved to be genius, with extra energy with his last push he overcome the strong Italian.
One stage win for a PCT team in a Grand Tour should be classified as success, but now not only we have two, they were back-to-back! Vantomme with his win moves to 2nd in green jersey classification, behind Vanbilsen who for 2nd day leads the green and shares King of Mountain jersey.
Odds on Quickstep winning the PT next season? I'm thinking about 1/999! That's right, bet 999 to get 1 back in winnings!
Edited by TheManxMissile on 10-12-2014 00:52
Vantomme coming from winning his first HC race in our homeland at Eneco Tour following up with a Tour stage came high in confidence. But it was another Belgian who took unlikely glory on the first day. A short prologue that favoured cobbles specialists, and Steurs was the best one. We are many things, but we are not a TT team, so to actually get a stage win in TT is brilliant.
Steurs takes the prologue with huge margin!
Vantomme struggled in the first three sprint stages, but with him doing better in the prologue than his opponents he was still within a good chance of good GC, from long back he came 2nd on penultimate stage which have him important bonus seconds and chance of overall win on the final stage.
Vantomme grabs podium after late kick.
Motivated on the final stage, our team did a perfect leadout with Coquard leading out Vantomme to a tight win. Vantomme started his sprint from 1.5km out and still no one passed him, it was a deserved win. With Van Stayen not on the podium it means Vantomme takes his 2nd HC rated stage race in a row. Some form he is on.
Vantomme wins the stage taking the GC!
Stage Winners
Stage 1
Geert Steurs
Quickstep
Stage 2
Michael Van Stayen
Venchi - Ferranti
Stage 3
Jon Aberasturi
Bacardi Limited
Stage 4
Francisco Ventoso
Team CSC - Orbea
Stage 5
Maxime Vantomme
Quickstep
General Classification
1
Maxime Vantomme
Quickstep
15h29'34
2
Michael Van Stayen
Venchi - Ferranti
+ 8
3
Francisco Ventoso
Team CSC-Orbea
+ 10
4
Jon Aberasturi
Bacardi Limited
+ 13
5
Geert Steurs
Quickstep
+ 19
...
12
Kenneth Vanbilsen
Quickstep
+ 28
14
Gianni Meersman
Quickstep
+ 29
15
Tom Van Asbroeck
Quickstep
s.t.
49
Bryan Coquard
Quickstep
+ 2'07
81
Wouter Wippert
Quickstep
+ 4'47
82
Kristoffer Skjerping
Quickstep
+ 4'48
1.1 Kobenhavn Byrundtur
Baugnies takes Quickstep first cobbled classic!
Having not won a cobble classic this season we were under pressure to do so and with limited opportunities left we had to deliver. And so we finally did.
In typical fashion, Baugnies attacked a lot...
But this time it miracously paid off..just...Baugnies first win in 2014!
These two races combined means we scored 613 points overall giving us average points scored per day across the 7 race days used of 87.57
I don't think we'll ever beat that!
And last thing, Quickstep was nominated for Team of the Year and after a veryy close contest came out top. Thanks for the votes. It seems that motivated the team quite well
Incredible double-header for you and you are on the way to expected win in the division. Much deserved one, as i think you have the best managed team in the game. Great to see fellow D2 class manager finally heading for the PT experience.
Even Kim is impressed: (blame tsmoha and Alex for gIF mania).
Thanks Tsmoha hopefully we'll be joining PT together
Avin Wargunnson wrote:
Incredible double-header for you and you are on the way to expected win in the division. Much deserved one, as i think you have the best managed team in the game. Great to see fellow D2 class manager finally heading for the PT experience.
Even Kim is impressed: (blame tsmoha and Alex for gIF mania).
Spoiler
Indeed one day I hope jph, Ste, Mhaley yourself and other remaining Div2 managers end up in PT together. That would be cool!
Next season for you will be interesting. It's mega important year for you with lots of tough decisions. Loan out talents to max them or maybe let them stay in order to promote? It depends how it goes early in the transfers for you but hope it works nicely for you. And you'll be challenging promotion for PT in either next year or two years with maxed Grosu and Zmora, scary sight
It's about time that Baugnies won one of the cobbled races and they didn't come down to a sprint, also the performance of your team was highly impressive in the Baltic Tour congrats on 5 in the top 15
Some promising threats on all terrains bar TTs. If Vantomme won't grab a win, i guess De Maar is a good bet indeed. Good luck!
Thomas Dekker
Aleksandr Pluchkin
Jacopo Guarnieri
Rick Zabel
Juan Van Heerden
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
2.HC Baltic Chain Tour 
1.1 Kobenhavn Byrundtur 
