Looking back at my initial expectations, I was right with Nerz being able to be in the 6th-12th range (which he actually would've exceeded if it wasn't for the long break and the time gap that wasn't recorded).
Kelderman didn't podium anything and was rather disappointing, but his races will come soon.
This was rather a support job and a distinct hope of some decently used race days, it definitely was better than leaving those 10 days over. There were simply no better suited races left on our calendar.
But to offset that, we have stage podiums by Heider and Nerz which I didn't expect and Heider did get a spot between 15 and 20 (despite unfortunately dropping a lot compared to Brandt f.ex.) in the end.
Plus I don't want to underestimate the fact that both Nerz and Kelderman are U25 this season which means some nice bonus points if we already can't quite compete with the best "mature" riders. Second spot there is nice for us.
In the end, I expected Tachira to be one of the lowest-scoring races of the season as one of very few C1 races we're in without a TT for Nerz or nice hills for Kelderman and without sprinters, so what would I estimate at around 7pprd is satisfying when not having promotion ambitions.
Thanks tsmoha for the amazingly fast-paced reports, and congratulations to La Vie Claire for a rather surprising, understandably frustrating for some, but in a way still deserved GC win.
Let's hope your next wins will be more clean though, I don't really like the upgrade to PCM13 yet...
Edited by cio93 on 21-04-2014 03:22
I just went back and my points calculation: 65! (Might be a small error)
While it won't make it any headlines, it's 65 more than I thought we'd get. We had 3 stage podiums, which unfortunately with a bit of bad luck we couldn't convert to wins, which would've been awesome! Terciado with his KoM quest and Niyonshuti with his aggressive racing saved the race for us! It's this kind of luck that may by some miracle save us from relegation - but I won't bet on it
I said before the race that I would be very happy with a top five.
6th is not bad then. Good race for Marzano, and gives us some points that might be very important in the end.
Terrible race for us. We needed tough mountain stages and we didn't get them. 10 racedays down the drain for around 25 points. Big disappointment. Not looking forward to the rankings.
Good race for me, completed an early goal of mine for the season completed. Kashechkin proved himself the best of the climbers, unfortunately the breakaways were to strong on most stages. Hopefully this is the start of a good season for me.
Just read stages 6 - 11. Some crazy stuff happening, but quite an entertaining race for the neutral spectator (like me). Do feel bad for the victims though.
Congrats to La Vie for the unexpected GC win. And also to the CT teams grabbing stages!
Race did not play out at all as I hoped, and I am sure I would have been more irritated reading them as they went up rather than 6 stages in one go now! Thanks for the effort on them tsmoha.
And while the gameplay was poor, it has to go down as a great race for Jaguar. Two stage wins and the points jersey is fantastic for Bennett, while Berhane's unrewarded aggression finally turned around on the final stage to secure a Top 10 GC, which was my target for him.
