As mentioned before, this update will cover our three pending March races - as the title says, all of them are cobbled ones. With two of them being wildcard races, only the final one really mattered - but the others were a great experience nonetheless!

The race many treat as "unpronounceable" looked like a perfectly suited one for Edward Theuns - cobbles and hills combined. And Eddie brings a good sprint on top of that, so we had some hopes for him to deliver an even stronger result than in Strada Appia Antica (6th).

Just like in Italy, our team decided to help with the chase - until Mauro Schmid attacked with 70km to go. It was a gutsy move, and he obviously stood no chance against Teunissen and Stallaert, but that's the kind of experience you need to make - exactly why we were here primarily.

With 40km to go, Edward Theuns also joined an attacking group. The attack went nowhere - and after he missed out on a later one that looked to be decisive, he was lucky that all favourites were back together on the final kilometer! Where he definitely was one of the top favourites now, given his skills on the hills and his sprinting capabilities - but no.
Somehow, his tank was empty, and he only finished 11th in an 11 rider group. He looked to play it tactically really well, but something was missing that day. Probably not the best legs - maybe next time then!
By the way, Mauro Schmid finished on an excellent 29th place, showing that strong cobbles skills aren't a must-have to do well in such races!

A completely empty Edward Theuns finishing 11th.

Monument time! We surely didn't expect that our first ever monument in team history would be a cobbled one - but after signing Edward Theuns it was pretty clear that this would be our first choice. He won the race two years ago - and now was back for a final attempt at a monumental result while in his prime.

The first 240 kilometers saw no activity whatsoever from our team - but then Edward Theuns attacked together with Wisniowski, Pedersen, Polanc and Per with only 25km to go! You can't find many bigger names especially than the first two on the cobbles, so that was a promising move for sure!

Polanc later attacked again, and Per was replaced by Gerts - but Eddie still held onto the group after the Oude Kwaremont, so the hardest parts by far were done - and he still was fully in the mix!

And the attack indeed turned out to be decisive - whereas Polanc had a great solo ride to a memorable monument win, the foursome behind were fighting for the two remaining podium spots - and Theuns definitely had his chances, being one of the better sprinters.

He was unable to match Pedersen's final acceleration, but Edward Theuns indeed managed to sprint to 3rd place - our first monument podium in our very first participation! What a race by Eddie - even if it's not worth any points, it's definitely a great result for his personal career hit-list! Congratulations to another stellar performance, Eddie!
Giorgi Tediashvili almost cracked the Top 30 this time, finishing 32nd. Mauro Schmid was 52nd, a pretty solid cobbles result once again.

Edward Theuns outsprinting World Champion Wisniowski for 3rd place in the Ronde!

The final race of the month was the most important one of this cobbles series - being the only one with points at stake for us! Although only rated C1, the competition was as strong as in an HC race, given the lack of choice for cobblers, so a high result wasn't a given by any means! Furthermore, the route wasn't overly selective, being pretty flat and having only one minor hill in the circuit. Still, another battle Edward Theuns vs. Joeri Stallert vs. Maxime Daniel could be expected, with the three being the fastest sprinters.

But first, it was once again time for Cedric Bakke Christophersen's regular attack - it was great to see him doing it in his home race as well! As usual, it didn't yield any kind of success (he finished 100th, not scoring any points), but at least our jersey was shown and he had some fun at home!

There wasn't a lot of action during most of the race - but with 16km to go, we had a selection that turned out to be decisive - with Edward Theuns among those 12 frontrunners.
However, a little later he missed out on the next selection, where only 4 riders remained up front - at least the group behind consisted out of 7 riders, having a numeric advantage. And thanks to some big shifts from Spengler and Van Hooydonck, we had a group of 11 to sprint for the win - including Eddie!

Theuns took the lead pretty early on, and faded towards the line. Still, he dared to celebrate early - and indeed, Edward Theuns won the 2023 Lillestrom GP! What a year our cobbles leader is having - this is his 3rd win of the season already! Remember that we never won more than one classic per year - Eddie now has won three of them in three months, what a beast!

An honourable mention once again goes to Giorgi Tediashvili, who protected his leader during most of the race and went on to finish 21st, scoring some points on his own as well!

Edward Theuns winning Lillestrom GP!

There were four cobbled races on our schedule this month, three of which were just covered in this update - and the results are really fantastic! Except for Macskako, where he didn't have his best day, Theuns never finished lower than 6th, even taking a monument podium - and yet another win when it really mattered! We know we're high up in the rankings - and we know that a big, big part of this is thanks to our cobbles leader. We take a bow, Eddie!

Imladrik
Sure, we got points in TOSA - but I guess in the long run, sponsor goals are more important. I'm pretty confident we'll stay in PCT anyway, so I'd have preferred less total points but getting a GC Top 5 instead
Definitely understand that TTTs are a pain to report with the current version!

It's 7 races in April for us - and after our first monument participation in Ronde van Vlaanderen, we'll now get to race our first Grand Tour as well - the Giro d'Italia! And given that it's our first race of the month, we'll directly start with the "Corsa Rosa":























Besides the GT where we don't have anything to lose, this could be a pretty rough month for us. Pologne doesn't really suit us, nor do most of the classics. Our biggest hopes are on Eddie Theuns to get a strong result in Roma Maxima - otherwise this month could be a pretty low-scoring one... But we've seen some surprises already, maybe a new rider will actually step up and score some important points for us!

Laurens
Sure, I guess we shouldn't do any more monument to not lower our average there
Agree that yet another classics win was fantastic to follow!

cunego
Thanks for the kind words! Definitely didn't expect Theuns to beat Stallaert on most occasions (so far) - but given that the latter has Franceville (and Benelux?) and Theuns has neither, I'd suppose Stallaert will still outscore Theuns in the end.
I know it's looking good for promotion, but that's what many said about your team two years ago as well - sadly it turned out otherwise...

Nemo
Yep, unfortunately the calendar team won't accept my suggestions
Indeed, I expected the second group to fight for 5th "only" in Lillestrom, but hey, thanks for the congratulations

Even though April racing is already well in progress - we got two Top 20 results in the Giro prologue - we think it's worth taking a look back at what happened in the first three months of the year. No, don't be worried, we won't "summarize" all our races again - but we want to look at the numbers.

And most notably, we'll take a look at the March rankings, as they're another big, big milestone in our team history! You may remember that after a so-so start in January, we were up to 2nd after a stellar month by Theuns in February.
And now? Well, now we're in the lead!

Pos	Last		Team	Total	RD	PpRD	Proj
1	2		Jura GIANTS	1256	49	25.63	4178
2	1		Los Pollos Hermanos	1165	42	27.74	4522
3	3		Fastned	1074	56	19.18	3126
4	4		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	1001	43	23.28	3795
5	5		Team Popo4Ever p/b Morshynska	941	51	18.45	3007

After setting the highest score for the month of March - thanks to lots of successful TTTing (we won 3/3 TTTs in March) and another cobbles win - we've indeed managed to squeeze past Los Pollos for an instant! After leading the CT standings for the first time last year, we've now achieved this milestone in PCT as well - given that we relegated the first time we were in PCT, that's definitely a massive step forward! And who knows if we'll ever be able to do the same in PT - maybe in a decade or so...


Another milestone was achieved in February already, where Edward Theuns led the individual standings - a first for us no matter the division! Eddie dropped down to 2nd in March, but as we'll see in an instant, he's clearly the main reason why we've been doing so well in the early season.

But he hasn't been the only strong performer so far - let's actually take a look at the individual standings in March, before going into some more detailed analysis to find out how the scoring to date compares to our pre-season expectations:

Pos	Rider	Nat		Team	Total
2	Edward Theuns	BEL		Jura GIANTS	406
17	Cees Bol	NED		Jura GIANTS	196
34	Fausto Masnada	ITA		Jura GIANTS	145
57	Xuban Errazkin	ESP		Jura GIANTS	91
65	Stefan Küng	SWI		Jura GIANTS	80
93	Mauro Schmid	SWI		Jura GIANTS	53
94	Giorgi Tediashvili	GEO		Jura GIANTS	52
98	Alexys Brunel	FRA		Jura GIANTS	49
114	Stefan Bissegger	SWI		Jura GIANTS	36
117	Szymon Rekita	POL		Jura GIANTS	35
125	Valentin Darbellay	SWI		Jura GIANTS	31
126	Krzysztof Marchewka	POL		Jura GIANTS	31
150	Colin Stüssi	SWI		Jura GIANTS	22
160	Hugo Page	FRA		Jura GIANTS	19
280	Felix Stehli	SWI		Jura GIANTS	5
329	Cedric Bakke Christophersen	NOR		Jura GIANTS	2
330	Nejc Kosic	SLO		Jura GIANTS	2
359	Gergely Szarka	HUN		Jura GIANTS	1
435	Dylan Page	SWI		Jura GIANTS	0
436	Manuel Stocker	SWI		Jura GIANTS	0
437	Christoph Janssen	SWI		Jura GIANTS	0
438	Scott Davies	GBR		Jura GIANTS	0
439	Gustas Raugala	LTU		Jura GIANTS	0

As mentioned before, Eddie Theuns obviously is our superstar - racking up over 400 points and three classic wins in three months is just outstanding! But whereas some good scoring (although not quite as high) could be expected from our top cobbler, Cees Bol has been doing surprisingly well, and currently sits inside the Top 20 as well.

Masnada and Errazkin both got most of their points in March, as did Tediashvili and Brunel. Küng and Schmid scoring earlier in the season ensure that we have a pretty solid amount of 8 riders in the Top 100 - it's definitely not just a one-man-show so far!

We can also note that we have another 5 riders in the Top 150 - who are all there because of the successful TTTs (and their effect on stage races, where applicable) in March, with Hugo Page as the only other Top 200 rider having scored his points with a great breakaway move in Juarez earlier in the year.

And we also have just 5 riders without any points so far - which will hopefully soon change for Dylan Page, whereas the others might need some luck to score some points. Janssen has already won two races so far this year (IoM and the TOSA TTT), but was unlucky to never be in the Top 5 positions and hence missing out on well-deserved points.


So, that's the "hard" points. But what does that mean? Which rider does meet the team's expectations so far, and who will need to improve? We'll take a closer look at those numbers by department - as in the expectations post earlier this year:

	Rider	Exp.	Act.	PpRD	Proj.	Proj. Outcome
	Colin Stüssi	200	22	4.40	211	106%
	Fausto Masnada	250	145	9.67	483	193%
	Valentin Darbellay	100	31	2.82	155	155%
	Total	550	198	---	849	154%

This department currently looks pretty promising. Stüssi, our strongest climber, has only participated in two races so far - Ukraine, which was a big failure by the whole team, and the IoM TTT, where he led the team across the finish line. The true climbing tests will follow later in the year, though, so while his PpRD looks along the lines of the expectation so far, it's far too early to conclude.

Masnada has raced a lot more - and while Hong Kong was a big and South Africa a medium failure, he did a great job by taking 2nd in Pais Vasco. If he finds some more races to make good use of his great hybrid skillset, he should achieve his goal score - we doubt it'll be almost twice as much, though.

We don't expect a whole lot from Darbellay, but he did his job as a solid depth scorer rather well so far in Hong Kong and Pais Vasco. He missed out on the 20 IoM points, though, but was an important contributor there as well.

Overall, the expected points should be achievable; we're almost halfway there already, and some potentially good races are still ahead. They'll need to keep pushing, though!

	Rider	Exp.	Act.	PpRD	Proj.	Proj. Outcome
	Mauro Schmid	250	53	5.30	233	93%
	Xuban Errazkin	200	91	4.55	218	109%
	Total	450	144	---	451	100%

This one looks much less optimistic than the climber department - but we might land on target. Schmid got most of his points from Viana do Castelo - which was one of the races where we had most hopes for - but otherwise struggled to score. But we still believe he'll do some overperformances - he just needs to take example on Meurisse's Strade Bianche to see how it's done with that skillset. But no pressure on him, he's still developing.

Errazkin is currently on-track to reach his target; however, with his potentially biggest scoring race by far already done - and not done too well (TOSA) - it's questionable if he'll really reach the target. We're clearly surprised by how easily he gets dropped in the TTTs - which hurt his scoring in South Africa, and will potentially do the same in other races this year. On the other hand, he's also shown he can keep up with the strongest puncheurs on a good day, so there's still hope.

The points scored so far aren't huge, but it's points scored, and we knew that this department would be our weak spot this year. Good to see they might still get to the target.

	Rider	Exp.	Act.	PpRD	Proj.	Proj. Outcome
	Stefan Bissegger	250	36	1.80	97	39%
	Alexys Brunel	250	49	2.88	159	63%
	Stefan Küng	250	80	4.00	220	88%
	Szymon Rekita	150	35	2.50	163	108%
	Krzysztof Marchewka	50	31	1.29	92	183%
	Total	950	231	---	730	77%

Well, this doesn't look overly good right now. And given that it's the department with the highest expectations, a deviation from the expected scores could have a big impact. But why are we pretty far away from the target so far?

On one hand, because we had at least one big failure so far, in Ukraine, where we scored close to nothing. On the other hand, although we did a great job in the March TTTs, by far not all of these points went to TTers. Apart from IoM, the TTTs were in stage races - so the TTers were mostly enablers for other teammates to do well, which can't be exactly counted in points.

And what we also need to keep in mind is that the (almost) purely TT-decided stage races are yet to come, so there's definitely hope for our TTers to considerably exceed the expected outcome which is based on their current PpRD!

Let's still mention Stefan Küng, who had a strong race in Hong Kong, giving us hope for races like Denmark, Norway or maybe even Britain. And our two youngsters B&B also scored some U25 points already - we expect quite some more to come. We'll see...

So far, all of them did a great job in TTTs - it remains to be seen if they can also get something from the individual races. We think they will.

	Rider	Exp.	Act.	PpRD	Proj.	Proj. Outcome
	Edward Theuns	500	406	25.38	1,040	208%
	Giorgi Tediashvili	50	52	3.47	149	298%
	Nejc Kosic	20	2	0.14	4	20%
	Total	570	460	---	1,193	209%

Well, we're three months into the season - and our team leader has reached more than 80% of his target points already. Eddie Theuns has been sensational so far, with three wins (Omloop, G-W and Lillestrom) and another podium spot (KBK) - plus three PT Top 11 results, including a monument podium. This is obviously reflected by his huge PpRD - unfortunately, he'll not be able to even stay close to keeping that pace up. There are only four more cobbled races left - the rest of his RDs will suit him far less. We're still pretty positive that he'll exceed the expected score by a certain amount, potentially making up for the losses of other departments. Definitely a key signing for us this offseason!

But we don't want to forget about Giorgi Tediashvili, either! In his final year of development, he's already exceeded our points expectations, scoring more than half of his points with a sensational podium in Geraardsbergen! So any additional points from him are a bonus - and on top of that, we've already seen that we've got a great C1/C2 rider for the future in him!

The future is past Nejc Kosic already, who was signed as a pure support rider for Theuns. He's done a decent job so far, and although he likely won't achieve his points expectation, if Eddie continues to do that well then there's also a part of Kosic's work in that!

Yes, we've been really lucky with the cobbles this year - with Eddie being our jackpot of the transfer window! We surely won't score as many points as projected based on the current rider PpRDs, but it definitely looks like we'll exceed expectations by a good margin in this department. But well, all races first have to be races...

	Rider	Exp.	Act.	PpRD	Proj.	Proj. Outcome
	Cees Bol	200	196	15.08	739	369%
	Dylan Page	75	0	0.00	0	0%
	Manuel Stocker	10	0	0	0	0%
	Gergely Szarka	10	1	0.08	2	23%
	Total	295	197	---	741	251%

If you're looking for a true overperformer in our team - one doing clearly better than his stats suggest (and we don't count Theuns in that category), then here we go! Cees Bol has been doing a great job in every race so far - TDU, GORC, and Juarez (and don't ask the PT managers about Paris-Nice). He's been sprinting more like an 80+ sprinter so far - which can be somewhat justified by his versatility, but his consistency has just been great overall. Given that his only GC races of the year (TDU wasn't even intended as one, but he didn't care) are behind him, he surely won't stay close to the current PpRD - but we don't have any doubt that he'll easily exceed the expected points, given that he's just 4 points short right now... Another great new rider for us!

Dylan Page has yet to get his season fully started - he only rode Juarez as a backup for Bol so far, but a backup wasn't needed there. Pologne will be a first indication whether he can fulfill our (rather modest) expectations or not.

Stocker and Szarka are intended to lead out our sprinters; so far, we didn't manage to get a train on track, but they've done a good job of protecting Bol nonetheless. They have to be lucky to get some points, but that's not our most important expectation for them anyway. If Bol and Page deliver, their job is done well.

So, there's a huge PpRD for Bol right now, which will inevitably drop - but this looks like another department that should yield at least the expected amount of points. Promising stuff.

	Rider	Exp.	Act.	PpRD	Proj.	Diff.
	Félix Stehli	5	5	0.29	17	341%
	Cedric Bakke	5	2	0.08	6	128%
	Christoph Janssen	10	0	0	0	0%
	Hugo Page	5	19	0.68	63	1,262%
	Scott Davies	5	0	0	0	0%
	Gustas Raugala	5	0	0	0	0%
	Total	35	26	---	86	246%

And yet another "green" department! Our talents have been doing really well so far - Page in Juarez, Stehli in Strade Bianche, Bakke in GORC (and in a ton of races where he was in the BotD!). It's obviously just small points, but it's still a valuable contribution to our total scoring. And by now, we can expect them to easily outscore the overall points expectation, although it will require some luck to get into the right breakaways for them.

On the other hand, we shouldn't forget Janssen - he was a part of two successful TTT lineups so far - had he finished inside the Top 5 riders in both, he'd have 26 points to his name now - as many as the five others combined. So while he's still at zero points, he has already contributed a lot!

Call them "random" or "lucky" points - every team loves to get some of them, and so do we. It's a good sign for the future if our talents already have some (minor) success here and now!

Dept.	Exp.	Act.	PpRD	Proj.	Proj. Outcome
Climbers	550	198	---	849	154%
Puncheurs	450	144	---	451	100%
TTers	950	231	---	730	77%
Cobblers	570	460	---	1,193	209%
Sprinters	295	197	---	741	251%
Talents	35	26	---	86	246%
Total	2,850	1,256	25.63	4,178	147%

Well, it looks like we had pretty high expectations pre-season - mostly considered to be very optimistic or even unrealistic. It turns out, we're currently even exceeding them by far!

But we don't want to get ahead of ourselves; we know that the early part of the calendar is what suits us best. Lots of cobbles, many TTTs - these are our main strengths. We're not at all surprised that we're "ahead of the schedule" in certain departments.

However, that we're even leading the division, having done well in races where we didn't expect it to this extent (mainly sprint races, but also an amazing streak on the cobbles), that surely comes unexpected.

Still, there's no reason yet to raise our expectations, that seem to be pretty high anyway. There are so many races left that could turn out like Ukraine (i.e. almost pointless) - we are yet to do well in a PTHC stage race, for example. So for now, we enjoy to be where we are, knowing we surely won't score above 4,000 points in the end.

And we obviously also know that even finishing above 3,000 - which may or may not be doable at this point - could mean something really big. But we'll take one month after the other, and we'll see where that leads us to in the end! For now, it feels great for sure!

Abhi
I will, no worries. Still plenty of hills and hybrid races left for all of you

Once again, we have to apologize for not quite keeping up with our done races - this time, a happy event in our content manager's private life is the reason.
Nonetheless, we want to take a look at what happened so far in the month of April - a month that was expected to be rather rough given that most races didn't really suit our main strenghts.
Please note that the Giro will be covered in a separate update, being one of our main highlights not only in April, but in the entire year.

Unlike last year, where we had three Polish riders in our lineup, only one was in this year's roster - Krzysztof Marchewka. Although he was only there to target the prologue, we couldn't refuse him his home race - as he had enough race days to spare. And he did well, taking a rather surprising 7th place and our first points of the race.

In terms of points, we had no clue what to expect. Gianni Moscon took 7th place here for us two years ago, but he's no longer riding for us, and Xuban Errazkin is a tad weaker. On the other hand, he's slightly better on the longer climbs - and Fausto Masnada is even stronger. Some teams even sent their top climber, hoping it would be a race for the climbers/hybrids rather than the puncheurs.

In short, they were right. It wasn't even a race for the hybrids, looking at Faglum Karlsson and Penasa in 5th and 6th, but one for the climbers. Areruya didn't care, sure, he can do anything that's uphill.

And fortunately for us, Fausto Masnada also was among the better climbers in this race. After a decent enough prologue, he finished in the Top 12 in all four hilly stages (thereof three Top 10s), to get a very strong 7th place GC finish! Xuban Errazkin unfortunately didn't have good legs once again, and only got a disappointing 31st place.

Masnada's points were pretty much all we got out of this race, as we didn't get any really notable stage results - with one exception: In his first race as our lead sprinter, Dylan Page sprinted to 4th in stage 4, scoring his first points. Not quite a repeat of last year's sprint win by Stepniak, but a decent debut!

All in all, that's 87 points for us - less than the target PpRD, but still more than expected and a decent score overall.

Dylan Page getting our highest stage result, 4th place on stage 4.

After Giorgi Tediashvili's strong performances in Gent - Wevelgem and Geraardsbergen - Bosberg, we were hoping for another Top 10 in our final C2 race of the year. And he definitely was among the more versatile riders present, a big plus on a hilly course. Furthermore, this was the race we got our top cobbles result from before the current season, which added some more motivation.

However, something went terribly wrong. All of our riders were dropped early and never really made it back - a very disappointing zero-pointer for us. We'll definitely bring our own breakfast again next year, opting for the English version this time...

Our second - and final - hilly HC classic of the year. Given our lack of a top puncheur, we once again couldn't expect too much. So we tried something rather unconventional - given the relatively easy profile, we sent Edward Theuns alongside our two puncheurs Mauro Schmid and Xuban Errazkin.

Well, it turned out to be a rather smart move. Inside the final 5 kilometers, all three were still in the main group, with Mauro even leading the chase. Well, we thought he'd be our main man - he thought otherwise.

And he probably was right - whereas he couldn't hold onto the first six riders, who all were stronger puncheurs, Edward Theuns won the sprint of the second group, taking a very strong 7th place!
Mauro Schmid, tired by all the work he'd done before, finished just behind this group, in 16th place. Xuban Errazkin, having been invisible once more, ended up even further down, but still scored some points with 21st place.

All in all, that's 60 points from a race we could've gotten nothing at all from - definitely a great job, and our best PpRD race by far this month so far!

Edward Theuns finishing 7th in a non-cobbled classic!

Whereas we don't have one of the division's top sprinters, Cees Bol has already shown multiple times that he can keep up against the strongest on a good day. Moreover, the hilly profile in Portugal was a perfect fit for his skills.

However, just like English breakfast, the Portuguese one apparently didn't do our riders well, either. First, Cedric Bakke Christophersen got dropped from the breakaway as soon as it was (finally) established.

A little later, Cees Bol was dropped, and we had to fear another unexpected zero-pointer. Fortunately for us, Démare was in that group as well, and Tryg brought all of the gapped sprinters back.

However, as (too) often this year, Cees somewhat messed up his positioning, and was never in contention for the top spots. He might have had the speed, but not the room for getting through. Whereas his 12th place isn't too shabby looking at the startlist, it's still less than what we were hoping for. These 18 points were another slight disappointment this month - but not fully unexpected to be honest.

Cees Bol unsuccessfully trying to make his way through.

On the same day, another sprint race was held in Bol's home country. But given the huge PT competition and the often messy nature of the race, we opted for sending Dylan Page instead. An outsider for sure, but one who could always create a surprise.

In hindsight, the indeed messy finale might have suited Cees - whereas Page wasn't really visible. Nonetheless, he wasn't completely off the pace, either, beating e.g. Coquard - which usually would be a top result. However, it was only a 22nd place finish for him - pretty disappointing, looking at some of the names ahead.

Still, that's 10 points for him - but the highlight of the day was definitely Scott Davies scoring his first career points. Being part of the BotD, he finished 43rd after being reeled in - well done!

All in all, however, 30 points from Lisbon and Veenendaal is still pretty disappointing, as we were hoping for at least one bigger result.

red
Sorry, guess the riders misunderstood your proposition. Instead, they did great in PT and not much in PTHC so far ^^

red
Sorry, guess the riders misunderstood your proposition. Instead, they did great in PT and not much in PTHC so far ^^

Some days back, our team completed its biggest adventure in the MG world so far - our first ever Grand Tour! We got an invitation to the Corsa Rosa, the Giro d'Italia - and we sent quite a strong lineup there, as we'll see in the course of this review.

The prologue wasn't among our main target stages - all that mattered was that Colin Stüssi didn't lose too much time, given his lack of skills in short TTs. He did a decent job - as did our Stefans, Stefan Küng in 14th and Stefan Bissegger in 20th. The latter subsequently got to wear our first ever GT special jersey, leading the U25 standings after the prologue!

The next couple of stages were for breakaway riders and sprinters - and we got involved in both! Christoph Janssen seized the chance to get as much experience as possible, joining the breaks on stages 2 through 5. Being our weakest uphill rider, he unfortunately wasn't able to get the KoM jersey for a day, always hovering around 3rd place in these standings for a couple of days.

However, despite Janssen not getting any notable stage results, stage 5 still marked a major milestone in our team history: Not only our first PT stage win, but it even was a GT stage win! Cees Bol, who already was 5th the day before, outsprinted everyone on the closing meters to take a fantastic victory!

Cees Bol wins stage 5 of the Giro!

Cees definitely got his place in our team history with that win - and on top of being our first PT and even GT stage winner, he also got to wear the Maglia Ciclamino, the points jersey, after two consecutive Top 5 results! Fantastic job!

The day after, there was a first test for the GC riders, with Colin Stüssi getting a strong 10th place on a hilly profile. This performance brought him up to 9th in the GC heading into the first mountain stage.

In that stage - stage 7 - Mauro Schmid and Giorgi Tediashvili joined the breakaway of the day - exactly the scenario we were hoping for with Schmid; unfortunately for him, there were some clearly stronger climbers in the group, so he couldn't get any notable KoM points. Colin Stüssi on the other hand had another solid day of racing, finishing 12th. Schmid still took over the white jersey for the U25 lead - so we were leading in points, U25, and even in the team standings!

The special classifications didn't change after the race's sole long ITT on day 8. Stefan Bissegger and Stefan Küng had a pretty good race, finishing 6th and 8th. But more importantly, Colin Stüssi moved up to 6th in the GC after finishing the ITT in 30th place!

Day 9 was another day for the sprinters - and another great day for Cees Bol! Without any chance against Groves this time, he still was best of the rest to take 2nd place - extending his lead in the points standings!

Stage 10 was another one we had some hopes for - not necessarily regarding Giorgi Tediashvili, though, who joined his 2nd break of the race. However, the hilly finish definitely suited Mauro Schmid, and he was right there under the red kite! He couldn't quite win the stage, but a 5th place is a more than respectable result for our youngster!

Mauro Schmid finishes 5th on stage 10, wearing the white jersey.

Mauro Schmid also was our highest finisher on the next day, taking 9th place from the break - not standing a chance against some far better climbers, though. Colin Stüssi lost some time to the top favourites, but still remained 6th in GC.

Stage 12 was another one for the sprinters - unfortunately not for Cees Bol this time, as he (once again) got his positioning completely wrong and missed out on the Top 10, losing the Ciclamino.

Days 13 and 14 were for the climbers again, with Colin Stüssi taking 9th and 11th on these two stages (where the latter one was an ITT up to Mount Etna). He slipped down to 8th in the GC after these two days - still a perfectly fine result.

After the mountains, another chance for the sprinters - the chance for Cees Bol to strike back. And boy, did he strike back! After a strong day in the break by Stefan Küng, our flying Dutchman just flew past everyone - even the already celebrating Santos! Stage win #2 for Cees - fantastic job, rewarded by taking over the Ciclamino again!

Cees Bol wins another stage!

Most of the remaining stages were for the climbers - although stage 16 was rather hilly rated. Which didn't stop Colin Stüssi from attacking, though! Unfortunately, he lacked the punch to keep up with the strongest, but still got a nice 7th place, moving up to 7th in the GC as well.

Then yet another sprint stage before the climbing finale - and unfortunately another rather disappointing one for Cees Bol, finishing 9th. But the Ciclamino still remained on his shoulders.

The next three days probably were among the most insane ones ever in a Grand Tour. First, Amezawa and Giannoutsos were gifted a couple of minutes on stage 18, to move up to 5th and 4th in the GC. On day 19, it was Colin Stüssi's turn to get a big amount of time for free - after showing a great race to take 3rd place on the stage, our 4th stage podium of the race!

Colin Stüssi finishes 3rd on stage 19, right behind other wildcard rider Bennett.

This effort saw him jump up to 5th place. But these gains were nothing compared to what happened on stage 20. Shikai, starting the day in 11th place, was gifted more than 10 minutes by the peloton - to simply run away with the GC win! No-one had a clue of what happened that day - it was just crazy. Colin Stüssi was just too high up in the GC to be allowed into that insane breakaway, too, and slipped down to 8th again. Which is more along the lines of his actual skills, though.

On the final day, there was just one goal: defending the Ciclamino! Our preferred scenario would have been a breakaway win - but that was never going to happen. And unfortunately, Cees Bol launched the sprint too far back to compete for a top result, therefore having to hope that his direct competitors wouldn't score too many points.

Well, it wasn't to be. Even though Cees took another good stage result - 6th place - Ahlstrand finished just one spot too high, and "stole" the Ciclamino on the last possible occasion. Deservedly, we have to say - but it still hurts quite a lot. It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for Cees to win a GT points jersey - but no.

Cees Bol finishes "only" 6th on the final day, losing the Ciclamino by some inches...

Still, he can be proud of his performance - as can the entire team. Cees Bol got us two stage wins and a second place, whereas Colin Stüssi got a 3rd place stage finish - and 8th in the GC!

Speaking of GC, Valentin Darbellay - the only rider not mentioned so far - ended up 38th after providing some great support to Colin. Mauro Schmid was 53rd, which was enough for 8th place in the U25 standings.

All in all, it was a great race for us - had we been scoring eligible, we'd have been the 5th highest scoring team! Bol was #6, and Stüssi #14 on the scoreboard, showing what a fantastic couple of days they had in Italy!

And although we didn't get any actual points from the race, we've seen some really encouraging things out there - now up to our riders to take that great shape over to the races where it really matters!

Laurens
Yeah, especially Wallonie was better than expected. In Pologne only the stage results were missing, GC-wise it was great indeed!

red
Well, I guess Siric didn't read what you think about Roma
Looks like my guys indeed prefer PT races to PTHC races, I'd rather get the RvV points than the Roma points tbh ^^

When we had to apply for the PTHC bands pre-transfers, we tried to avoid cobbles as much as possible - which is why only two classics are in our schedule. This is obvoiusly a completely wrong approach in hindsight - especially missing out on Franceville really hurts.

So performing in the two classics we got is even more crucial, given the big points available. A Top 10 was the minimum goal for Edward Theuns, who has proven in Ronde van Vlaanderen that he can even challenge the best of the best!

For once, none of our riders joined the breakaway, and so the action started with 20km to go, when Eddie joined a group including Per, Pedersen, Stallaert, Stavrikakis and Senechal, all chasing down Anderberg.

However, they couldn't get a decisive gap, and so lots of riders rejoined, even far weaker cobblers. With 5km left, Theuns was still in the front group, though, this time including 12 riders.
However, he clearly was on a bad day, getting beaten on the uphill finish by weaker puncheurs, sprinters and cobblers. Edward Theuns finishing 7th was absolutely within the expected range - but given names like Salzmann or Siric ahead of him definitely shows that a lot more was on the table today!

Sadly, we continue to not deliver our best performances in PTHC races - Theuns did a great job so far in HC and C1 races, and obviously in his monument participation - but PTHC unfortunately remains our big weakness. It wasn't a disaster by any means, don't get us wrong - but it feels like a big missed chance to even take a PTHC podium!

There were no further scorers, with Nejc Kosic narrowly missing out on the points by taking 53rd. Tediashvili wasn't part of the lineup for once, riding the Giro instead that unfortunately was concluded on the same day.

Edward Theuns finishing 7th in Roma Maxima.

March was a very special month for us, as we were leading the PCT standings by the end of the month. We knew we had a rather complicated month ahead - and so it was.

Whereas Tour de Pologne had some decent scoring - mainly thanks to Masnada's great GC finish - we couldn't meet or even exceed expectations in most other races. GP Wallonie being the exception, of course, where Eddie Theuns sprinted to 7th place!
Especially the sprinter races were less successful than what we were hoping for; with Bol's great Giro in mind, we were hoping for a Top 10 at least in Lisbon, maybe even more - but he once again didn't get his positioning right. In Veenendaal, Page was a no-show.
And last but not least, the cobbles didn't yield the points we were hoping for. Lincoln GP was a disaster - a completely unexpected one, in a small and not very strong field. Roma Maxima was decent, but we still feel like we left a lot of points on the road.

In the end, we scored 237 points - less than 15 PpRD, so clearly not a good month. However, we only dropped to 2nd place, and still have one of the top PpRD averages - and we're still projected to promote!
But we know that we'll have to work hard to even secure a Top 10, which remains our main focus. We'll take race by race, trying to get as many points as possible out of each and every one - and we'll send what we'll end up with.


Last month, we gave a detailed overview of the riders' performances compared to the expected points. We'll try a shorter format this month - it should give a good idea of who's delivering as expected, and who isn't (yet):

Rank		Rider	Expected	Actual	Trend
4		Edward Theuns	500	511	Completed
24		Fausto Masnada	250	215	On target
25		Cees Bol	200	214	Completed
63		Xuban Errazkin	200	106	Off target
78		Stefan Küng	250	80	Off target
97		Mauro Schmid	250	63	Off target
114		Giorgi Tediashvili	50	52	Completed
116		Alexys Brunel	250	49	Off target
133		Stefan Bissegger	250	36	Off target
137		Szymon Rekita	150	35	On target
139		Krzysztof Marchewka	50	33	On target
149		Valentin Darbellay	100	31	On target
169		Colin Stüssi	200	22	On target
179		Hugo Page	5	19	Completed
206		Dylan Page	75	15	Off target
307		Felix Stehli	5	5	On target
355		Cedric Bakke	5	2	Off target
356		Nejc Kosic	20	2	Off target
357		Scott Davies	5	2	Off target
383		Gergely Szarka	10	1	Off target
450		Christoph Janssen	10	0	Off target
451		Gustas Raugala	5	0	Off target
452		Manuel Stocker	10	0	Off target

Well, the good news is that 5 riders have already reached their target value. Whereas this doesn't have a huge impact on the overall scoring for riders like Stehli or Hugo Page, it obviously is great news concerning Eddie Theuns or Cees Bol! Both are among the riders with 200+ expected points, and these riders doing well is crucial to achieve our goal. Tediashvili having completed his goal points is nice to see as well, showing that we invested into the right rider for our C2 races - despite the Lincoln failure.

It's also looking good for Fausto Masnada, who is only 35 points away from his target but still has quite some races left. "On target" means that a rider is expected to reach his expected points if he continues to score at his current PpRD average. So even though riders like Rekita, Darbellay or even Stüssi haven't scored a lot yet, they didn't use many RDs for that and are still looking to be on track.
On the other hand, many riders are currently behind their schedule - most notably most of the TTers. Küng is projected above 80% of the expected points, hence the orange colour - but both Bissegger and Brunel are clearly below. Which doesn't come unexpected at all at this point, though, as so far they've mainly contributed to TTTs - their races to shine individually are yet to come...

Both puncheurs currenly are "orange", too, whereas they were "green" last month. But there's still hope they can achieve their goal values, too. The same holds for Dylan Page, who did some of his RDs in support of Cees Bol and has still quite some races as our lead sprinter.

Points for talents/domestiques are pretty random, anyway - with a lucky breakaway like Hugo Page had in Juarez, they can easily get more than 5 points - but they can as well finish the season at zero points.

All in all, we're still ahead of our schedule, thanks to riders like Theuns and Bol scoring their expected points for the whole year in just 4 months - with still quite some RDs left. Not many well-suited ones for the former, but he's shown in Wallonie that he can also take that "punchy sprinter" role we gave him in some races!

Abhi
Sure, Giro was great to follow - unfortunately pointless
It's indeed good to see that Stüssi can keep up with the PT dudes - too bad I couldn't find the funds this offseason to further boost him, now he's too old
And Bol has mostly been doing a great job all year long, hoping he'll continue to do so when it matters

SotD
Yeah, it did indeed work out pretty well. I guess Stüssi somehow was inspired by Chiarello, who also is "only" a 79 climber
I surely wouldn't have sent the same team if it had cost me some actual RDs, but that's the advantage of a wildcard team I guess

red
I can definitely understand your feelings on Enger vs. Bol. I do think that Bol might be better suited to GTs especially with his recovery, but in general he's got better backups. Still, Enger should be faster at least in the first week... Which he also was, taking Pink at one point

After a classic-heavy month of April, May is pretty much the opposite - three stage races, just one classic. And we're also hoping for it to be a higher scoring month - for some reason, as you'll see:














Unlike last month, we think that every single race in May should at least partly suit us. With the same number of total RDs like in April, we're definitely hoping for more points this month, after which we'll be halfway through our RDs already. Our goal must be to hold our PpRD above 20 for as long as possible - May should be a good opportunity to even slightly increase it again!

Fabianski wrote:
Still, Enger should be faster at least in the first week... Which he also was, taking Pink at one point

This was one of the PTHC races we were expecting many points from pre-season. Having one of the (supposedly) strongest TTT lineups, and with a closing hilly stage that allowed solid riders to stay in the pack last year, we were hoping for Xuban Errazkin to fight for the higher GC spots, and for at least one of Stefan Küng, Alexys Brunel or Cees Bol to make the front group - and a solid GC result - as well. The latter also was our big hope for the sprints, even more so given his great Giro performance last month.

Well, the "sprinter card" definitely didn't stick. On day 1, Cees was more or less where he had to be - but only more or less, as far too often this year. He didn't find enough space to fly past the others on the closing meters, and only finished 12th. It was even far more disappointing on the 2nd day, where he wasn't attentive early on in the stage and was completely out of contention. Some completely wasted race days for him, unfortunately.

Worse, he also was the weak link in the TTT - and in hindsight, this may have cost us quite some spots. Because the TTT stage on day 3 was our most disappointing team performance by far this year. We were tied for the 3rd strongest lineup, behind the two clear-cut favourites - but we didn't finish 3rd, nor 4th, and not even 5th. Nope, we were all the way down in 10th place! We'll have to analyze what went so wrong, but the fact is that it did go wrong.

Fortunately, however, we didn't drop Xuban by minutes this time, like in South Africa. He only lost 3" to his teammates this time. So even though the GC looked pretty awful for us after 3/4 of the race, Errazkin still was one of the highest ranked puncheurs. And on the final day, he finally stepped into action!
Easily keeping up with the front group, he even launched two attacks - the second one looking promising, but was unfortunately shut down, too.
On the final incline, he lacked the punch to follow some of the world's top puncheurs (and sprinter star Gaviria), no reason to be mad about that. However, he finished just 14" down, in the first chase group - taking 9th place and our best stage result in this race.

Whereas in terms of stage results, the Tour of Lithuania was a big letdown, Xuban Errazkin made sure that we still got a good points haul - moving up all the way to 4th place in the GC! And had stage winner Lutsenko missed out on the bonus seconds instead of winning, it'd even have meant a GC podium - but let's not get overly greedy here. 4th place is by far our best result in a PTHC stage race - we got two 13th places in Colombia and Tour d'Afrique two years ago, so that's quite an improvement! Big congrats to Xuban - although it didn't feel like that, this was a great performance!

Xuban Errazkin takes 9th place on the final stage.

All in all, it's a weird feeling. The first three stages were disappointing - especially the TTT - and the final one was just solid by one single rider (with all others outside the Top 50). And still, it was enough for a great GC finish and some really good points - so while we're disappointed about how we got there, the final outcome definitely was great here!

red
Yeah, AI is weird - just hoping for some good performances here and there - but wouldn't be surprised if we did best in races where we expect it the least ^^