Remember this, our own Thomas Voeckler riding in the legendary yellow jersey in 2011, we hope of course to repeat that feat with either Thomas Voeckler or Pierre Rolland. However before such a great achievement could be made you first need to get to the mountains and to get there you first need to go the start.
The start of the 100th Tour de France was in Corsica and with the absence of Coquard (schedule conflict ) the first stage for the sprinters wasn’t really interesting for us. The only time you would see us it was when either Kern crashed or when Voeckler attacked on stage 2. That basically sums up our time in Corsica.

The following 4 stage was the same story. With a almost all flat stages and a TTT we weren’t really seen. A breakaway wasn’t a option with Voeckler short in the GC. The first time we showed ourselves again was in the 8th stage where Thomas Peeters tried an attack together with Barquil, de Clerq and Favre. The leaders brought the whole pack together and when there was a split at 7 km to go, all three of our riders still in the group (Rolland/Voeckler/Peeters) were caught behind said split. Rolland spent quite some energy to get back to the group that he was caught out of. He was now 15th in the GC.


the split that decided a lot

And then the big news from France, we had a stage win goal for the Tour and thanks to Monsieur Voeckler we got it in stage 9!. He was part of a rather big breakaway that was allowed to get an 3 minute gap at the end. Thanks to the big gap at the end, Niemiec would actually take over the yellow jersey and Voeckler was now 4th in the GC again.


Voeckler does what he does best: WINNING!

Stages 10 through 15 nothing important happened because everything was flat. There was just this little climb at the end of stage 15. The Mont Ventoux!! The carnage was terrible. Voeckler lost 5 minutes on this stage alone while Rolland lost a fat 8 minutes. This meant that Voeckler was 6th and Rolland was 21th.


Voeckler and Rolland are still here

The 16th stage was a special one for us as during stage 15 we announced that we had signed Thomas Hinault from AG2R and as fate would have it, he and Thomas Peeters found each other in a breakaway. The breakaway made it until the end and it was Hinault that took victory with Peeters being 2nd. Talk about mixed feelings


future Europcar rider and current Europcar rider making a one-two

Over the course of the Tour Thomas Voeckler was somewhat surprisingly our guy for the top 10 in the GC but stage 18 official ended his run in the top 10. Voeckler lost 8 ½ minutes today and is 2 minutes behind 10th place Kreuziger. We mentioned the 2011 Tour de France earlier and on the same end climb as today (The Alpe-d’Heuz) Voeckler lost the lead back in 2011 and now in 2013 he lost his chance to finish in the top 10.


someone from Europcar riding for his own, showing that Voeckler also gave up on a top 10 overall

We came back the next day with positive news however as Pierre Rolland was in the breakaway today and this late in the Tour breakaways are usually able to go the distance and fight for the stages. Rolland was together with Monfort the best in today’s break and together they fought for the win. Pierre was able to beat the Belgian taking his first stage in this year and his third in three years.


stage win number 2, Rolland this time

The last pair of stages were pretty uneventful in Europcar terms. Rolland overtook Voeckler for best of the team which meant 12th place for Pierre and 17th for Thomas. With two stages and the achieved goal we are happy with our performance in the team’s biggest race and we are already looking forward to next year with new riders.


Of course, the Tour isn’t the only race on the calendar and while some of the biggest names were racing in France, some other riders have gathered in Austria for the Osterreich Rundfardt. It was the race for Nokkvason to measure himself with some the world’s greatest riders and Kelderman, without having to work for someone else. Lue Khamse Khamphan was also there to get some points in the sprints. The first stage was one for Nokkvason however but he wasn’t prepared on the attack early on the climb and found himself in the 5th group. He put in a massive acceleration after that to eventually finish 9th in the stage and in the second group. Second stage was similar to the first so Nokkvason could show himself yet again. he choose to play the anonymous card and safely finished 11th while maintaining his place in the GC.


Nokkvason in his national champion jersey is going after the leaders

Stage 3 was for Lue’s chance to shine, we started our train with 3 k to go. However Kelderman and Duque were glued to our wheels and the final meters were tough enough for them to use Lue as a stepping stone to victory. That is if De Vries wasn’t so dominate as he takes his third stage win in a row. While stages 4, 5 and 7 were breakaway victories, only once we had somebody in the break on stage 5. Berhane finished 3rd.


Berhane finishing third, (Garcia (CJR) is behind Dimitrou (TNE))

Stage 7 was a time trial, where Di Silvestro finished only 18th and Nokkvason 23th. Stage 8 was the final stage and with a sprint finish to be expected and Nokkvason 13th place in the GC, we asked Lue for on last sprint on the final day and he delivered by finishing 4th despite having not the best lead-out as they were a little bit late today. Thanks to the late leadout, Yohann Géne had enough left in the tank to finish 6th that day so we had two guys in the top 10.



Since our last update, we also raced in belguim and the pre-race show mentioned Christian Schroder as one of the biggest favorites for the overall together with Kakhi. They both showed on the first stage that they are worth the favorites titles as they both went after lone breakaway rider Sven Nys. Sadly they came sort of Nys as he won the first stage. It’s not all bad as Schroder beat Kakhi for second place and gained time on the rest of the peloton.


Schroder following Kahki attacks but too late to catch Cyclo-Cross Legend, Nys

The second stage was less focused on rider like Christian but more on rider like Bryan Coquard. He had Lue Khamse Khamphan as lead-out and together they delivered. His main rival Abundi from the polish CCC team had punctured that made the stage win fairly easy. Schroder stays in 2nd place in the overall.


Bryan celebrates the stage win while Lue in his national jersey holds on to 3rd place.

Stage 3 was one that could potentially be the general rankings decider if Christian and Kakhi both attacked to get time on Nys, both however saved themselves for later stages which gave a breakaway the chance for the stage win. Ghyselinck took advantage and won that day. the next day, we took revenge when Bryan won his second stage this race. Lue wasn’t as strong as a few days before but managed to get another top 10 placing.


Bryan puts the distance on his companions while Lue is dropping back to 7th place

The final stage was an uphill sprint so it was between Kakhi and Christian again. it was Kakhi however that bested Christain. He even got some time on the rest of the peloton, not enough to overtake Nys for the overall but enough to take Christians second place. However thanks to Coquard two stage wins, we had 3rd and 4th place in the overall as well


There were also some one day races since the last update, we start with Tre Valli Varesine. We didn’t send last time winner Veilleux. Thomas Voeckler was today’s leader. As part of strategy we sent Kern into the breakaway. We didn’t anticipated that Androni sent Rubiano after the breakaway, he bridged the gap to the breakaway easily and being fresher than the rest he dropped the others from the breakaway and the pack never saw him again. in the peloton Uran was the first to go after Rubiano but he was too far away. Sagan, Pellizotti and Riblon followed while Thomas and Cristobal Riquelme caught up to them later. Uran and Sagan where to strong for the others meaning that Thomas was fighting with the others for 4th place. Only Cristobal Riquelme was stronger than Thomas with resulted in 5th place.


Voeckler finishes 5th behind Belkin’s Cristobal Riquelme

The following one day race we report on was an important one, as it was one of our goals races, GP Fourmies and it was a real sprinter classic with top sprinters like Greipel, Brouwer, Hanzen and Bryan Coquard. We needed an top 8 and seeing the start list it seemed possible. We didn’t send someone into the breakaway as everybody needed to stay with Bryan to get him as good as possible position in the final sprint. Belkin was the dominate team however so Griepel, Verboven, Bryan and Hanzen all went to Brouwer’s wheel. Bryan wasn’t strong enough to mix it up for the victory. The victory was between Brouwer and Griepel with the German beating the Dutchman. Bryan had to settle for 4th place even behind Hanzen. He did finish well enough to succeed in achieving our goal set for this race meaning we are now 2 for 2 in the goals department.


Bryan goes to Verboven’s wheel while Hanzen is trying to get to Bryan’s wheel

The final race we report on today is the GP de Plouay which is raced on the same course as the 2000 world championships. We didn’t set a goal for this race but the hilly course made it possible to have dual leadership today, if the race was made fairly easy we had Bryan Coquard for the mass-sprint and if the race was made really hard we had Thomas Voeckler for bunchsprint. However things didn’t go to plan as we had a mass-sprint but it wasn’t Bryan that was the best finished but Thomas instead. The distance of 235 km must have got the better of Bryan as he only finished 14th while Thomas was 6th. With Lue Khamse Khamphan in 12th we had 3 guys in the top 20 so we scored some nice points for the rankings.


Lue mixing it up in the front of the peloton that are chasing the breakaway


The world of cycling is, surprisingly for some I’m sure, not only about races. We thought it was a good time to give some information on the background of the cycling world starting with some good news, some great news, some bad news and some terrible news. we like to start with the good news. we are likely to promote this season to the world tour and we are happy to announce that Tour of Norway overall winner Christian Schroder and Classic leader Lue Khamse Khamphan are staying with the team for 2014.

The bad news is that we need to say goodbye to Thomas Peeters, Kim Po-Ding, Johann Nokkvason and Drago di Silvestro. Thomas has decided that professional cycling isn’t what he thought it was like and is likely to return to amateur cycling in Belguim which gives him more time for his personal life. Kim is returning to Asia to race for Champion System. He feels more at home in a “communists� environment and he’s certain that he’ll get Tour leadership next year there instead of here. Johann and Drago are both moving to the Polish team CCC-Polsat. Johann doesn’t feel ready for WT level yet and he prefers to stay on PCT level. We were forced to release Drago as the communication with the public wasn’t the standard that we wanted. We wish all the riders best of luck in whatever career they’ll pursuit in the following years.

With the previous mentioned riders leaving the team our team is hit hard as our biggest point scorers are leaving. As replacement we’ve signed French future talent Thomas Hinault, winner of the Criterium International, 24th at the Tour de France overall and currently number 73 in the points table. He’s also great with communications with the public last year, where he’s known as Le Faucon. We are looking forward him next season.

However we end with terrible news. team manager known by the public under his code name “Jesleyh� (known by some as Mr. Europe) is forced to step back from the management due to family related problems beyond his control. Earlier rumors of splitting the team in North-Europcar and South-Europcar are false. At this point it is uncertain if Jesleyh will return to the team in the foreseeable future