Shame Houle couldn't make it a second Champs-Elysees victory in his career but always nice to see Farfetch winning
Well a slightly dissapointing TDF overall maybe but in a year where we're not fighting for points really no Tour where we wore yellow and got a stage win can truly be a dissapointment. Some long-lasting memories made here and happy for it, especially the stage win coming at the hands of our talisman George Bennett.
Congrats SotD and Croatia on the win and the huge haul respectively Really awesome moment to see Festina deliver a home TDF win, very special as you wrote about, must be a very proud and unique moment and I hope in a while that will be just how this TDF is remembered for you
Thanks LLS for the great reporting, really enjoyed it and I know what an effort it is to deliver 21 reports to standard and in such a time, we all really appreciate it
jaxika wrote:
Unbelievable, we won the Alpe d'Huez stage. Our first TdF, our first TdF stage win and its a classical mountain. Choi dropping to 7 isnt good, but this win more then satisfy me
Thanks for the exciting reports!
Love that both of us got such huge first-time TDF stage wins on staple finishes at La Toussuire and Alpe d'Huez - you definitely got the better one though! (and GC finish )
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
Very disappointing stuff from Van Poppel, but especially from Benoot. Wasted 21 race days here.
A very good tour from Tolhoek, Rodriguez and Conti, even though the last one only worked for the others. Disappointed Rodriguez comes up empty handed from the race, but he showed some promising things for the future. Could think about some training for him.
Thanks for the reports and sorry for not commenting more often. Didn't spend a lot of time on the laptop lately, only used my phone from where it's a bit harder to comment and the many stages where my team didn't show up at all didn't help either.
Still recovering from the fact that Kritskiy ended up outside the top-10... this is one of the craziest results of our teams history. Really hope we can turn this around in the next couple of races.
Thanks for the many congrats over the past couple of days.
Having a vacation was a welcome time away from the game, and the dissapointments of Lecuisinier and the Tour de France.
Lecuisinier just barely making the 1000 mark, and misses his 2000 points benchmark by 100 points, which is 150 points worse than last season. Those 150 points should have been easily found in the Tour de France looking at the competition, but the GC fight never really started. Perhaps because there was such a clear margin (on paper) between the best and the group behind - Still it feels very weird that the podium aspirants didn't want to give it atleast 1 go at winning the race - or atleast opening the fight for the podium and/or stagewins.
In the end we got what we came for - albeit in an unnattractive fashion. We won the Tour de France and thus put down the most important benchmark for the team.
And by doing so, and with the general decrease of motivation due to the game behaviour, I guess this is a good a time as any to consider stopping.
Thanks a lot for the reports, they were well produced and delivered from start to the very finish.
Sorry for the lack of comments in the final week from my side. Was on vacation and didnt want to go online during that time.
Thanks for the reports, once again we got blessed with great quality reports for a GT!
Congrats to SotD for the overall victory. It might not feel like the triumph it was and might have looked like a forgone conclusion but still a big success in team history that deserves congratulations. I can understand the frustrations well to get limited scoring out of a victory, less excitement due to the lack of strong rivals and it feeling anticlimatic but i hope you'll find new goals that motivate you to continue.
In the end, i think this is one of the GTs that suffer a bit from the RDs reductions a couple years back removing the possibility of attempting a GT double as having a 2nd or 3rd possible GT winner in the startlist would surely benefit the racing a lot more. (this is not meant to critize the RD reductions, it was probably the right call all things considered)
Congrats to Croatia too who imo was the big winner of this race. I stopped counting the number of stage wins, days in polka dot and so on that made this race feel like a lime dominance throughout. That from a lineup that should have been the weakest one of the top 4 ranking teams is insane.
I'm happy with my own race too. Chiarello was a joy to watch. 8th is a perfectly fine result and matches the top 10 GC target i wanted to see but he adds some great stage results and a couple of days close to the top of the GC to it which came very unexpected. If he didnt blow up on the final mountain stage, he might even be in a miracle GC position. I'm less excited about the rest of the climbing team. Expected much more breakaway activity from them but at least Vosekalns and Tvetcov finished in good depth GC positions and helped us finishing 2nd in the team competition.
Hofstetter also adds a 2nd place on the Champs Elyssee which confirms to me that he can be as good as i think he can be if he just hits the right startlists where he can join the sprints properly.
Finally getting around to summarize this race from Puma's perspective.
The sprints were inexplicably weird, as sadly expected. We brought the strongest sprinter AND train and weren't rewarded in the slightest for either, but luckily this is where the unique abilities Demare brings to the table came in handy.
Winning four stages on hilly terrain has been a joy to watch though, particularly because it wasn't always just a late kick that set him apart from the rest of the field.
Particularly the insane attacking efforts on stage 10 were very memorable and cemented his status as the defining non-climber of the race, and in the end he very much deserved to wear green in Paris again.
The rest of the team did their best to support Arnaud as well as the game allowed them to, but definitely fell short of my expectations as a breakaway squad on non-Demare stages.
A notable exception to that was Egger's ride on stage 8 to finish fourth on the day and in the GC at that moment. Later on in the race, we just didn't have the courage to try or the legs to do much against stronger opposition when we did try.
Congratulations SotD for the race win! I understand the path there wasn't particularly to your liking, but the end result deserves all of the praise for your smart and persevering team planning over the past decade. I'm very happy you achieved your big goal.
A game without you wouldn't be anywhere close to being the same, much less the transfer seasons without our talks. I hope this isn't the end.
Massive props to Generali and Moser as well for finishing on a TdF podium, and I loved seeing riders like Roglic and Chiarello in the mix at least early on.
Farfetch and Project:Africa with the race of their lifetime so far winning multiple stages, and Xero winning one as well was amazing to see, I'm always rooting for new teams to show up big in moments like these and you all did!
Pinot also with a massive race for ISA, and Isostar again collected big prizes with low-budget riders as they always do and make their final step towards retaining the top spot, congrats to you as well.
And last but not least, thank you so much for a TdF-worthy reporting effort, LLS! You always deliver quality.
Really awesome moment to see Festina deliver a home TDF win, very special as you wrote about, must be a very proud and unique moment and I hope in a while that will be just how this TDF is remembered for you 
)
