First of all thanks for playing along in naming the loan-out of the year. We'll repeat the process for Bull of the Year when all rider reviews have been posted.


The winner was clear as a frosty day on the lakes: Olli Kulppi. Olli had a great season riding alongside Boonen and wit ha youth jersey in de Panne and a 22nd place in his Roubaix-debut to his name alongside with some breakaways it was no surprise that he took the prize. Well done Olli!

Samuel did great in his first season in our jersey, after having been in loan at Aker-MOT last season, with several good stage result both in ITT's and road race stages as well as a solid GC result in Iceland.

He will be part of our PCT setup as well.

Last year Viktor won a couple of prologues making him our most winning rider. He did not find that level this year. Combined with a stronger TT-presence in the division he had a hard year with only one top 10 result.

Viktor will most likely be staying with us as part of our TTT-core next season.

The signing of Samoilev was the most complicated transfer of our last offseason as we took him in order for Red Bull to take Gökhan Hasta on loan. To be honest we were a bit doubtful due to his high wages, but at this point we are very happy we did.

Branislav was ready to step up whenever Anacona forgot to ride his bike in USA and was a very important team mate for Winner in the last part of Tour of America especially. Being two times named Bull of the Month bears witness to his good year.

Stage win and GC 2nd place in Giro del Capo when Anacona was elsewhere preves his competence.

Odds are he will be riding on our team next year as well, though we will be listening to any offers that may come.

Ignacio is a late-season hill specialist. Both this season and the last he rode a relatively anonymous season helping his teammates until things suddenly fall into place late in the season when he is riding as back-up plan for someone else. He did become Bull of the Month in May as well, but that was just as much doe to everyone else underperforming and Ignacio doing as he should.

This year it was in Ruta America del Sur where he was awake when Vastaranta took a blunder and saved our race with some good stage results and a GC podium.

It's always nice to have the kind of riders that can pop up and produce a good result when needed while also putting in some good work over the course of the season so we will most likely be keeping Ignacio with us next season.

After having been the best rider on a crappy team last year CAS was demoted to key helper for Anacona this season. A task that he filled with excellence as he also found some great racing legs with the lower level of pressure. In fact he even scored a bit better than last year where he was outright leader of the team everywhere he went.

He also got his first win for our team in Azerbaijan and combined with GC 2nd places in both Azerbaijan and East Java this season could be called a real rebirth of the beloved Danish climber.

Right now I have serious doubts that anyone will be able to make an offer that will result in the departure of the very first rider we signed to the team.

Taciak had a good season in the role of the helper, though with fewer highlights than last year. Still someone has to make the hard early work on the stages and in the TTT's as well and he did that in the manner we could expect from him-

Will he stay or will he go? Time will tell - he have been a good man to have around and was also among the first batch of riders signed.
Most likely he will get a new contract and then we'll see what happens in the offseason.

The Finnish RR-champion had a less than impressive season.
Sure his role in setting up sprints for Westling went to hell of obvious reason, but it saddened us that he didn't attempt to show the jersey in another manner in stead. In fact it only got caught by the cameras once all season and that is just not good enough.

Tianien should be really happy with his passport as that is the only thing keeping him in the grey zone contract-wise...

You all know how thrilled we were when we managed to get the best Finnish cyclist to the team - and that for a very nice salary. But did he perform according to the hype?

On one hand he did get us several wins and many jighlights, but on the other hand he had more than once in the season where he just didn't work hard enough for a good result. E.g. Taiwan, first hilly stage of America del Sur or some of the classics where he just rolled over the line safe inside the peloton.

And then we have a bunch of races where he missed out on a potential win by wasting his energy on early attacks. Really is a mood-racer that Jukka.
We MIGHT consider letting Vastaranta go in a direct swap for a rider around Pluchkins level.

Last year he secured our win goal in the only race where we came with full support for him so we figured that he deserved a new contract and then we built a flat team around him in stead of spreading them out over all the races.

A small handful of times over the season it looked like he sort of considered sprinting. Every time he decided not to though and as earlier announced he will not be offered a new contract.

In fact we won't have him on the team even if he offers to rider for free.
We wish him absolutely no luck with his future.

As earlier announced we had 5 nominees for the title. Before the vote that had to be reduced to 4 riders.

The one missing out is Ignacio Sarabia. Ignacio had some good moments, but all other 4 nominees had a better season in general.

That leaves two expected leaders, who each both delivered and disappointed and two designated lieutenants, who stepped up in beautiful manner when it was needed.

Below are the riders' top 10 finishes:







Now it's time for you to decide who had the best season. Leaders who delivered or underdogs, who delivered when it was needed and they got the chance.

The vote has been cast and you guys decided to award Samoilev with 3rd place while 40% voted for Anacona and 40% for Chris Anker Sørensen.

So I got to cast the final decisive vote and that didn't really leave us with much other choice than giving it to the biggest positive surprise of the season:



Chris was our best rider last season, though that wasn't really an impressive feat so he was demoted quite a lot for this season.
Last year he got a stage 2nd and two stage 3rd as his best results.

This year he was put in the role of the helper and did impressive in that role. First as a key helper when Vastaranta won GP Sallanches with Anacona on 3rd ans shortly after by winning the queen stage in Azerbaijan when Anacona had his first melt-down. That race alone made this season better than his last when measured by top results.

He was on to a great Tour of Scotland as well until a nasty crash put an end to his hopes leaving it at a stage top 10.

His great spirit to take the chances that appear this year is well examplified by his top 10 in a bunch sprint on the last day in Tour of Iceland despite having been in the break all day.

In Giro del Capo it was Samoilevs turn to get a stage win and GC 2nd and once again CAS fulfilled the role of the helper to perfection.

In Tour of East Java he stayed in that role too long as Anacona never rewarded the effort and what could easily have been a stage and GC win got turned into two more 2nd places due to Chris being such a nice guy.


Anacona made another sub-par effort in USAPCC despite getting well looked after by Chris and Branislav. The fact that Chris finished 12th in the GC despite the ITT just puts another fat line under the season he's had.

And then of course he was part of the team around Anacone in Tour of America. You know that team that for the first two weeks was very much in contention for both GC win and team competition. CAS has his share of that glory as well!

That was the end of his regular season, but we hope and dream that he will be able to carry the form into the Danish NC so he can get a distinctive jersey to ride in next year.
He deserves that!

Starting off with the B Worlds Road Race we had Lindau and CAS both in support of a favourite and Samoilev/Taciak others on underdog teams.


Throughtout the day Denmark was the most visible of those, but sadly Guldhammer didn't have the legs to finish the job.
Good thing that Lövkvist had one of the best days of his career then as he managed to take the win.

And with all their leaders finishing in top 8 of the race our boys have every reason to be content with how the B-RR went.


For the Team Time Trial we were only represented on the Colombian team, where Anacona did a great job taking his pulls to help the team finish an impressive 3rd.
Great to see one of our boys getting a medal!

The rest of the races didn't really give us much to cheer about.
Some credit goes to Sakari though. He was badly placed (after all he was the only guy on his team) and got caught behind when 20 riders split of the front, but he managed to be best among the rest, which is a nice little thing.

Sergiu and the rest of the Moldovian team failed big time in helping Pluchkin towards full legend status.

1	Thomas Lövkvist	Sweden	6h25'38
29	Chris Anker Sørensen	Denmark	+ 3'30
79	Branislav Samoilev	Belarus	+ 8'25
120	Philip Lindau	Sweden	+ 18'53
125	Mateusz Taciak	Poland	+ 20'05

1	-	Italy	1h24'40
3	Winner Anacona	Colombia	+ 23

1	Daan Olivier	Netherlands	6h50'27
21	Sakari Lehtinen	Finland	+ 18'38

1	Andy Schleck	Luxembourg	6h31'01
40	Winner Anacona	Colombia	+ 2'06
179	Sergiu Cioban	Moldova	+ 43'38
186	Philip Lindau	Sweden	+ 47'32

Now we look very much forward to the national championships where we will hopefully get a few jerseys.

We could speculate from here to eternity about where we have the best chances but apart from Finland, where it's just a matter of which of our riders win, anything can happen really.

the_hoyle wrote:
Congrats on the NC victories so far