Today we have received the great news that the team manager of Repsol - Honda, Aquarius97 has been awarded the trophy as the Best New Manager of the Year!

This was made through a poll which involved other 32 MG managers - at least it's what i suppouse - and our manager was voted by 13 managers, 4 more times than AbhishekLFC, the manager of Phlips - Continental, and 6 more times than Tamijo, manager of Campari - Super Dry.

Our manager was also voted as the Third Best Reporter of the Year, with less than half of the winner's votes, tsmoha. From this HQ we want to congratulate him for the award!

As a consolation price, we can officialy anounce that our manager has been ̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶c̶e̶d̶ chosen to colaborate with France TV Sports during the coverage of this year's Tour de France! See you in France during the month of July

Shonak wrote:
And I'm sure the reportert of the year award will be coming around one da.

We entered the month of May with a huge margin to seventh team in the rankings, 123 points over Azteca,and while we are still on promotion places, and we'll finish the month in promotion places for sure, this has been an awful month for Repsol - Honda.

We have only scored 34 points in 11 RD this month, although in our May Preview given our "realistic" race predictions, we actually overperformed overally in the month. Really bad considering that 15 teams! have out-scored us in this month, including the rest of Top13 in CT Rankings

In a race dominated by cycleYorkshire, taking the win and having 3 riders in the top4, Morgan Kneisky was again disappointing in a TT this season, as he's yet to finish in the top10 of a timetrial this season, and the 1 point he got for finishing 24th in this race, it's his first in a timetrial race this season

From the beggining we knew this wouldn't be a succesfull race, as as we said in the preview we thought that the finish was in flat roads, thus only sending here Gilbert of our hilly trio, with Cunego and Agostini being left at home.
Robert Power joined the BotD, in what was the first time that a breakaway in a CT race this season didn't bring us points, as the only other previous breakaways in C2(HC) were Valverde in San Cristobal (13th in the finish) and Agostini in Bayern (stage win + GC podium)

Despite Marcato having worked to catch a dangerous move of Roux, Gilbert didn't place himself well before the final 2 kms, and missed out on the winning move (Wyss won for Philips), having to settle for a 11th place. With no other point scorers today, this wasn't a great race, but at least it was an on-par performance by the Belgian

This race could have been actually quite good if it wasn't for a crash involving Gilbert in the last stage, which prevented us from having 3 riders in the top15 in GC.
Agostini surprised everyone by being just one place short of a top10, finally using his impressive back-ups to perform above his level in a hilly race, while Cunego scored his first points on a hilly race this season after finishing 13th in GC.

We had a rider in the breakaway in stages 1 and 3, with Kneisky and Prado. The Mexican would later crash when being caught by the bunch, while the other positive thing in the race was Roson's podium in the U25 classification

We came to this race with absolutely zero hopes of even scoring any points, but Marcato surprised us by finishing 23th in GC to score four points. Nothing espectacular, but still more than 0

tsmoha wrote:
Lovely review as always.

A month without Valls certainly will always slow down your pprd pace Kneisky definitely disappointing so far though. I remember him doing quite well in the past. From a personal perspective it was nice to see Power in the break. A pity it was going to be your first breakaway with no points gained

We are entering the sixth month of the season being in the worst position in the CT Rankings in the whole season! After having been in the top5 of the rankings in every provisional standings made after every single race of the season, after cycleYorkshire scored heavily in Olympia's Tour, we have dropped to the sixth in the standings.

But this month is one to retake our place in the top5, with 2 mountain races and a cobbled one

Rafael Valls returns to a PCT race after being dominating the CT mountain so far this season, with 2 GC wins and another GC podium. We are bringing everything we have in the mountains to fight against the best climbers in PCT in Costa Rica. Cunego, Serrano and Nakane will be Valls' key domestiques, and hopefully both can have enough left to score a few minor points. The rest of the squad is made of Roson, Valverde, Agostini and Fernando. You might be surprised by the lack of young riders in a C1 race, but given we have a clash with another race, our planning for this race - and the other race too - was more about filling the team than anything else.

Our goal for this race is to finish somewhere between 6th and 9th, something we think is very possible looking at Valls' performance so far this season

The team has been forced to ride in Norway against their will in this infamous race - despite being its first edition. With the team focus put in Costa Rica, several of our team will be also racing in Norwegian cobbles.

Marco Marcato leads as always our cobbled squad, and after finishing 23rd in Faso, we are somehow confident on him been able to finish in the top20 here. Any points that we score outside mountains are very welcomed, as it's also the last pure cobbled race we have to ride this season!

The rest of the team is here just because we had to send them to avoid any penalties from the MGUCI, with Gilbert, Kneisky, Van Niekerk, Prado, Beyer, Power and Rodriguez in our 8-men squad for this race. Hopefully any of them can be in the BotD, just to show the jersey

This race is probably the most important race in what's left of our season. If Rafa Valls can manage to win his 3rd GC of the season here in Andorra we'll keep our promotion chances very much alive. If he performs like in Trentino, the other C2HC race he did before - and the only mountain stage race he hasn't won this season - we'll be off the battle.

Also it's interesting to mention that we have the Third Season Goal of the team, which is to finish in Top 5. Valls' support will be the same as in Tachira and Langkawi - and we know how these races ended - with Serrano and Nakane being a perfect duo to control the race in the mountain, especially if Rafa can get into the race lead early. As in most of the races, the rest of the team is formed by young riders, but every single of them isn't useless in this terrain, with Prado and Roson hopefully trying to bring us some extra points by the U25 classification, while Power, Rodriguez and Van Niekerk will have only domestique duties

60 RD's into our inagural season, just half of the total RD's, and it's time to evaluate how has gone our season so far.

We never planned to be fighting for promotion in the first season, as we set a goal of finishing inside top15, and in most of predictions we were between 9th and 13th, so it's a pleasant to have been in promotion places all-season until now, although we are now in 7th place in the CT Rankings

Place	Team	Points
1	World Cycling Centre	1005
2	Kulczyk - DMTEX	839
3	In-n-Out p/b Carrefour	772
4	cycleYorkshire	747
5	Philips - Continental	669
6	Goldcorp - Nordstrom Rack	587
7	Repsol - Honda	576
8	Xero Racing p/b Octagon	560
9	Sauber Petronas Racing	553
10	Azteca - NBCSN	525
11	Campari - Super Dry	478
12	Proximus Continental Team	476
13	Telia-Brussels Airlines	371
14	Team Reddit	314
15	Aeropostal Venezuela Ciclismo	285

The deficit to Philips, who marks the last direct promotion spot is less than 100 points, something that should be recovered only with Andorra. But even if after the summer we are back in promotion places, the odds are against us for promoting.

What looks way better is our Top15 Goal, as the gap to Aeropostal, who is currently in 15th, is almost 300 points

Overall	Points	RD's	PpRD	Ranked
Repsol - Honda	576	60	9,60	7th
Type of Race	Points	RD's	PpRD	Ranked
C2HC Races	308	21	14,67	10th
C2 Races	231	31	7,45	5th
C1 Races	37	8	4,63	10th
Race	Points	RD's	PpRD	Ranked
Tour de Langkawi	132	7	18,86	1st
Vuelta al Tachira	116	10	11,6	1st
Bayern-Rundfahrt	85	5	17	7th
Giro del Trentino	82	5	16,4	5th
Great Ocean Road Classic	42	2	21	4th
Costa Rican Mountain Classic	24	2	12	2nd
Clasico San Cristobal	22	2	11	5th
Euskal Bizikleta	20	4	5	9th
Tour de Romandie	13	6	2,17	4th
Gisborne GP	10	2	5	10th
Cacak Classic	9	2	4,5	9th
Barcelona Classic	8	2	4	10th
Lillestrom GP	8	2	4	12th
Tour du Faso	4	3	1,33	17th
Windhoek ITT	1	2	0,5	12th
Geraardsbergen-Bosberg	0	2	0	14th
San Marino Hill Classic	0	2	0	17th

It's obvious where are we scoring most of our points; in the mountain races, mostly thank to Valls being 2nd in the Individual Rankings after winning 2 out 3 stage races so far this season. Those 2 stage races were C2 races in Tachira and Langkawi, thus making us being the 5th best team in C2 races, while we are only 10th in C2HC races and C1 races

Rider	Points
Rafael Valls	330
Stefano Agostini	96
Philippe Gilbert	65
Damiano Cunego	18
Morgan Kneisky	18
Rafael Serrano	12
Marco Marcato	12
Ignacio Jesus Prado	11
Alejandro Valverde	7
Jaime Roson	5
Hideto Nakane	1
Robert Power	1

Rafael Valls is the star of the team, and is not a surprise to see him scoring around 58% of team's total points, a percentage that will massively increase during after the months of June and July, where he have two stage races in Andorra and Bulgaria.

Our second best scorer is surprisingly Stefano Agostini, mostly thanks to his surprise GC podium in Bayern-Rundfahrt after a breakaway stage win

Most of Gilbert's points came from a late attack in Great Ocean Race, but he has consistently scored points in the hilly races.

The deception of the year is clearly Damiano Cunego, as he has only scored 18 points so far this season, in a pathetic season for the best rider of MG history.

The rest of the team is probably where they could be expected

In another post later, a more focused analysis in some riders will come

@Croatia My main target pre-transfers was Contador, but in the moment Valls became available i had no doubt about going all-in for him. And while it was a risky move to bet everything on one rider, now i can only laugh when remembering posts pre-season me or other manager saying that 400 points would be a great season

@Abhishek Won't deny that i was inspired by some elements of your post, mostly in the points per race And about Valls' RDs left, i'm confident he can double his current points tally in his final 14 RD's. It all depends on how Andorra goes

@Booker Authoritative Aquarius Points Almanacâ„¢ Love it

The 2-2 between Valls and Penasa is very relative, because if we count GC wins, it's 2-1 for Valls, total wins it's 5-2 for Valls, in points Valls has more than Penasa...

A "3-3" wouldn't be bad, but in that case i choose to win Andorra

Five photos, five wins. That's the summary of Rafael Valls' season so far. He has been the dominant climber that he was expected to be when he was transfered from Euskaltel in the pre-season.

He is currently in second place in the Individual Rankings, just 19 points behind Sam Harrison, but with Tour d'Andorra coming next, he should be back in the lead at the end of June - or at least ahead of Harrison. As he said in a pre-season interview, he expected to win 1 stage race and take between 3 and 5 wins during the season, while reaching the 500-point mark, Despite having 4 races left in his calendar, including 2 stage races, he has already accomplished his first two season goals, as he has won both Vuelta al Tachira and Tour de Langkawi, while taking 1 stage in Venezuela and 2 in Malaysia, which brings his wins tally to 5, the most succesfull rider in CT, and only one win short of Sam Bewley and Ben Swift. And he is the only rider in all divisions to have won 2 stage races so far this season

Let's take a look on how has his season gone so far.

It has been a succesfull first part of the season for him, scoring 330 points in his 24 RD's so far, but he still has 14 RD's left to do, and while it might sound strange, we expect him to even surpass that number of points in only his last 14 RD's, which could bring his total points tally to around 700.

Coming next is Tour d'Andorra, a C2HC stage race where the team has a Top5 Goal, but where we expect Rafa to win the race really close to his/our home country. A mountain fest during 5 days where the least we can accept is something around 150 points to come from this race.

In July Rafa will be riding his last stage race in CT level in Bulgaria. Again 5 stages, but with a similar format to Trentino; 3 mountain stages and a 20-km TT. He has won both C2 stage races so far this season, but if he can score "only" under 100 points we'll be satisfied, as we have here our last goal of the season, a Top5 Goal

Then Rafa will rest until October, where he'll have to give our promotion run a final push in two races. First a mountain one-day race in Colombia; Colombian Venteaux. We don't know who he'll return from a two-month hiatus, but at least a podium should be within reach, so at least 42 points.

That leaves the final race of his season, Tour of East Java. Despite being a C1 race, we expect a big result from him, like a Top10, which could give him around 30 points.

That would give him around 320 points in the second part of his season, reaching the 650 mark, what we believe it's enough to win the Individual Rankings.

We rate his season so far with a 9,5. Hopefully at the end of the season we can say again that, or even give him a better score

Rafa Valls did it again! The best climber in CT has won his third stage race of the season in Andorra, after having led the race throughout. Rafa clearly knew that this was probably the most important race in the whole season and he didn't disappoint. And with a Top5 Season Goal here, this was our third Goal Achieved out 3 so far this season. And we're looking really good to achieve all our goals in our first season!

Already in the first stage Rafa took a big early lead, after taking the win in Port de Envalira with over a minute on everyone else, in what was his sixth win of the season, and seventh of his MG career.

In the next 3 stages he saw his gap to Penasa reduced after the Italian's win in S2, but Valls finished third in both S2 and S3 to have the lead in the Points classification too, and despite having an awful day in the MTT, where he finished 38th!!, Rafa did hold a gap of 1'07 entering the final stage of the race, a brutal mountain stage like no other in the calendar

Once the group where Rafa was with the rest of GC favourites started the final climb; Col d'Ordino, the Spaniard attacked before his main rival could do it, and would eventually crack Penasa, who could not follow the amazing pace of Rafa

Rafa would take another stage win to end the race, again with a gap over a minute to the second place, and the final margin in GC would be 2'26 to Penasa.

Rafa has now eight wins this season, and is currently the rider with the most wins in 2017, tied with PT best sprinter Ben Swift in the top. He's also now the 7th rider with most wins in CT races in the history and tied for fourth most wins in a single season in CT races.

In the Individual Rankings, Rafa is back in the lead, and with a 110-point gap to Penasa, almost 200 points to Harrison and around 230 points to Roux, and still 9 RD's left in his season, he's the main favourite to suceed Serghei Tvetcov as the CT individual Ranking winner

1	Rafael Valls	Repsol - Honda	21h32'09
2	Pierre Paolo Penasa	Kulczyk - DMTEX	+ 02'26
3	Winner Anacona	Team Reddit	+ 06'12
4	Dario Cataldo	Campari - Super Dry	+ 07'35
5	Romain Bardet	Philips - Continental	+ 08'01
41	Hideto Nakane	Repsol - Honda	+ 36'27
43	Rafael Serrano	Repsol - Honda	+ 36'52
87	Jaime Roson	Repsol - Honda	1h16'00
92	Ignacio Jesus Prado	Repsol - Honda	1h19'46
106	Aidan Van Niekerk	Repsol - Honda	1h41'01
119	Robert Power	Repsol - Honda	1h58'00
127	Cristian Rodríguez	Repsol - Honda	2h11'06

Shonak wrote:
Valls is the definite GOAT (at least in CT)