Any race where Drucker is the leader is an important one for us! This one was no less. We expected to be standing on the podium come the conclusion.


We had a low-key stage, but were attentive enough to keep Drucker at the front throughout. Per and Van Emden, who did most of the protecting work, also hung on to the front group. The break was reeled in early and our trio finished in a 19 man group which came to the line together, with Per, Drucker and Van Emden claiming 6th, 7th and 9th respectively.




We were quite sure that this stage would go to a breakaway and that's exactly what happened. Four riders, from both the early break and a late attack, held off the pack. Our best was Krieger in 11th and Bogdanovics in 12th. No change in the GC for our guys.


The lenghty cobbled section was expected to produce fireworks. It turned into a damp squib as a lone breakaway rider stayed away and took the win. Van Emden finished some way down in the next group to lose one GC position. Per and Drucker held on to their positions from Stage 1. Matzka was the best on this stage with 6th.

1	Sam Harrison	World Cycling Centre	8h26'39
6	David Per	Philips - Continental	+ 29
7	Jempy Drucker	Philips - Continental	+ 31
10	Jos Van Emden	Philips - Continental	+ 35
29	Ralf Matzka	Philips - Continental	+ 2'54
50	Alexander Krieger	Philips - Continental	+ 6'19
71	Michel Kreder	Philips - Continental	+ 19'07
98	Maris Bogdanovics	Philips - Continental	+ 28'42
DNF	Albert Timmer	Philips - Continental

We didn't get the podium, but the three top 10 finishes gives us many more points. An excellent race from Per and Van Emden. We would've wanted and hoped for Drucker to be on the podium, but the margins were thin and the fact that Stage 1 became the decisive stage had a role to play in it.

Per got us some more points by finishing second in the U25s. Winning the team classification gives us some more points, which is always welcome. A good end to the business end of May, which has been a good month for us.

Now onto Olympia, where we don't expect to be successful. A write-off so to say...

Our home race was one where the pressure was off. May had been a good month for us so far and we came into this race with no expectations anyway.


We got off to the best of starts with Grabovski claiming an impressive 5th place in the ITT. Something to really smile about on home ground. It has been some time coming from our top TT specialist.




Our goal in the flat stages was to stay out of trouble. we were not really expecting to be challenging in the sprints. We managed to stay out of trouble and Grabovski moved up a place in the GC at the end, courtesy Stelly Robert having a tough stage.


Per joined the breakaway on this stage.


He won all three intermediate sprints but could not hold on till the finish. We stayed out of trouble in the sprint and that was job done for the day.


More flats, more staying out of the limelight. We were not complaining though. No change in the standings.


The all important Team Time Trial had us hoping that Grabovski could hold on to a top 10 position. The team did well to finish 9th in a strong field. Grabovski dropped to 12th in the GC unfortunately but Van Zandbeek and Van Emden moved into points scoring positions. Per was up to 4th in the U25s.




Similar to the previous flat stages, we protected our position well. Grabovski lost a position to end up 13th because of time gains by another rider but both Van Emden and Van Zandbeek moved up a spot each in the standings. Per retained 4th in the U25 classification.

1	Mikhail Ignatiev	Ferrero - Samruk	14h23'08
13	Dmitri Grabovski	Philips - Continental	+ 34
26	Ronan Van Zandbeek	Philips - Continental	s.t.
28	Jos Van Emden	Philips - Continental	+ 1'05
32	David Per	Philips - Continental	+ 1'14
67	Alexander Krieger	Philips - Continental	+ 4'45
75	Ralf Matzka	Philips - Continental	+ 5'26
86	Maris Bogdanovics	Philips - Continental	+ 7'20
91	Jempy Drucker	Philips - Continental	+ 7'48

We told you to look out for Grabovski, and he finally delivered. Our home race wasn't the zero pointer that we were expecting, but gave us a handful of points. Our TT setup pulled out a very good performance when they needed to.

This rounds off a very good month for us, making up for the ground that we lost in March and April. If our calculations are correct, we should be back up to 4th in the table, our highest position since April.

Positives:
Wyss has a lot of RDs left and most of them are in his favoured hills. This is will be key to our promotion push.

Drucker has three races as leader left.

Negatives:
Krieger is solo leader in three races. We don't expect much from those races.

12 of Drucker's remaining RDs are not in his favoured cobbles terrain.

Two stage races and a Classic remain in the mountains. Despite Bardet's good run so far, we're not sure how well they will turn out. Battaglin hasn't been a success at all.

The statistics are updated post the CT rankings update for May. We severely underestimated the points cycleYorkshire would score, and offer our apologies to ryant for that.

As a further general observation, we would do well if we end up with as many points as we are projected for at the moment. However, given what is left, I find it hard to figure out how we'll score the same amount of points as we did till now. The main problem is Kreder and Drucker not having enough useful RDs. As such, we don't see how Kreder gets past the 100 point mark or Drucker past 200, unless we get lucky. Depth scoring will continue to help the cause, but time for at least a couple of riders below Van Emden in the table to have some good races!

Also, June and July should see you turn things around without the bad luck you've been suffering. Roux and Bennett should have a good couple of months.

jandal7 wrote:

Thanks for the faith but I have to ask you to take that back, you've told me this every time

Per <3

Drucker lines up as the leader of a cobbles race and that should not be a surprise. We take Krieger to this for the small chance of it ending up in a bunch sprint, with Bogdanovics and possibly Matzka in support. The latter will also be a decent help on the cobbles along with Van Emden and Leezer. Per gets to do whatever he wants.

Alexander Krieger leads a rare race for us and that's where it starts getting difficult to predict our success. He finished 4th overall last season in this race and we'll be jumping around in joy if that happens again. However, given the evidence so far this season we're not getting our hopes too high. The flat team in support of him is quite strong. We'd like to ask Krieger to use that and prove to us that his signing was justified.

Bardet has done very well in the mountains so far, up against stronger climbers in the division. Andorra, however, might be too big a bite to swallow. Not being the strongest climber will hurt him in the long climbs. Plus, he's horrible against the clock. Not a recipe for success with the stages lined up here. Battaglin has been struggling for the most part. We perhaps messed up with our support in this race too. However, the only rider we could've brought as a domestique who isn't here is Costa, and that wouldn't be much of an upgrade to be honest!

The race was a tough one right from the start with an early crash for four riders and a few punctures, including one for Van Emden. We did a lot of work to chase the early break and it was caught with more than 50 km still to go.

Things really kicked off with 30 km to go. Bush was the first to make an attack, immediately countered by Drucker.



They got reeled in but the pair attacked again on the next cobbled sector. They were unsuccessful again, with a 12 rider elite group now forming at the front with 17 km to go. Following another Bush attack, and another Drucker counter, the lead group got whittled down to just five riders, including Drucker. And then the picture which defined our race...



Drucker fell on the final cobbled sector, with just 6 km to go. He got dropped by the first two groups and didn't recover. He won the sprint from the third big group to reach the line, but that only gave him 11th place when a podium was looking likely!



No one else could finish in the points for us either.

1	Guillaume Van Keirsbulck	Goldcorp - Nordstrom Rack	5h20'44
11	Jempy Drucker	Philips - Continental	+ 4'19
35	Tom Leezer	Philips - Continental	+ 8'16
40	Ralf Matzka	Philips - Continental	s.t.
41	David Per	Philips - Continental	s.t.
54	Jos Van Emden	Philips - Continental	+13'05
88	Maris Bogdanovics	Philips - Continental	+23'04
DNF	Albert Timmer	Philips - Continental
DNF	Alexander Krieger	Philips - Continental

A cruel way to lose out on massive points, but we can't really do anything about it. A bit disappointing that no one else could provide some depth points for us, despite sending a strong cobbles squad. Let's just hope this isn't a sign of things to come for the rest of the month.