Before we'll drill down into the individual riders' performances, let's look at how the team did. Overall, by race category - and also compared to CT history.
Wins
You've often heard recently that we had a really successful season this year. And what's the best way to prove it? Well, wins!
We got a total of 17 wins in 2022, divided into one classic win (IoM ITT), three GC wins (Catalunya, Trentino, Sun Tour) - and 13 stage wins! Compared with the teams having world-beaters on board, this might not be that impressive. However, let's take a look at our team history - and you'll likely agree that we had a great year!
We notice that in all our previous seasons, we had exactly 8 stage wins. No matter the year, no matter the division - we got 8 of them. Well, despite having considerably less race days than last year (less RDs in CT, plus general RD reduction), we got 5 stage wins more this year!
Except in our first year, we always took exactly one classic win (Placci, Sakartvelo, IoM ITT) - so we still haven't been able to establish ourselves as a true classics team. So if we're not really strong in one-day races, we must be rather good at...
Stage racing, of course! While we got one GC win in each of the past two seasons (Amissa Bongo, Japan), we won even three stage races in 2022 alone!
Later on, we'll also see that we won each of the special jerseys at least once this year - so, did we really have a successful season? Yes, for sure we did!!!
Points
Another good measure of success are points. And in our case, especially the points difference to our competitors. Absolute points might not mean that much, but the PpRD ratio is surely a good measure - also when comparing 2022 to previous years. This is how that comparison looks like:
As said before, comparing absolute points across seasons isn't too meaningful, with race days and points scales varying depending on the division. Still, despite the calendar being thinned out, and - even way more importantly - the C2HC category (yielding 40-50% more points per race than C2!) dropped, we still got a new high score in terms of points!
Especially with points scales changing, PpRD isn't necessarily too meaningful, either - but getting a clear new high score there in spite of the non-favorable circumstances means our riders really did a great job overall!
In terms of points (and logically PpRD as well), we ended up almost 50% better than all our rivals, with only McCormick getting slightly closer (meaning more than 2/3 of our points). In the end, our gap over the rest of the division was huge - and with the two currently known higher-level disbands, even half of our total score would have been enough to take 7th place and a non-automatic promotion spot!
To put things into relation: Our gap over 2nd place was more than 650 points - with the gap between 2nd and 11th being just less than 500 points! So yes, we did have a very successful year!
By the way, with our PpRD we'd have secured a Top 15 spot in PCT - but we'd probably not have the same PpRD if actually racing in PCT, as the next section shows...
Race Categories
So, Fab, you keep telling us your team might not be PCT-ready. Are you serious?
Yes, indeed. Despite our huge success, we'll need some major reinforcement if we are to stay up in our second PCT attempt. Knowing that promotion would be very likely even with a sub-par season, we decided to take the risk and do lots of C1 races, and quite some HC races as well - with the goal to find out where we might already be competitive with our current team, and where we'd need some enhancement.
Well, the answer to the latter point is: pretty much everywhere. Let's first take a look at the wins per race category:
Wins by race category
HC
C1
C2
Classic
-
-
1
1
Stage
2
1
10
13
GC
-
-
3
3
Points
-
-
3
3
KoM
-
-
1
1
U25
-
-
1
1
Team
-
1
2
3
Total
2
2
21
25
You've already seen the race, stage and GC wins before - now we're also including the additional classifications.
The verdict is pretty clear: We've been very successful in CT with 14 "actual" wins plus 7 other classification wins. And we weren't successful in the other categories, with just 2 stage wins in HC, and a single stage win plus the Euskal team standings in C1.
You might argue that we just raced less in the higher categories. Which is correct for HC, so those 2 stage wins in 17 stages are actually fine. However, we did race as much in C1 as we did in C2 (59 vs. 60 RDs), which means that our C1 outcome is really woeful. And yes, we did send our best riders to many of those C1 events - but they were simply not good enough to win at that level.
You can't always win, though - and other high places are worth quite some points, too. So let's see what our Top 10 statistic tells us about our success:
Top 10s by race category
HC
C1
C2
Classic
-
1
8
9
Stage
9
25
43
77
GC
-
5
12
17
Total
9
31
63
103
First of all: 103 Top 10 results in 140 race days - Wow! This figure means that not only our leaders delivered big time, but we also got some great depth results! And we don't even count all the additional classification Top 10s in there (GC results obviously are, though)!
Now, let's break that figure down into the race categories. We've mentioned it before - there were 60 C2 race days, and we took 63 Top 10 results! Realizing this now, that's just absolutely crazy! Fantastic job by the team, congratulations once again!
The HC figure is pretty much OK in terms of stage results as well; 9 Top 10s in 17 stages, knowing that this was the category with the toughest competition - we can live with that as a CT team. We'd have to clearly improve that as a PCT team, though. And even more so on the GC results - we didn't even get a single Top 20 result in three stage races. That was clearly disappointing.
The C1 numbers again aren't great, either. Pretty much the same number of race days as in C2, but less than half the amount of Top 10 results. On the other hand, not having a competitive PCT-level sprinter definitely hurt us there, and that was to be expected. But even leaving flat stages out, there were more than enough occasions where we felt that we should have scored some stage points - but didn't.
The GC results were pretty disappointing, too. Obviously there's the surprising standout result in Hong Kong (2nd). On the other hand, not having anyone in the Top 20 both in Pais Vasco and Vineyards (despite getting a TTT Top 3 in the latter) was just bad - especially given some of the riders achieving what we were targetting. We also had four 12th GC places, so with a little more luck those could've been Top 10s - and things would look better GC-wise.
Last but not least, let's see how all of these hits and misses translate into points - which obviously is what counts in the end:
Points & PpRD by race category
HC
C1
C2
Classic
5
60
197
262
PpRD
1.25
5
14.07
8.73
-
-
-
-
Stage Race
165
503
1228
1896
PpRD
9.71
10.7
26.7
17.24
-
-
-
-
Total
170
563
1425
2158
PpRD
8.1
9.54
23.75
15.41
Usually, PpRD should follow the race category, i.e. higher PpRD in higher category races. Well, we did the contrary.
Those really low 8 points per race day in HC can be partly explained by the fact that we didn't send our strongest riders there a lot. But even those we sent were very disappointing GC-wise.
Being below 10 PpRD in C1 races as well, however, is what's really, really concerning. For example, we had one of our strongest lineups of the year in Vineyards - and didn't even get a Top 20 GC result.
Let's put it clearly - with similar HC and C1 performances next year, we'll be going straight down again - we'd be dead last with such numbers. So here you have the reason why we're not sure we're ready for PCT.
However, we were more than ready for CT, and especially for the C2 category. Whereas the classics often didn't go too much according to our plans - for example with Moscon taking a single Top 10 result out of 4 races - the stage races were simply awesome.
We mentioned it before, we'll say it again: We finished on the GC podium in every single C2 stage race! With the awesome 1-2 in Herald Sun Tour, that's 10 GC podiums in 9 races! We did focus on stage races - especially on TT-heavy ones - and it played out even far better than what we could have imagined! Obviously, there was quite some luck involved to get that full podium streak - but it definitely will be something to remember in our team's history!
And it was obviously this category, C2 stage races, that was decisive for our title challenge. Our team can be proud of that 26.7 PpRD value - which was enough to take our C2 PpRD above 20, and the overall PpRD to over 15! It was the only category where we were above our average value - far above!
In the end, how would we characterize this team? Too strong for CT, as shown by the rankings. But - currently - too weak for PCT, looking at our C1/HC misses. There will be a lot of work to do during transfers!
CT History
Just out of interest, let's take a look at how our awesome season compares with CT history.
The first thing we notice is that it's really hard to do a meaningful comparison. The scoring system has changed multiple times, the division size changes every year - and the calendar hasn't always been the same in terms of total RDs, either.
With the C2HC category cancelled, lots of potential points were lost from 2021 to 2022. There were no more races where there wasn't any potential PCT participation - and the C2 points, even with the modified scale, were roughly 40-50% lower than C2HC points. Let's just state this before looking at the actual numbers.
No matter the number of participating teams, the points scale or the calendar - our 2,158 points would have been enough for the CT podium in every single year.
Which also means that we would have achieved promotion in any season with our score - which isn't the case for our fellow promoting teams, though. McCormick's score would have been enough to go up from 2015 to 2017, but not in any other year. In general, in the years where we have PpRD values in the CT history (2018 to 2022), a value below 10 PpRD would never have been enough to promote in the past. Which should be a direct consequence of the C2HC cancellation.
With our score, we'd also have won the division in all but 4 cases (2013, 2018, 2019, 2021) - meaning in the first year and in most of the 2017 points scales era. However, in the year where we first promoted (2020), we'd have won - 43 points ahead of Philips who'd have dropped to 4th... A season to remember for those incredibly close results! Oh, by the way, a certain Gianni Moscon was 8th in the CT standings that year...
In the last years, the points of the winning team also depended on the number of participating teams; the absolute CT highscore was reached in 2021, with only 14 teams riding in CT. Next is 2019 (17 teams), then 2018 (19 teams) - and 2022 (19 teams).
Where we did however set a new record is concerning the gap from 2nd to 3rd. Those 653 points in 2022 are unmatched, and only Azteca in 2019 actually got (very) close, winning the division 644 points ahead of Euskaltel.
Even though it's hard to have a meaningful comparison across the years, we'll feel free to claim the "Most dominant CT win" title for us - unless there are some valid objections, though!
So, we didn't have a record breaking season in most ways - but we definitely did have a great year, as stated before!
red Yeah, I hope the sponsors will be reasonable and not just see black or white
jandal There might have been some smarter goals, true. But we won Placci before with Moscon, so Top 5 looked like an easy goal. Romandie Top 5 was always going to be a long shot - maybe should've taken Top 10, which we did reach. And win goals are always hard to achieve, so 2nd isn't too shabby
TMM Back-to-back would be awesome, but the current team either needs to be replaced or to step up at least two levels in C1/HC races...
-----------------------------------------
UU Thanks for the feedback. His way of thinking and speaking got him lots of fans I feel, but likely also some enemies among those whe spoke up against. Really sad that he's no longer here.
SotD Indeed, the 2021 Vuelta was a big achievement as well, taking 5th place and the white jersey while actually "just" supporting Haig.
A shame that his hopeful career - and even more so his life - ended so early.
red Very sad. That's the short and spot-on summary of it all.
I like numbers and graphs. And the numbers and graphs you made clearly show a superb season for Jura. No wonder you ended up winning the title Maybe your team was just a bit unlucky in C1, and is actually ready for it next season, with some additions here and there. If they performed a bit stronger there you might have even gone over 3k points.
We've already seen that as a team, we had a really, really successful year. But team success doesn't just come from nowhere - it must be based on some great performances by individual riders!
So in this 3rd part of our season review, we'll take a look at how each of our riders did this year, and how we currently see their future. We'll end with an overview of the 2022 scores, plus an updated all-time scoring list. Let's go!
Disclaimer
I haven't started renewals yet, so everything that's stated about a rider's potential future on the team is purely hypothetical - although I obviously have some plans, I could still mess up renewals big time
Individual Reviews
Colin Stüssi
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
2
29
€ 110,000
76.49
42
406
9.67
271
Highlights
Win Giro del Trentino, GC Win Giro del Trentino, S2 Win Giro del Trentino, Points Win Tour of Vancouver, S6 Win Tour of Vancouver, S7 (TTT) Win Tour of Vancouver, Points Win Tour of Vancouver, KoM Win Tour of Vancouver, Team Win Volta a Catalunya, S3 (TTT)
--- 2nd Tour of Vancouver, GC 2nd Giro del Trentino, S1 (TTT) 2nd Tour de Romandie, S1 (TTT) 2nd Tour of the Middle East, GC 2nd Tour of the Middle East, S4
--- 3rd Tour of Vancouver, S1 3rd Tour de Vineyards, S5 (TTT)
--- 7th Tour de Romandie, GC
Looking back at everything that Colin has achieved this year, we are definitely happy that we finally decided to send him to a pre-season training camp!
In terms of individual wins, he wasn't our most successful rider - but two stage wins plus a GC win in Trentino are definitely a great yield! Furthermore, he was part of the two successful TTT lineups in Catalunya and Vancouver.
In the latter race, he finished 2nd in the GC - due to one relatively weak mountain stage - but took the KoM and Points jerseys in addition to his stage 6 solo win. In Trentino, he won the points standings as well, plus stage 2 and the GC, as said before.
Another successful race was the Tour of the Middle East. We were unsure whether to send him there or not, with the race including just one mountain stage and no ITT - but he did a great job to take 2nd on the final day and in the GC, beaten just by a rider having an exceptional day.
Our home stage race, the Tour de Romandie, was a success and a failure at the same time. A success, because Colin matched the GC result of Nairo Quintana the year before, despite the latter being a far better climber. But it also was a failure, as we missed our Top 5 sponsor goal there, despite the team setting him up almost perfectly with a 2nd place in the opening TTT. He kept up with all the top climbers in the hills and the mountains - only to have a really bad day and lose even a potential GC podium in the mountain time trial.
There were some more lowlights, though. The Volta a Catalunya was the first one, where he just couldn't keep up in the mountains and only finished 10th in the GC. We still won the race, but Colin's performance was definitely below par.
Other races were far worse, however - as he missed out on the Top 10 in all of them. The least bad was the Tour d'Andorra, where he finished 12th, after dropping out of the Top 10 on the final day.
In terms of stage races, his most awful performance clearly came in Tour de Vineyards, where he couldn't even reach a Top 20 finish - despite the team taking 3rd in the TTT... He simply wasn't where he should have been on the sole mountain stage, and that cost us a ton of points and an almost granted Top 10 GC.
Moreover, every single one of his classics was a failure. In Hallstatt, he even completely missed out on the points, whereas he just made the Top 25 in Apex. In Torino, he only was a co-leader - and it was the other one who brought home a good result.
Overall, Colin had a great year, finishing 2nd in the CT individual standings. However, there are quite a few "what ifs", especially in the non-C2 races. Which would be his main targets next year.
So, what does that mean for his future on the team? Honestly, we don't know. We'll definitely offer him a new contract, but if a CT team approaches us with a great offer, we'd have to think really hard. Because we know by now that he can rock the CT mountains. And he apparently can't do the same in PCT...
Fausto Masnada
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
6
29
€ 140,000
76.10
44
326
7.41
429
Highlights
Win Volta a Catalunya, GC Win Volta a Catalunya, S3 (TTT) Win Tour of Vancouver, S7 (TTT) Win Tour of Vancouver, Team Win Euskal Bizikleta, Team
--- 2nd Hong Kong Challenge, GC 2nd Züri Metzgete 2nd Tour de Romandie, S1 (TTT) 2nd Giro del Trentino, S1 (TTT)
--- 3rd Hong Kong Challenge, S1 3rd Hong Kong Challenge, S3
--- 7th Euskal Bizikleta, GC
Being our 3rd strongest rider (according to OVL), Fausto expectedly takes one of our top spots as well. Being mainly planned as a domestique, his score is actually way above expectations - and a great 6th place in the CT individual standings testifies of his great 2022 season!
Even though he missed out on getting a race win - in terms of crossing the finish line first - he scored some of our most prestigious results! First of all, there's obviously his GC win in Volta a Catalunya. Being sent there as a domestique for Colin, he stepped up when the latter failed to do his job - and despite struggling quite a lot in the mountains, he still took the win! This was mainly due to a fantastic job by the team on stage 3, where they took a dominant win in the TTT, giving Fausto the time buffer he needed in the end.
In Vancouver, he was an important part of the successful TTT lineup as well, and also helped Colin to take 2nd place in the GC, as well as pushing the team to the win in the team standings. Which he also did in Euskal Bizikleta, by the way.
However, his highest scoring race of the season was his first of the year (with Catalunya being the 2nd), and he needed just 3 days for this! In Hong Kong, Fausto scored our best C1 result by far, taking two 3rd places on the first and last stages, and finishing 2nd in the GC!
In Romandie and Trentino, he also was part of our strong TTT lineups, who finished 2nd in both cases. Moreover, he helped Colin to get his sole GC win of the year in Trentino.
Fausto also had a strong end of the year, taking yet another C1 GC Top 10, in Euskal Bizikleta. And to round out the season, he narrowly missed out on our win goal in Zurich, finishing 2nd and matching our highest result there!
What were his lowlights? Well, being planned as a helper mostly, that's hard to say. The only race where he was our undisputed team leader was Badaling, where he was inattentive and missed out on the decisive split. We clearly expected more from a rider with his skillset there.
Pais Vasco was the other race where we think that more should have been possible - neither him nor any other rider from the team was successful there.
And yeah, Coppa Placci, where a subpar team strategy led to our riders finishing 7th and 8th - instead of one helping the other getting a Top 5...
In general, however, Fausto had a great year. His future is pretty unsure, though. He might stay on the team, either as a potential breakaway rider in HC/PTHC races, or as a leader in C1. Or just as a helper. He might also be sold, given that we don't have a sponsor link to Italy anymore. The third option would be to send him to a training camp - it would be the last possible moment to do so. We'll see...
Szymon Rekita
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
9
28
€ 70,000
73.75
58
291
5.02
241
Highlights
Win Isle of Man ITT Win Herald Sun Tour, GC Win Herald Sun Tour, S4 Win Herald Sun Tour, Team Win Bayern Rundfahrt, S4 Win Volta a Catalunya, S3 (TTT) Win Tour of Vancouver, S7 (TTT) Win Tour of Vancouver, Team
--- 2nd Tour de Romandie, S1 (TTT) 2nd Olympia's Tour, S4 (TTT) 2nd Giro del Trentino, S1 (TTT)
--- 3rd Tour de Vineyards, S5 (TTT)
--- 4th Hong Kong Challenge, S2 4th Olympia's Tour, GC 4th Olympia's Tour, S1 4th Olympia's Tour, S6
--- 7th La Tropicale Amissa Bongo, GC
Finding our 9th strongest rider already in 3rd place in our team-internal rankings - and in 9th place in the CT rankings! - might look like a big overperformance. However, Szymon was the division's fastest time triallist - and he clearly demonstrated that in the second half of the year!
With 4 individual wins, he was our most successful rider of the year - and that's part of the explanation of why he scored almost 300 points. The start of the season wasn't that spectacular, but with a 4th place in his first race of the year (Hong Kong), he already showed that he was competitive even at C1 level.
In many races, he was the most important piece of our TTT puzzle - leading the team on the stage podium every single time he was present: Wins in Catalunya and Vancouver, 2nd places in Romandie, Olympia's Tour and Trentino, and a 3rd place in Vineyards. He often wasn't even rewarded for his efforts, though, not finishing among the first 5 riders of the team.
In the second half of the year, he could finally go for personal success as well. And he did so in the Isle of Man ITT, which he won in a dominant fashion - our sole classic win of the year.
His most prestigious win might however be the one in Bayern, where he won the closing stage - it was one out of two HC stage wins for the team this year.
The highest scoring race, though, was clearly the Herald Sun Tour, yielding exactly 1/3 of his total score. It was the only time this year where he fully lived up to his skillset in a TT-heavy stage race - and so he won both the stage 4 ITT, and the GC! Ahead of a teammate, by the way, as we'll discover later on... With that 1-2, it was no surprise that we also took the team standings, but that was rather a footnote.
Besides some really big highs, he also had a couple of lows. One of the most disappointing results came in Monterrey, where we only finished 8th. Szymon led the team to stage podiums in all stage race TTTs, but in the one classic he did he wasn't able to make the impact we expected from him.
There were also two TT-decided C1 stage races where he was below expectations. Clearly below in Arab Tour, missing out on the Top 10, and slightly below in Amissa Bongo, finishing 7th.
But generally speaking, if a rider gets 4 wins (2 stages, 1 GC, 1 classic), and pushes the TTT lineup to 6 stage podiums (thereof 2 wins), he did have a great season. And in fact, Szymon was our second cheapest rider, considering the Wage per Point ratio (excluding the "free" riders). Colin is #3 in that list, by the way.
Szymon has already shown that he can be competitive at PCT level (stage win in Bayern, 4th place in Hong Kong, 7th in Tropicale GC), so there's no serious doubt that he'll stay with the team. Except if he has some unrealistic salary demands of course - but it's clear for us that he deserves some bonus after this great season!
Marcel Aregger
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
15
32
€ 55,000
74.58
54
239
4.43
230
Highlights
Win Tour of the Middle East, S2 Win Volta a Catalunya, S3 (TTT) Win Euskal Bizikleta, Team
--- 2nd Jelajah SKL, GC 2nd Vuelta al Pais Vasco, S3 2nd Tour de Romandie, S1 (TTT)
--- 3rd Volta a Catalunya, S1 3rd USA Pro Cycling Challenge, GC 3rd USA Pro Cycling Challenge, S3 3rd Tour de Romandie, S6 3rd Tour du Maroc, S1 3rd Tour du Maroc, S3
--- 4th Jelajah SKL, S4 4th Tour de Romandie, S2 4th Euskal Bizikleta, S4
--- 7th GP Izola
May I present: Our most efficient scorer, in terms of wage per points! In his final year at his peak, Marcel's points cost us less than € 250 each, meaning he scored more than 4 points per € 1,000 of wage - with a ratio of one point per 1k being the limit for a "sufficient" performance.
His overall score might look a bit surprising at first, given that he only scored one individual win all year long. But winning stage 2 in Middle East also got him the yellow and green jerseys - he finished 2nd in the points standings in the end.
And then, there obviously are his two great GC results; 2nd in Jelajah, only beaten by Kopfauf who unexpectedly made it over the hills, and 3rd in USA PCC, thanks to a 3rd place on stage 3 and a decent epilogue. The two 3rd places in Morocco were very valuable results as well!
He also did well in Romandie, but was unfortunately unable to get a stage win at the end of his (maxed) career. 3rd and 4th in the sprint stages are strong results, though, and he also had his share in the team's 2nd place in the opening TTT.
Speaking of TTT, he was also part of the victorious lineup in Catalunya, where he also got a podium spot in the opening stage. Last but not least, we put our hopes on him for the hilly GP Izola - and he didn't disappoint, finishing 7th.
Where did he disappoint, then? Surely in Pais Vasco, as did the entire team. There were stages we thought to be tailor-made for his skillset, but he mostly thought otherwise. Still, a 2nd place on stage 3 made him our best scorer there - with 12 measly points...
The same holds for South Africa, where there were some nice stages for him - but the team didn't support him, or he just didn't feel like racing. Zero points.
These two races however were rather risky choices for his schedule; with the puncheur skills of e.g. Houle he'd surely have done a fantastic job. Which holds as well for GP Lugano or Zuri Metzgete - however, in the latter race, he was just a backup option that was finally not really needed, given Fausto's 2nd place.
His worst race of the year probably was Frankfurt Eschborn. He scored zero points (as did the entire team), whereas looking at the results, he could easily, easily have been up front. Alas, bad days and races happen.
There's just one thing we really regret - having been able to sign him only for the very last year at his peak. He was a bargain, no doubt about it - but we'd have loved to pay him more and have him for a little longer.
Does this mean we won't renew him? We don't know. If the rules don't change, he'll unfortunately only be eligible for C2 races without prologues - but that would still make him a viable option for races like Izola. We'll see if we try to keep him as a "Capitaine de route" for another season. Or sell him to CT, where he surely has another strong season in him.
Gianni Moscon
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
21
28
€ 190,000
76.75
41
207
5.05
918
Highlights
Win Tour of Chile, S2 Win Euskal Bizikleta, Team
--- 3rd Euskal Bizikleta, S4
--- 4th Milano - Torino 4th Tour de Pologne, S2
--- 5th Euskal Bizikleta, GC 5th Tour of South Africa, S5
--- 7th Coppa Placci
Well, well, well, what to say... Our strongest rider barely makes the internal Top 5, and even misses out on the CT Top 20. To have a point of reference: in our last CT season in 2020, he scored more than 450 points, and ended up in the CT Top 10.
His highlight sheet is really, really poor for a rider with this skillset. One of the lone reasons to celebrate was his stage win in Chile, attacking pretty much at the same point as last year, and soloed to the line again! He also finished 12th in the GC, riding a really good mountain stage on the final day.
The other top results came rather late in the season. In Milano - Torino he achieved, what he failed to get in all his C2 hilly classics: a Top 5 finish!
Euskal Bizikleta was a good race as well, as he sprinted to 3rd place in the final stage, netting him a Top 5 GC finish - his only Top 10 GC all year long.
Although listed among the highlights - because it was his 2nd best classic result - Coppa Placci was actually disappointing. He won the race two years ago, and now even failed to fulfill our Top 5 sponsor goal.
It was by far not his most disappointing race, though. The start of the year was nothing short of horrible - in Gisborne, Hong Kong, San José and Pais Vasco, he scored 11 points in total - getting a double bagel in the C1 races!
This can be more or less explained in Hong Kong, given that Masnada did a great job - but not caring at all is just unprofessional.
It was even worse in Pais Vasco, where none of our puncheurs did anything useful at all. Missing out on the Top 10 in both Gisborne and San José was a ridiculous underperformance as well - it clearly looked like someone didn't use the offseason to get in shape. At all.
The results didn't get much better, as Poland was also heavily disappointing - with his climbing skills and physical stats, he should have easily kept up with the likes of Prevar or Eiking. Wallonie was a wasted race as well, as he only just made the Top 30.
In South Africa, his GC ambitions were clearly hurt by our weak TTT lineup (due to Vancouver clashing), but even in terms of stage success he was far behind his 2020 standars. The 12th place GC finish was OK, the stages not.
And last but not least, Züri Metzgete. It was a great race by the team, with two in the Top 10 - Gianni wasn't one of them. He finished barely inside the scoring positions, getting one point.
Was that his final no-show in our colours? After such a bad year - with basically just three races yielding satisfying scores (Chile, Torino, Euskal), we might be tempted to not renew him.
On the other hand, it looks like MGUCI will somehow make physical condition matter more next year, which might bring him back to his normal scoring level. We might even train him on the hills, as we think it was that missing "red stat" that made him miss out many, many times. Or he might just be sold, as we believe he can rock CT again - maybe just don't let a guy like Fausto ride in the same race...
Krzysztof Marchewka
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
27
29
€ 75,000
72.82
65
175
2.69
429
Highlights
Win Herald Sun Tour, Team Win Volta a Catalunya, S3 (TTT) Win Tour of Vancouver, S7 (TTT) Win Tour of Vancouver, Team
--- 2nd Herald Sun Tour, GC 2nd Herald Sun Tour, S4 2nd Tour de Romandie, S1 (TTT) 2nd Olympia's Tour, S4 (TTT) 2nd Giro del Trentino, S1 (TTT)
--- 3rd Olympia's Tour, GC 3rd Olympia's Tour, S1 3rd Tour de Vineyards, S5 (TTT)
--- 5th Isle of Man ITT
Krzysztof is just #13 (out of 17 riders) in our internal pecking order - however, only according to OVL, clearly not in terms of scoring! He did more than pay back the faith we put in him - in general, our Polish trio pushed each other to unknown heights this year!
First and foremost, Krzysztof was a key part of our TTT lineup, similar to Szymon. A little slower, but very important nonetheless. And he did every single TTT he possibly could do, with the obvious exception being South Africa (as he was riding in Vancouver). The results speak a clear language - we won't repeat them again.
But he also had some individual success. For the first time in Olympia's Tour, where he beat Rekita to take the final podium spot, behind the winning Glanbia duo. In Isle of Man, it even looked like we might get a 1-2, but he slightly faded in the end to finish 5th. Still a great result!
However, he clearly saved the best for last, finishing 2nd in Herald Sun Tour both in the ITT and the GC - behind Szymon, making it a fantastic 1-2 for us!
The races where he didn't do as well as we expected were those with short TTs. Both in Jelajah and USA PCC he left with zero points. Whereas Top 10s can't really be expected due the well-known randomness of prologues, not even scoring a single point - i.e. missing out on the Top 25 - in the U.S. wasn't great to see.
Also, whereas we had many great TTT results with Krzysztof on board, those in Pais Vasco, Monterrey and Windhoek weren't. This can at least be partly explained with the lack of TT depth in our roster, though - when the stage racers aren't there, numbers 3-5 in the TT pecking order are missing. So we can't blame Krzysztof for that. Just Monterrey should definitely have been better.
Will he stay? Well, we noticed that he did a fantastic job alongside Szymon, so that answer should be clear. On the other hand, Brunel and Bissegger are coming back from their loan spell, and will significantly enhance our TT lineup - meaning that Krzysztof might not get many chances to ride for individual glory anymore. But to add some depth to our TTT roster, he should definitely have a spot in the next 1-2 years.
Gino Mäder
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
30
25
€ 100,000
75.21
50
168
3.36
595
Highlights
Win Tour of California, U25 Win Volta a Catalunya, S3 (TTT) Win Tour of Vancouver, S7 (TTT) Win Tour of Vancouver, Team
--- 2nd Tour of California, GC 2nd Tour de Romandie, S1 (TTT) 2nd Giro del Trentino, S1 (TTT)
--- 3rd Tour de Vineyards, S5 (TTT)
--- 6th Tour of California, S6 6th Tour of California, S7
--- 8th Tour of Vancouver, S1
Being an emotional guy, I can't suppress what just happened to RL Gino. So I do have a hard time writing MG Gino's season review - and I'll try to be not as harsh as I would with any other rider.
Overall, He wasn't having that final U25 year we were hoping for. He basically had one single strong race - the Tour of California. With slightly better legs in the closing TT, he could even have won it - but taking 2nd place behind Warbasse was clearly more than expected in a stacked CT climbers field. He didn't have any outstanding stage results, but was very consistent to finish 2nd - and win the U25 standings.
California was his only C2 race as our leader, whereas he was among Colin's most valuable domestique in all other non-HC stage races. Meaning that he contributed to our great TTT results, as well as to the GC wins in Catalunya and Trentino.
However, that's pretty much all we can say about his highlights. We were expecting him to pick up most U25 jerseys in the C2 stage races - but in fact, the one in California was his only one all year long. This clearly was a major disappointment - and strongly linked to the fact that he simply didn't care about getting as good a result as possible in all the races where he wasn't our team leader. To be fair, he still finished on the U25 podium in 5 other races.
But what probably was most disappointing were his no-shows in HC races Bayern and Maroc. We were well aware that he wasn't among the top climbers in these races - but being beaten by absolute non-climbers in Bayern, and not even seriously trying to go for breakaways in Morocco, was disappointing. He clearly showed us that we shouldn't solely rely on him in those races next year.
Next year, that's a good keyword. What will happen to him? To be honest, I have no clue. Being the first talent we signed in our debut season, he should obviously have a spot in our roster for the rest of his career. But we also saw this year that he might not be ready to face the challenges of PCT.
But more importantly, as said before, I'm an emotional guy, and I don't know yet if I can handle having him in my MG roster after he no longer is with us in RL. Time will tell, but for now I can just say again: R.I.P. Gino.
Grzegorz Stepniak
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
45
33
€ 50,000
73.83
58
130
2.24
385
Highlights
Win Tour de Pologne, S3 Win Tour of Vancouver, S3 Win Tour of Vancouver, S7 (TTT) Win Tour of Vancouver, Team Win Herald Sun Tour, S1 Win Herald Sun Tour, Team Win Euskal Bizikleta, Team
--- 2nd Tour of California, S5 2nd Olympia's Tour, S4 (TTT)
--- 3rd Tour of Vancouver, S2 3rd Bayern Rundfahrt, S2
--- 5th Tour de Pologne, S4 5th Tour of Vancouver, S5
Here's our 3rd Polish rider - and all of them made the team's Top 10! Grzegorz is in 8th place - and he's our final rider having scored 100 points or more this year. No other CT team came close to 8 riders with 100+ points - with Bianchi and Tryg both having 5. Not even half of the PCT teams had such depth, by the way! And just to say, he's also our 8th rider in the CT Top 50...
But enough generalities, let's focus on Grzegorz now. We're not used to sign declining riders - or at least not paying them - but we needed a second sprinter besides Marcel, and Grzegorz looked like a decent choice for one year. He was.
In fact, he's the rider with the most stage wins on the team, being victorious three times. Three riders won two stages (plus some other nice stuff, like GCs or jerseys), but none of them got three. The most valuable one of his stage wins definitely was in his home race, Tour de Pologne, where he even won a sprint stage at HC level!
The other two stage wins came in C2 races; first in Vancouver, where he was also a minor contributor to the TTT and team standings wins. His final win of the year - and maybe of his career? - was in Sun Tour, where he won the opening stage, hence wearing the yellow jsersey as well!
Some more fun facts about his season: he was one out of just two riders who contributed to all three team standings wins. And he scored far more results in the upper half of the Top 10 than in the lower half (8 vs. 3). So when he sprinted, he was incredible efficient!
The few lowlights therefore are about the races where he didn't sprint. For example, he went to Olympia's Tour being our lead sprinter. Out of three attempts, he only scored a 7th place as a notable result.
The quota was even far worse in Amissa Bongo and Arab Tour - in both of them, he scored zero Top 10 results in three attempts. It was pretty frustrating to see him not even try there - although admittedly the C1 sprinter fields were really stacked, and this didn't come fully unexpected.
Now, after this amazing season - he probably was even more successful after one year of declining than he was at his peak - what are our thoughts about his future? That's pretty easy - he won't stay with us. With his next round of declining, he'll lose too much of his speed to still be viable as a main sprinter - and we do have other, more local, options for leadout riding. Therefore we'd like to thank Grzegorz very much for all the great moments this year, and wish him all the best for maybe a final year of cycling - or for his retirement.
Gabriel Chavanne
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
73
30
€ 50,000
73.46
61
77
1.26
649
Highlights
Win Jelajah SKL, S1 Win Jelajah SKL, Points Win USA Pro Cycling Challenge, S4
--- 2nd Jelajah SKL, S4
--- 5th Tour de Pologne, S1
You may have noticed that the highlight list has all of a sudden gotten way shorter than for most previous riders. Well, we can notice quite a drop-off in terms of scoring after our Top 8, so it isn't a huge surprise to have relatively few outstanding results. Furthermore, Gabby is a specialist for prologues, whereof there aren't that many all year long.
Prologues obviously were his biggest highlights, then. It started early on, as he won the first stage of Jelajah SKL, adding a 2nd place on the last day to that. Unfortunately, he couldn't quite keep up on the hilly stage 3 (given that race winner Kopfauf did, we believe Gabby should've been there as well), so no GC result for him - but at least the points jersey!
His other prologue win was on American soil, as he won the closing stage of the USA PCC. Usually a GC-defining stage, the sprinters were too consistent for once - and Gabby had again not been attentive enough before, dropping out of GC contention before the final day already...
The was one other notable result - a 5th place in the prologue in Pologne. And that was it.
The two other prologues he had were then obviously the lowlights of the year. Actually, his first race in the U.S. wasn't great, as he missed out on the Top 10 in California - he would do better later on in the same country, as seen before.
Amissa Bongo wasn't any better - not a great way to round off your principal racing part of the year. But prologues always had a good part of randomness, so we can actually be happy with 3 podiums in 6 attempts - plus a Top 5.
What is slightly disappointing as well is that he didn't join any breakaways or do other fancy stuff in all his other 55 race days. But given that we had some kind of favorite in almost every stage, there wasn't a lot of freedom anyway.
Gabby's future on the team should be safe, as long as he doesn't ask for some astronomical raise. We'll expect him to do better in non-C2 races, though!
Mauro Schmid
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
127
23
€ 90,000
74.75
53
43
0.81
2,093
Highlights
Win Tour de l'Avenir, S4 Win Euskal Bizikleta, Team
--- 2nd Tour de l'Avenir, GC
--- 3rd Tour de l'Avenir, S3 3rd Tour de l'Avenir, S6
--- 10th Züri Metzgete
The number of highlights - and the race in which most of them were achieved - already tell us that Mauro might have been the most disappointing rider besides Moscon this year. Being our #5 in terms of OVL - nobody knows why, by the way, that value is completely excessive - he's only our #10 in terms of scoring. He did score more points last year as a level 1 rider, which clearly isn't what we were expecting from him.
By far his best race of the year was the Tour de l'Avenir - a prestigious race for sure, but a literally pointless one. He got a stage win, two more stage podiums - thereof an ITT stage!!! - and ended up 2nd in the GC. Which is our best ever result - Gino took 3rd place two years ago. Mauro's effort came rather unexpected, due to the incredibly long ITT - which he completely surprisingly finished in 3rd place. Good job!
He also made valuable contributions in quite some races where he was sent to as a helper of either Gianni, or Fausto, or both. Most notably, he did a great job to secure our team standings win in Euskal Bizikleta. He also ended up 3rd in the KoM standings there, finally doing what we wanted him to do all year long: joining a breakaway.
He was also present in Hong Kong where Fausto took 2nd overall; the same holds for California where Gino finished runner-up. Or in Chile, where he supported Gianni on his way to a stage win and a decent GC result.
However, he saved his best performance for last - and last indeed means the final race of the year, Züri Metzgete. Not only did he shut down numerous attacks, he even led out Fausto on the final kilometer - and ended the race in 10th position!
We already said that we are rather disappointed by his overall score. Can we really say this of a rider who mostly acted as a domestique? We think that yes, we can.
Sure, there were races - especially C2 ones - where we had a race favourite in our lineup. There, his job was to help them, and he did that pretty well. However, Mauro also raced in lots of higher category races, where he had much more freedom - but unfortunately didn't use it. He would have been a perfectly suited breakaway rider for C1 and HC races - but instead of trying, he often followed his teammates' example and did nothing at all. Be it in Poland, Badaling, Wallonie, South Africa, Apex, Andorra or even Lugano - just nothing. That was disappointing.
Will he still get a new contract? Well, he's still developing, and we're confident that he learnt a lot this year and will do better in 2023. The only open questions are how much we'll have to pay him, and whether we can find a (risky) way to develop him to the maximum level ourselves.
Leonardo Basso
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
163
29
€ 50,000
72.98
64
27
0.42
1,852
Highlights
Win Volta a Catalunya, S3 (TTT) Win Tour of Vancouver, S7 (TTT) Win Tour of Vancouver, Team Win Herald Sun Tour, Team Win Euskal Bizikleta, Team
--- 2nd Tour de Romandie, S1 (TTT) 2nd Olympia's Tour, S4 (TTT) 2nd Giro del Trentino, S1 (TTT)
--- 3rd Tour de Vineyards, S5 (TTT)
Looking at this table tells everything about who Leo is: An incredibly reliable domestique! Alongside Stepniak, he's the only rider who was part of the lineup in all three races where we won the team standings - and just like Marchewka and Rekita, he was in all TTT lineups that reached a stage podium.
Leo fully met our expectations, being an important part of the team on pretty much every kind of terrain. Unfortunately for him, we wasn't able to reach an individual highlight this year - also because there weren't any cobbles at all on our schedule.
If we want to find the fly in the ointment, we can point at the races where we didn't have a race favourite, and hence Leo would have some freedom - but didn't use it. With his decent sprint speed and punch, he'd be a great choice for breakaways, but unfortunately he didn't take his chance.
Still, it's absolutely no surprise that we want to keep Leo for another season. Even though our TT department gets even stronger with Bissegger and Brunel coming back from their loan spell, and Janssen developing into a decent TTer as well, some more depth won't hurt. And we'll probably have to ride some cobbled races again next year, where we'll happily count on Leo again.
Erick Rowsell
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
167
32
€ 0
72.68
66
25
0.38
0
Highlights
Win Volta a Catalunya, S3 (TTT) Win Tour of Vancouver, S7 (TTT) Win Tour of Vancouver, Team
--- 2nd Tour de Romandie, S1 (TTT) 2nd Olympia's Tour, S4 (TTT) 2nd Giro del Trentino, S1 (TTT)
--- 3rd Olympia's Tour, S6 3rd Tour de Vineyards, S5 (TTT)
The main reason why we signed Erick in the CT draft was to strengthen our TTT core - and at the same time adding some more climber skills. As we can see from the results, that plan worked like a charm, with the first ever Brit in our team history being part of all the successful TTT trains as well, just like Leo.
And unlike the Italian, he also had a personal highlight, with a 3rd place in the closing ITT of Olympia's Tour! Due to some time losses on other stages, he unfortunately couldn't transform this into a high GC finish, but it still was a race to remember for him.
Again just like Leo, if there was something else we'd have liked to see him do, then it's attacks in races like Pais Vasco, Andorra or Bayern. But with him lacking some of the Italian's physical skills and punch, it wasn't overly surprising to see him rather opting to stay with his team leaders.
As you can see, Erick is now 32 years old, and is about to lose some of his skills. We're sure he can still be of great use to a CT team - but we're rather in doubt that this would be the case in PCT as well. He's one of those candidates who might or might not get another contract - and he's aware of the situation. In any case, we'd like to thank him for his valuable contribution to our promotion challenge!
Christoph Janssen
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
210
22
€ 50,000
66.56
88
14
0.16
3,571
Highlights
Win Herald Sun Tour, Team
--- 2nd Olympia's Tour, S4 (TTT)
--- 3rd Tour de Vineyards, S5 (TTT)
--- 4th Tour de l'Avenir, S1
We have arrived at the bottom 5 riders, who all scored less than 20 points - but who did all score nonetheless! Christoph was our only Swiss talent signed in 2022 - we'd have loved to get more of them, but wage cap restrictions didn't allow us to do so given our huge number (for CT conditions) of leaders.
Even though he's designated to grow into a solid TTT core member, there wasn't much room for him in those lineups this year. He only made it where we didn't send all of our top climbers - which was in Olympia's Tour and Vineyards. In both of these races, he contributed to a podium finish on the TTT stage, so he definitely did his job well!
He also was part of the victorious team in the memorable Herald Sun Tour. In this race, as well as in Herald Sun Tour, he also finished 5th in the U25 standings, thereby picking up some points.
Christoph scored his best individual result in the Tour de l'Avenir, where he got a rather surprising 4th place finish in the prologue. He'll be hoping to get an even better TT result next year, after his first steps of development!
Were we disappointed with his performance at any point of the season? No - after all, we couldn't expect much from a neo-pro anyway. And he did what he had to do in the races he participated in, even going into the attack from time to time.
If we can agree on the usual terms, we'll obviously keep him on the team, trying to push his development further in 2023. He'd definitely have some good role models on the team for his career as a TTer!
Manuel Stocker
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
218
30
€ 50,000
73.79
59
12
0.20
4,167
Highlights
Win Herald Sun Tour, Team
--- 4th Herald Sun Tour, S3
In 2022, Manuel is the rider getting the rather unfortunate label of "most expensive rider", costing us more than € 4,000 per point scored. However, being our leadout rider #1 since our inaugural season, he was never a rider of whom we expected individual glory.
It was rather unfortunate for him, though, that we didn't have a top sprinter this year - and therefore mostly opted for an approach without leadout train. Meaning that Manuel was out of work most of the time. We can't blame him for this; his role just didn't fit our strategy in the end.
Still, he used the one opportunity he got, sprinting to 4th in the Herald Sun Tour - where he evidently was part of the GC winning team as well.
After such a season, could we envisage renewing his contract? Well, if you have a leadout rider on board, who did a great job for three years already - should you let him go? He'll never be among our top scorers, but he might again help a sprinter score lots of points - so don't be surprised if Manuel stays on board!
Alexandros Matsangos
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
235
23
€ 0
68.78
88
10
0.11
0
Highlights
Win Herald Sun Tour, Team Win Euskal Bizikleta, Team
--- 3rd Tour de Vineyards, S5 (TTT)
--- 4th Tour de Vineyards, U25
--- 6th La Tropicale Amissa Bongo, U25
The main reason why Stocker was our most expensive rider is that the remaining trio didn't cost us a single cent. Alexandros was the best scorer among them. The loanee from ELCO - ABEA got to race a lot, and even picked up some points along the road.
Most notably - which isn't visible in the highlights table - he was among our most aggressive riders, having quite a lot of breakaway appearances throughout the year. He might not always have been our best suited rider to do so, but we definitely appreciate his efforts!
Given his attacking spirit, one might conclude that he's egoistic - but the results rather show that he's a great team player. Team standings wins in Sun Tour and Bizikleta as well as a 3rd place in the Vineyards TTT stage are his top results with the team - and both in Vineyards and Amissa Bongo he also showed that he's no slouch himself, either.
Unfortunately, he wasn't able to convert any of his breakaway appearances into a notable stage result, but we're sure he'll do so in the future! We wish him all the best with his home team next year - if he doesn't come back to us for another loan spell, that is.
Panagiotis Karatsivis
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
262
21
€ 0
69.83
84
5
0.06
0
Highlights
Win Euskal Bizikleta, Team
--- 2nd Giro del Trentino, S1 (TTT)
--- 3rd Tour de Vineyards, S5 (TTT)
--- 6th Hong Kong Challenge, U25
Panagiotis was our second loanee from the ELCO - ABEA talents academy - and just like his Cypriot friend, he was very aggressive throughout the season, joining quite a lot of breakaways. Also like Alexandros, however, he wasn't able to get a notable result out of all his attempts. But he did make our jersey even more visible.
He also was a part of some pretty successful lineups, be it in Euskal Bizikleta with the team standings win, or in Trentino and Vineyards with TTT stage podiums. He did have his individual highlight very early in the year, though, taking 6th in the Hong Kong Challenge U25 standings.
Just like for Alexandros, we'd like to thank Panagiotis for his efforts, and wish him all the best for his hopefully long and successful career! And we'd like to thank ELCO - ABEA for another great chapter of our development cooperation, and we do highly value the mutual trust!
Noam Cohen
CT
Age
Wage
OVL
RDs
Points
PpRD
€/P
281
32
€ 0
73.27
62
3
0.05
0
Highlights
2nd USA Pro Cycling Challenge, Team
--- 23rd GP Izola
That's it, we have reached the final rider in the list. Noam was our 2nd draft pick - and we agree, it wasn't the smartest one. We thought we'd still be left with one sprinter at this point, before bringing in Stepniak in a last-minute deal. Which meant that Noam didn't even have a single race as our lead sprinter - hence his low scoring isn't surprising at all.
In fact, he's our only rider who wasn't involved in a single win all year long - neither individual, nor TTT, nor team standings. Can we blame him for this? We don't think so; given the circumstances, we only planned him as a bottle fetcher all year long, and mostly in races we couldn't send a lot of stronger riders to. So clearly team management is to blame for not planning their draft in a smarter way.
We'd still like to thank Noam for being a reliable helper this year, and we wish him all the best for his future. If he wasn't about to decline, we might have offered him a contract as a leadout for next year - for a lead sprinter we'll hopefully be able to sign - but it rather looks like we can't really fit him in our 2023 roster.
Summary
In general, our riders have been doing really well all season long. There were some underperformers, like Gianni or Mauro, and maybe Gino a little bit as well. But we also had some overperformers, like Fausto, Szymon, Marcel or Krzysztof.
But given that even those who were rather disappointing made a significant contribution to our total scoring, it was a great season overall! What are we most proud of? Well, three riders in the individual Top 10 probably is a once-in-a-lifetime achievement. So is having 7 riders in the Top 30 (or 8 in the Top 50) - just amazing!
We're also proud that almost every rider could smell the taste of victory this year in some way, which should hopefully be highly motivating for everyone!
And after the individual analysis, here are all the numbers at one glance:
Rider
Wage
CT
RDs
Points
PpRD
€ / Point
Colin Stüssi
€ 110,000
2
42
406
9.67
271
Fausto Masnada
€ 140,000
6
44
326
7.41
429
Szymon Rekita
€ 70,000
9
58
291
5.02
241
Marcel Aregger
€ 55,000
15
54
239
4.43
230
Gianni Moscon
€ 190,000
21
41
207
5.05
918
Krzysztof Marchewka
€ 75,000
27
65
175
2.69
429
Gino Mäder
€ 100,000
30
50
168
3.36
595
Grzegorz Stepniak
€ 50,000
45
58
130
2.24
385
Gabriel Chavanne
€ 50,000
73
61
77
1.26
649
Mauro Schmid
€ 90,000
127
53
43
0.81
2,093
Leonardo Basso
€ 50,000
163
64
27
0.42
1,852
Erick Rowsell
€ 0
167
66
25
0.38
0
Christoph Janssen
€ 50,000
210
88
14
0.16
3,571
Manuel Stocker
€ 50,000
218
59
12
0.20
4,167
Alexandros Matsangos
€ 0
235
88
10
0.11
0
Panagiotis Karatsivis
€ 0
262
84
5
0.06
0
Noam Cohen
€ 0
281
62
3
0.05
0
All-time Scorers
And last but not least, we'd like to share with you the impact the 2022 results had on our all-time scoreboard:
Rider
Total
2019
2020
2021
2022
1
Gianni Moscon
1049
459
383
207
2
Theo Reinhardt
846
596
250
3
Fausto Masnada
675
183
Generali
166
326
4
Nairo Quintana
563
563
5
Colin Stüssi
406
406
6
Szymon Rekita
317
26
291
7
Marco Guillén
303
303
8
Andrea Manfredi
263
105
93
65
9
Mirco Saggiorato
258
115
128
15
10
Gino Mäder
242
37
37
Generali
168
11
Marcel Aregger
239
239
12
Cyrille Thièry
193
90
50
53
13
Tom Scully
179
179
14
Krzyztof Marchewka
175
175
15
Hermann Pernsteiner
158
110
48
16
Grzegorz Stepniak
130
130
17
Leonardo Basso
129
Repsol
62
40
27
18
Alfredo Balloni
108
108
19
Mauro Schmid
104
61
43
20
Benedikt Mundle
97
70
27
21
Jan-André Freuler
94
94
22
Issiaka Cissé
93
34
59
23
Gabriel Chavanne
77
77
24
Manuel Stocker
70
12
13
33
12
25
Mikiel Habtom
63
63
26
Fabian Lienhard
58
Philips
52
6
27
Simon Pellaud
54
54
28
Thomas Boudat
39
Philips
Yorkshire
39
29
Stefan Bissegger
30
12
18
Puma
30
Gian Piero Signorini
25
25
31
Erick Rowsell
25
25
32
Max Walscheid
17
4
13
33
Christoph Janssen
14
14
34
Pedro Merino Criado
11
11
35
Nico Brüngger
11
11
36
Emmanuel Morin
11
11
37
Robin Froidevaux
10
0
10
38
Alexandros Matsangos
10
10
39
Pascal Eenkhoorn
8
8
40
Miltiadis Giannoutsos
8
8
41
Giorgi Tediashvili
8
8
42
Patrick Gamper
6
6
43
Gergely Szarka
5
5
BWT
Duolingo
44
Aaron Van Poucke
5
5
45
Alexys Brunel
5
5
Puma
46
Panagiotis Karatsivis
5
5
47
Ioannidis Kiriakidis
4
4
48
Noam Cohen
3
3
49
Aimiliano Vila
2
2
50
Riccardo Minali
0
0
51
Alessandro Fedeli
0
0
52
Andrea Vendrame
0
Delvaux
Volvo
53
Brent Van Moer
0
0
54
Jason Tesson
0
0
First and foremost, we do have a new leader, with Moscon overtaking Reinhardt (whom he trailed by just 4 points going into the 2022 season). This was definitely expected, given that Theo unfortunately turned down our renewals offer last offseason.
We also had Masnada passing Quintana - which we didn't really expect, given the 200 points gap between the two of them. But with Fausto having an awesome 2022 season, the podium spot is clearly deserved!
Stüssi's season is noteworthy as well, given that he jumps right to 5th place from nowhere. It's a similar situation for Rekita, who gained lots of spots in his first maxed season, after having scored just 26 points last year as a still developing rider.
Mäder is the final new name inside the Top 10 - and he only takes that spot due to points from previous years, with Aregger clearly outscoring him in 2022. Marchewka and Stepniak both make it inside the Top 20 in their first year, whereas Schmid took two years to achieve the same.
We're proud that every single rider racing for us in 2022 scored some points - it's actually the first time we respectively our riders achieved this!
And with that ends our result-based review - however, we're eager to present you our talents' development progress shortly!
Nemo Well, I guess 3k points are a bit of a long shot with the new scoring system AND the RD reduction I guess that with some more luck, especially in C1 races, we could easily be 150-200 points higher, indeed. But with a little less luck in C2, we could also have lost the same amount of points easily - so I guess those 2k points are just fine in 2022
Due to wage cap restrictions following last year's relegation, we could unfortunately not provide many roster spots for talents this year. Well, we could have, but would have had to sacrifice some leaders, or valued long-time members.
Still, there are five young riders who made a significant step forward in their development - let's take a look at their updated skills!
Christoph Janssen 1 -> 3 (Stage Race, Time Trial)
FL
MO
HI
TT
ST
RS
RC
CB
SP
AC
FG
DH
PR
2022
69
62
63
69
66
68
68
55
59
66
63
65
69
2023
71
63
65
72
68
71
70
55
59
66
64
65
72
Max
72
67
68
76
71
74
74
55
59
67
65
65
76
It's pretty obvious that Christoph will never be a world beater - what he will however be is a solid TTT core member. He might not get too many chances next year yet, but starting with 2024 he'll likely be an important contributor already.
We ended up opting against the full Stage Race path, rather adding some additional flat skills - and we're still hesitating to sacrifice some more mountain skills in favor of flat roads.
In any case, we're looking forward to having another home-grown Swiss TT specialist once he's done with his development path!
Gergely Szarka 3 -> 4 (Track-Sprint)
FL
MO
HI
TT
ST
RS
RC
CB
SP
AC
FG
DH
PR
2022
73
62
66
60
71
70
67
60
74
74
64
65
68
2023
75
62
67
61
72
72
75
60
76
76
64
66
70
Max
77
62
67
61
72
73
76
60
78
78
64
66
72
Gergely returns after a great year of PT experience with Duolingo, having grown into a great leadout rider already. Especially his high speed on the flat is impressive, and he shouldn't have too much issues following the flat beasts inside the final kilometers.
After his final development step, he'll be a good option for lower-tier flat races in 2024 - unless we find some training funds later on, of course. Given that there hasn't been a Swiss sprinter talent in the last couple of years - except for Bissegger who finally picked the TT bike - we might as well invest in a young sprinter from another country.
Given the great job that Duolingo did, letting him race as much as possible, we'll easily be able to provide him the remaining experience he needs to reach his maximum level. So after two years with BWT and Duolingo, he might finally be wearing our jersey next year!
Alexys Brunel 4 -> Max (Stage Race)
2022
74
65
70
76
70
76
71
66
61
64
69
66
76
2023
75
67
71
78
72
78
73
66
61
65
69
66
78
Alexys is one out of two riders maxing this year, with his "TT twin" being presented next. When we bought him back in 2021 as a level 3 rider from Gjensidige, we knew he'd end up being strong against the clock, although we were unsure yet about his precise development path.
We're no longer unsure obviously, as now we know his final skillset - unless some training kicks in, obviously. While his main strength is riding as fast as possible on flat roads, he doesn't fear some uphills, either - and even has some nice skills on the hills, that might be further exploited in the future. What might speak against some hills training is his low acceleration, though.
His main focus will be on ITTs and TTTs, but we might also try some bumpier races for him, to see if the hills training could be viable. If so, he might become a mighty weapon for those races in the future!
Stefan Bissegger 4 -> Max (Stage Race)
FL
MO
HI
TT
ST
RS
RC
CB
SP
AC
FG
DH
PR
2022
73
66
68
76
71
75
70
60
72
72
64
71
75
2023
74
68
69
78
73
77
72
60
72
73
64
71
77
Stefan is the other "TT twin" - and our second rider developed from neo-pro to maximum level after Gino Mäder (both with a PT loan to round out their development, though). Just like Alexys, he was riding for Puma in 2022, being an important puzzle piece in Herklotz' Tour de France team, making sure the German didn't lose too much time in the TTT. Stefan scored almost 100 points, which is a handful more than Alexys.
When we signed him back in 2020, the main question was whether he'd become a TTer or a sprinter. As you can see now, we opted for the first version - which was a tough decision to make, given that both rider types aren't that frequent in Switzerland.
Still, we didn't want to completely neglect his sprinter skills, hence adding some track training during his development. We even thought about doing the same this year - but knowing how much climbing skills matter for many TTs, we finally opted against. Maybe we could have taken the fighter path for him as a compromise - which would however have meant losing some speed on the TT bike.
We feel like the current path is the best foundation for some potential - or rather expected - further training. We'd love to see him grow into one of the world's best TTers, although we'd need our sponsors to commit to some heavy investment for that.
But even with his current skillset, he'll form a great duo with Alexys for ITTs - potentially stronger than Rekita due to their well-roundedness - and obviously improve our TTT core even more. We can't wait to see finally see him compete as a fully developed rider!
Mauro Schmid 3 -> 4 (Hills)
FL
MO
HI
TT
ST
RS
RC
CB
SP
AC
FG
DH
PR
2022
71
73
74
67
69
76
71
69
69
75
74
73
65
2023
72
74
77
68
71
77
72
69
70
77
76
74
66
MaxV1
72
76
79
68
71
78
73
69
70
79
78
74
66
MaxV2
73
75
79
68
73
78
73
69
70
78
77
74
66
You can definitely C&P that last sentence for Mauro! Even though we still have to wait for one year, we're really looking forward to have the fully developed version of him - but hey, even the 2023 version should be great to follow!
We even got a pretty surprising letter from MGUCI, who do overall rider evaluations that are relevant for wages and race days - in fact, Mauro is now our highest valued rider on the roster! With an average value of 77.19, he has clearly left behind Gianni Moscon (76.75)!
While we're stoked by his great development, we're not overly happy with those MGUCI calculations - as that result probably means a significant raise - and a low number of available race days for the 2023 season. Which is quite a blow to our ambitions to make him the first fully home-grown rider.
Still, once we'll get our budget, as well as PTHC/HC bands, we'll try to figure out if we can possibly provide him the necessary experience, by getting some Pro Tour wildcards. But if we finally have to loan him out, well, we have to loan him out.
Either way, he should have his main strengths in hard hilly races with a not-so-hard ending. Given his great acceleration and decent sprint speed, he looks a lot like Xandro Meurisse - and we all know what the latter is capable of. We're really hoping to see Mauro ride in our jersey next year - we'd love to see him defy the division's top puncheurs!
For the final part of his development, we're still hesitating a lot between the two variants you can see up there. Until now, the first option would always have been our choice. However, it looks like stamina could matter a lot more in the future - if this really is the case, we'd probably sacrifice some climbing and acceleration for two more stamina points. We'll closely watch the 2023 results to find out what's the better path for Mauro. But he'll end up being a great rider either way, no worries!
Overall, we have two rather unspectacular riders in Janssen and Szarka. Then there are two good time triallists with our B&B duo, making our TTT lineup PCT-ready (although not top-notch, looking at some competitors). And there's obviously one of Switzerland's greatest talents in the last couple of years, Mauro Schmid.
We're well aware that having 5 talents on board won't be sufficient to ensure a good age structure on the long term - but we do surely hope that being on a PCT budget again, we can sign some more young riders! The future is looking bright for the next couple of years - but we surely can't rest on our laurels!
Schmid is a beast for the future Really nice talent!
Also I have a weak spot for Brunel whom I think is a really cool ridertype, and with Bissegger pretty similar you have a good starting point for a solid TTT experience.
Complains there are no good Swiss talents, still outstrips anything i'm putting together but a handy margin You'll need to add something more to remain in the PCT but in Schmid the future is secure from 2024
The 2022 National Championships are done and dusted - time to get an overview of how our riders performed there!
Cyprus
We don't have a full-time rider from Cyprus in our roster, but our loan-in Alexandros Matsangos did participate - and we obviously followed him as well.
He didn't quite have the legs in the mountainous road race, finishing 3rd out of 4 participants. Miltiadis was the unsurprising winner.
In the time trial, Alexandros was even further off time-wise, losing over 4 minutes to Christodoulos - and taking 3rd place again.
Greece
Like in Cyprus, our only participant in Greece was an ELCO loan-in. However, the flat course clearly didn't suit Panagiotis Karatsivis' skills, and so he could only finish 11th (out of 21). Vila surprised everyone else including top sprinter Farantakis to take the win.
In the TT, there was no way past other Panagiotis (Vlatos), as expected. Karatsivis took 11th place again - recognize a pattern?
Israel
The good news for Noam Cohen was that the roads were flat. The bad news, however, came in the form of cobblestones. Clearly not our #3 sprinter's speciality, and so he could only take 5th place out of 6 starters, with the winner being Yechezkel.
Logically, he should take the same place in the ITT - but that clearly wasn't realistic. He was by far the worst rider of his country, beating only our former rider Mundle in that multi-national NC race. It was clear pre-race that the winner's name would be Goldstein - Roy it was.
Hungary
Gergely Szarka won the Hungarian RR last year on flat roads, riding in BWT's jersey - now we were rooting for him to do the same in Duolingo's colours!
To not much avail though - which wasn't too surprising, with cobbles not being his favourite terrain at all. He reached the line almost 5 minutes behind race winner Moricz, taking 5th place (out of 10 starters).
However, as much as he dislikes cobbles, this is even more the case for TTs. 8th place for Gergely in that race, 7 minutes behind Sipos. Let's hope we'll be back on flat roads next year!
Great Britain
In a field of 36 starters, our draft pick Erick Rowsell definitely faced some mighty opposition. However, the mountainous route was more or less to his liking, and he finished 12th in the road race - just inside the first third. Carthy took the win for a mighty strong cycleYorkshire team.
But it's in the TT where he put up a really strong show - in the end, he finished on a strong 6th place, missing out on 2nd place by just 27"! Good job! Hayter easily won the race, a minute clear of Christian.
France
Our only rider from Baguette Country (or was it Croissants?) currently is Alexys Brunel. He mainly used the road race as a warm-up, but still finished a respectable 13th out of 55, trailing winner Koretzky by 35". The same time as mighty PHL, by the way.
And PHL is a great keyword, as Alexys did exactly match the Evonik star's time in the ITT race! This year, this was only enough for 6th, though - we're looking forward to see a first serious Top 5 challenge next year! Viennet won the race, by the way.
Italy
The first out of three NCs where we had more than one starter. In a mountainous race, we thought that Fausto Masnada should be our best card to play - but no. The course was by far not difficult enough to make a selection, and so it was puncheur Gianni Moscon who secured our best result in 5th place. Leo Basso also finished inside of that huge group, which ended up 1'14" behind solo winner Senni.
In the TT, our hopes were clearly smaller, given the nation's high density of top-tier specialists. Cattaneo made up for his weak RR performance and won the title, with Fausto Masnada being our highest finisher in 10th place. Leo Basso followed just 2 spots behind, with Gianni Moscon losing over 6 minutes and ending up 23rd.
Poland
We had some top contenders in both races in Poland, given the flat RR course. And Grzegorz Stepniak indeed did do well - until 500m from the finish line, that is. Looking safe for the Top 3 on paper, he had some horrible sprint timing and dropped all the way to 6th, standing no chance against Banaszek and the others.
For the TT, we had not one, but even two of the Top 3 favorites. Krzysztof Marchewka was the first of them on the road, setting a clear new best time. Only the two Szymons could threaten him - Sajnok fell short by more than 2 minutes though. So as Szymon Rekita approached the finish line, we already knew that the title was ours - surprisingly, though, he went to Krzysztof, who seemed to have some very favorable conditions on the last part of the race.
Our first gold medal of the year: Krzysztof Marchewka, Polish ITT Champion!
Switzerland
Last but not least, our home NC. Unfortunately, though, we couldn't look forward to the road race as much as in previous years, given that after some weird turns and twists it was decided to hold the race on... cobblestones, yep.
Obviously, Spengler won the race. However, by far not as easily as would have been expected, with Page having an insane day. Bohli made it 2x UBS on the podium - meaning that we missed out, as had to be expected. Nonetheless, a shoutout to Mauro Schmid, who finished with the same time as the winner to take a strong 4th place! Maybe we should have put more weight on developing his cobbles skills then? None of our 6 other riders made the Top 10, by the way. Stefan Bissegger did, though, finishing 8th, riding for Puma.
In the TT, we should have the top favorite in two years, but for now, Dillier is still the nation's king against the clock. Küng came 2nd, ahead of our TT talent Stefan Bissegger, riding in Puma colours for the last time. So technically no medal for us as well, but we'll still claim part of it. Colin Stüssi and Gino Mäder finished 5th and 6th, with our other TT talent Christoph Janssen taking the final Top 10 spot.
Summary
Unfortunately, this was the least successful NC period in our team history. We were unlucky with route selections in some cases, and on the other hand competition in some countries - including Switzerland - was more fierce than it sometimes was in the past. Remember that Mäder won the Swiss ITT title last year - definitely not a realistic scenario this time.
Nonetheless, we'd like to congratulate our new Polish ITT Champion, Krzysztof Marchewka, taking over the jersey from his teammate Rekita.
We're definitely hoping for some more wins next year - and maybe we'll even sign some NCs during transfers, if they match our requirements.
SotD At least that's my hope for Schmid
Brunel & Bissegger are two cool riders to have, and both might be worth some training if I can afford it.
TMM I was honestly surprised that Schmid was added that strong - and even more surprised that there wasn't any competition at all for getting him.
I'm still somewhat disappointed that Bissegger didn't max out at 79 or even 80 - especially when looking at someone like Kmieliauskas - but I guess that's compensated by Schmid
Of course, I'll need to pimp my roster quite a bit; TTT core should be pretty fine, but the rest isn't ready for (PT)HC. Will be an interesting transfer period
Wow I missed some huge posts, lots of lovely HQ content to chew on...
Love the rider recaps even though I don't have much to say about them. As I've previously said just a great great season from your guys That you did it with regional and often in-house-developed riders is even more special. Also really enjoy the all-time stats, I've been planning to include that style of scoring chart for mine this season (if it will fit!) and it's a cool way to visualise it.
Great bunch of youngsters coming through obviously lead by Schmid who is one of the brightest emerging stars around of this current U27 generation. Having three regional TT guys coming through like that (especially with Brunel and even Bissegger being very handy road stage riders) is just a dream for a developing team and would really be one change I would have made to my team's process (I have tried the last year or two with no luck yet ). They're high value to have anyway but especially under the current OVL teams that can TT are achieving high.
Looking forward and quite scared to have you in PCT next year! Much like with LPH I've been hoping for a while to be in the same division.
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
Its been a few days but those season recaps by rider was a great read. Great content and i also liked a few of those sneak peaks into your plans towards rider availability
The 2022 season has been concluded with the World Championships, where all but three of our riders (including loan-outs) were participating! Szymon Rekita was our "marathon man", riding all three main races - but more on that later. Those not getting any nomination were Gianni Moscon, Gabriel Chavanne (both due to the nature of the selected course) and Noam Cohen (due to Israel not participating in any event apart from the ITT).
Let's start with the B Worlds - the World Championship of the nations yet to become "traditional" cycling nations - and fighting for the sole qualifying spot for the main event:
B World Championship
Our only rider from a country participating in this race was Gergely Szarka - who did indeed get nominated. Given his lack of cobbles skills, he was only able to help his leader, Moricz, in the early stages of the race.
Moricz was no prime contender for the win, but eventually finished inside the group of favorites. He only was able to take a minor place there - but the race was won by a gutsy attack from Neilands anyway. Szarka ended the race in 66th place (out of 128 finishers), meaning that his WC journey was done on the first day already. Still, it surely was a valuable experience, which should help him on the day he'll co-lead the team on a flat parcours (alongside Peak).
TTT World Championship
This was the race we were most looking forward - and the event where we had most starters in. Our riders represented France, Great Britain, Poland, Italy, and obviously Switzerland, where 5 of the 8 starters were Jura GIANTS riders!
Erick Rowsell couldn't really be hoping for a good result with Great Britain, given the absence of the team's strongest time triallist Tanfield, as well as the likes of Hayter and Archibald. Still, 18th out of 24 teams was an underwhelming result for the Brits!
Szymon Rekita and Krzysztof Marchewka were leading the Polish team, alongside Sajnok - a strong trio without any doubt. However, the drop in quality behind these three didn't allow Poland to compete for the top spots, as they ended up in 12th place. Missing depth is the keyword - maybe we could invest even more into Polish cycling?
Loan-out Alexys Brunel is our only Frenchman - and hence was our only representative in the French lineup. They should have had some good chances to fight for the medals, but with Paillot refusing to participate, and hence their strongest man against the clock missing, those chances got diminished by a lot even before the start. With Viennet, Lecuisinier, Cosnefroy, Thomas, Mottin, Cavagna, Coppel and obviously Brunel, they still had a strong lineup, but not quite strong enough. 8th place for the Frenchies.
Fausto Masnada was our only starter in the Italian team, where Basso unfortunately missed out on a nomination. Led by Ganna and Cattaneo, the team consisting furthermore of Dal Col, Malori, Conci, Viviani, Sterbini and Masnada, definitely did a great job - and got as close as 11" to the win! Which was rewarded by the Bronze medal - clearly a moment to remember for Fausto!
And our Swiss team? With Stefan Bissegger, Colin Stüssi, Gino Mäder, Marcel Aregger and Manuel Stocker, more than half of the team consisted of Jura GIANTS riders (well, technically exactly half, given that Bissegger was riding for Puma this year). The three others were Switzerland's top TTer Silvan Dillier, #2 Stefan Küng and Martin Schäppi.
They were doing an amazing job as well, finishing with the exact same time as the Italians - but being ranked 4th. The worst possible scenario to lose out on a medal...
So instead of five Bronze medals, we "only" got one from Fausto - which will definitely motivate our riders even more to beat the Italians next year!
U23 ITT World Championship
Just like the B Worlds, this wasn't a race we had high expectations in. None of our young riders are strong TTers (yet), and so it wasn't overly surprising to have none of them close to the top. It was still slightly disappointing - or even worrying - to see Mauro Schmid in second-to-last position - he who took a 3rd place in the Tour de l'Avenir earlier this year! He just didn't have the legs it seems.
Switzerland was fully represented by Jura GIANTS riders in this race, with Christoph Janssen being the stronger of the two starters. He took 31st place - not much better, but he'll get another shot next year.
"Our" highest finisher, though, was Greek loan-in Panagiotis Karatsivis, who ended up 6 spots higher to take 25th place. His ELCO - ABEA teammate Alexandros Matsangos unfortunately missed out on a nomination (but did participate in the U23 Road Race).
ITT World Championship
The biggest bummer for us came already when the startlist was published, as we missed out on a nomination for the Swiss duo. We sure hope this won't happen anymore next year, when Stefan Bissegger has reached his full potential!
Still, three riders were representing Jura GIANTS in this event. Surprisingly, Erick Rowsell was one of them - it looks like some stronger British specialists just didn't feel like competing here. Erick is far away from the strongest TTers of this world - and so his 44th place (out of 48 finishers) wasn't a big surprise. Still, he enjoyed his last ride on the big scene!
Furthermore, both Polish spots were taken by our riders. Newly crowned ITT NC Krzysztof Marchewka was the first of them to race - but he didn't have one of his strong days. Only 40th place for him, definitely a bit disappointing.
So all our hopes for another medal - or more realistically, another Top 10 finish - were on Szymon Rekita's shoulders. And he didn't disappoint! He was able to beat quite some stronger riders, to take a great 7th place! Which by the way was two spots higher than Silvan Dillier, the highest Swiss finisher...
So, no medal for us (the race was once more easily won by Phinney, by the way), but a great result by Rekita that should give him some much needed confidence for next year's PCT challenge!
Road Race World Championship
Whereas this event usually is the final one of the year, the calendar got slightly mixed up this time, putting the youth race in the end.
We clearly didn't have any of the favorites for this race, with all our 5 nominated riders being on helper duties. Unlike in the TTT, we only had one starter for Switzerland (given that UBS have almost every semi-capable Swiss cobbler under contract), which was Marcel Aregger. He was there to work for Lukas Spengler, just like the rest of the team. Fausto Masnada and Leo Basso were nominated as support riders for Trentin, whereas Grzegorz Stepniak and Szymon Rekita even had two potential team leaders with Wisniowski and Kasperkiewicz.
To make it short, the only one to get a mention during the race was Rekita, who was setting the pace in the pack early on. And our highest finisher was Basso in 66th place.
Nonetheless, the happiest of our participants definitely were the Poles, as they could celebrate Wisniowski's WC title after the race! It's great to have two riders being part of the winning squad, showing us that our work is recognized elsewhere in the cycling world!
But hopefully next time we'll also have some riders actually competing for top spots - as helping is good, but winning is better!
U23 Road Race World Championship
To be honest, we didn't have big hopes for this race, either. None of our four youngsters - Mauro Schmid, Christoph Janssen, Panagiotis Karatsivis and Alexandros Matsangos - particularly likes to ride off-tarmac. However, we knew that Schmid just has a great engine and still some basic cobbles skills, so we expected him to deliver our best result.
Well, he certainly did. But he did so in a way that we didn't dare to dream of; every time there was a selection, Mauro was on the right side of the split. Eventually, there were just 4 riders left, fighting for the medals - but unfortunately it was Schmid who got dropped on one of the late cobble sections.
But this wasn't the end of the road - he just fought back, and finally was the first chaser of Rossi, who had just escaped! He was unfortunately unable to catch up with the Sammarinese, who got a rather surprising yet well-deserved WC title - but Mauro Schmid won the Silver medal in the U23 Road Race World Championship! Big congratulations on yet another fantastic U23 performance, after he already took 2nd in the Tour de l'Avenir earlier this year! Mauro proved us once again that even if the route doesn't fully suit his main skills, he can still deliver big time - which he'll hopefully do in the next couple of years as well! Great job!
And with the end of the U23 RR WC ends the 2022 season! We hope you enjoyed following us on this channel - and we'll happily answer any questions or comment that might still follow! But we hope you'll also join us in our brand new 2023 headquarters, when we'll again be a PCT team! See you soon!
jandal Thanks for your comment I'm looking forward as well to finally race against you in the same division - although I guess it's rather me who has to be scared of your roster, especially of Areruya
I'm indeed happy to get some Swiss guys maxing in the past and the next couple of years (I hope). Mäder wasn't quite as good as I hoped him to be, but I'm definitely looking forward to see Bissegger and Schmid (in 2024) in action
red You may not have to face my team a lot, but depending on a potential Schmid loan-out you might face him pretty often Goal is still to try to max him in-house, but it will depend on the calendar (and potential wildcards) if it's possible at all...
knockout Thanks I guess I do have a better view about availability now after renewals than I did when I wrote all this stuff, but it might be an interesting transfer season anyway
Colin Stüssi 
Giro del Trentino, GC
Tour of Vancouver, S6
Volta a Catalunya, S3 (TTT)
Tour of the Middle East, GC
Tour de Vineyards, S5 (TTT)
Euskal Bizikleta, Team
Hong Kong Challenge, GC
Szymon Rekita 
Isle of Man ITT
Herald Sun Tour, GC
Bayern Rundfahrt, S4
Olympia's Tour, S4 (TTT)
La Tropicale Amissa Bongo, GC
Jelajah SKL, GC
USA Pro Cycling Challenge, GC
Tour du Maroc, S1
GP Izola
Tour of Chile, S2
Tour of South Africa, S5
Coppa Placci
Tour de l'Avenir, S4
Erick Rowsell 
Alexandros Matsangos 
Panagiotis Karatsivis 
Noam Cohen 
You'll need to add something more to remain in the PCT but in Schmid the future is secure from 2024
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
That you did it with regional and often in-house-developed riders is even more special. Also really enjoy the all-time stats, I've been planning to include that style of scoring chart for mine this season (if it will fit!) and it's a cool way to visualise it.
