Luis Leon Sanchez Gil was the most dominant cyclist in the Pro Continental Tour throughout the 2015 season and his season was a major reason why Evonik - ELKO promoted to Pro Tour.

He dominated hilly stage races but was also impressive in hilly classics. This was good enough to top the Individual Rankings with a 200 points lead ahead of superstars like Contador, Brajkovic or Boonen who all earned a lot more than him.

Rumors that Tom Boonen might be leaving the promoted squad become previously louder and it looks as if Luis Leon Sanchez might move on as well giving his team a lot of space under the salary cap. After his dominant performances this year it would be a surprise if PCT teams would not be interested in signing the Spaniard.

It's the end of the year and that means that only a couple of races are left: Championship races were only titles count. Or said differently its's about death or the gladiolus.

In our debut season we were unlucky enough to miss all opportunities on a special jersey so our only two national champion jerseys in team history were bought in last years offseason when we acquired Emils Liepins (Latvian RR) and Gatis Smukulis (Latvian ITT) and these two jerseys were the big target for the national championships.

8 riders contracted with Evonik were up against former team mate Aleksei Saramotins and Latvian star Tom Skujins. Bekmanis, Liepins and Vosekalns distanced everyone else early and Emil Liepins used the chance to outsprint his team mates for the repeat.
Smukulis was the one big favourite for the time trial but it was Aleksei Saramotins who stole the show in the race. One got to wonder if he will ever were the jersey in a race before he retires some day.

The world championships were unsurprisingly nothing for our business. The only team member that got any close to a title was Luis Leon Sanchez who missed the TTT title by 21 seconds to Italy. He was also our best finisher in the road race finishing 60. Not that he can be very proud on that as only Mark Dzamastagic participated as well (184.)

Many of the smaller countries looked forward to the B Worlds race but we could not. Obviously Latvia is too small a cycling country to even earn starter spots as prestigious cycling countries like Cuba, Iran and San Marino were preferred. Latvia has some way to go before it will be accepted as a force in cycling.

Latvia has some way to go before it will be accepted as a force in cycling.

End of the season it's awards time. We are very proud to be selected as team of the year. We like to thank everybody that interacted with the team in any way, voted for us or followed our results. Now it's time to also honor some of our riders.
Last year we introduced the team awards and this should become a team tradition. This is the perfect time to look back at our outstanding riders while providing you statistics, statistics and even more useless statistics.

2014: Simon Geschke

It was never questionable that Luis Leon Sanchez Gil would win this award after his fabulous season. Tom Boonen was strong this season but Sanchez was the strongest PCT rider this season. His dominant season was crowned with GC victories in Ukraine, Romandie and in the Czech Republic. Chapeau!

2014: Andris Vosekalns

Unlike last year when Andris Vosekalns stood out with 13 break appearances and a total of 1900 KM in breaks we had no rider this year who showed our jersey at the front much more often than all others.

As a result we decided to award Dzamastagic who won the Down Under Classic from a late attack. The 140 points he scored in the HC classic where a very important foundation for our promotion campaign as it gave us a kickstart advantages that kept us in the fight for the promotion spots all season long.

(Favourite attacks or too large group attacks were not included)

2014: Yannick Stoltz

APPRD = Assisted Points Per Race Day
Score = APPRD * Assisted Points

Rather surprisingly for the team management it is leadout specialist Robert Wagner who wins this award. Wagner was Tom Boonen's main leadout rider all year and he raced all flat races of Boonen as well as many cobbled classics at his side. He was unnoticable for most fans : No major results, not attacking once and only 3 points total at the end of the year but he worked his ass off so that his leader (mostly Boonen) could score as much as possible during his 42 race days.

2014: Aleksei Saramotins

Pts = 2015 PCT Ranking Points
xPts(AVG) = Expected Points based on AVG
xPts(wage) = Expected Points based on wage
xPts = Total Expected Points
OF = Overachieving Factor

Short Explanation of what I did: I calculated the "expected points" by creating a regression function based on all PCT riders that scored at least a single point this season. I decided to base it on both AVG and wage as AVG alone would have a few big flaws such as the generally low AVG of sprinters and ideal PCM AI proven combinations of stats that dont hit on the AVG too much. The Overachieving Factor is the simple division of Pts/xPts and that one was the deciding criteria for this award. Below I added the most overachieving riders per PCT team according to my formula. It's far from perfect but since it shows Bazzana as most overperforming PCT rider it can't be too far off

This award goes to Gatis Smukulis who already started his season on a high by finishing 5th in the Down Under Classic. A strong season followed and despite working as domestique for Luis Leon Sanchez most of the time he still could add several strong results like a 16. place in Grands Prix Cyclistes to his palamares.

His best finish though was a podium in Philadelphia International Championship where he outclassed many of the hyped hill sprinters and finished third.

2014: Phil Bauhaus

Wonderkid Matej Mohoric made a huge step forward towards worldclass. He's only one year away from being one of the bests in his speciality and depending on the route he will already be a key rider in races like the Junior Worlds or Tour d'Avenir next season.

We thank everyone for following & cheering for this team and we hope that we will see you back here during the season which hopefully can be celebrated again with a Award Show afterwards. Thank you!

We can now confirm that we will retain our 2015 jersey for the upcoming jersey. All our sponsors stayed on board so we saw no reason to change away from our beautiful jersey of last season. Credit to aidanvn for the design.

The transfer season is far from being opened but you should know by now that the rumor mill never sleeps. With two new German CT teams appearing on the horizon it is no surprise to see every single German linked with a move to CT.

One rider who will definitely be available is Simon Geschke. Due to his team's widely unsuspected promotion to PT he seems to no longer fit the needs of his team. As a consequence he will be offered around to several CT teams.

Geschke enjoyed an unlucky 2015 season without many highlights but his magnificant 2014 season should make him interesting for all kind of CT teams. With 8 stage wins and 3 point jerseys he climbed into the top 5 individual rankings and claimed the lion's share of the promotion of then called Evonik - Signal Iduna.

We are proud to announce a sponsorship agreement with Slovenian telecommunications company Telekom Slovenije which is known for the introduction and connection of new generations of mobile and fixed communication services, system integration and cloud computing services and multimedia content.

Telekom Slovenije is exited by the potential of our Slovenian talents Matej Mohoric and Mark Dzamastagic who are seen as key pieces for the future of our team. We hope that they will remain a longterm part of our project.

Telekom Slovenije is already known as a sponsor of sport from major events like the PrvaLiga Telekom Slovenije (Slovenian First Football League) and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, the Slovenian associations for football, ski, ice hockey, judo and athletics as well as various clubs and athletes.