Oh what a terrible race for us. Big big problems that could hurt down the line. Still, congrats to Aquarius, great to see Philips doing great and most of all many thanks to SN for a great set of reports!
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." [PT] Xero Racing
Shocking stuff from Penasa down the stretch, and to make matters worse, Hochmann decided he just couldn't make it on the final stage. Overall, a terribly disappointing affair.
Congrats to Aquarius/Valls and thanks to SN. Onwards...
Rujano did an excelent spell on the first part of the race and a bad second. Sólis seemed to make up but this last day was too much for him.
Our GC spell was a disapointment but we got a stage victory and that was a brilliant result (and the goal), also mentioning a stint in the yellow jersey.
As our first ever race we're not disapointed at all, innumerous presences in the breakaway and a very offensive nature throughout the race made our colours be on the screens almost everyday.
Aquarius97 wrote:
For those interested, the total amount of points that every team scored in the race
Spoiler
Repsol - Honda
116
Philips - Continental
86
Team Reddit
84
Azteca- NBCSN
80
Telia-Brussels Airlines
73
Campari - Super Dry
70
Kulczyk - DMTEX
56
Aeropostal Venezuela Ciclismo
55
Wiggle p/b Boardman Bikes
40
Sauber Petronas Racing
38
Xero Racing p/b Octagon
38
The Balkan Cycling Project
28
Andorra Cycling Project
24
SanCor
14
Eddie Stobart
12
Statoil Pro Cycling
3
Goldcorp - Nordstrom Rack
0
Thanks Aquarius for this! It's not a top result but it's good to kick things of and good to know that we're not on the absolute bottom yet, more suited races will come.
Thank you SN for everyday putting up the race reports, they were great. Gratz Aquarius for your GC win and to everybody who won stages and classifications.
A very entertaining race indeed, quite satisfied with result and points scored for us. Big thanks to SN for the regular race reports and congrats to Aquarius for his first ever MG win.
tsmoha wrote:
Thanks for some outstanding reports, SN! Not sure, if I did comment on it already, but I see you have some "love" for the U25 competition (being part of the preview as well). Nice work.
There's points on offer there, and hopefully interest in following it from others too, so always feel it is worth a mention. Particularly as for the case here, and many other races, those fighting for it are not otherwise visible.
Aquarius97 wrote:
For those interested, the total amount of points that every team scored in the race
Spoiler
Repsol - Honda
116
Philips - Continental
85
Team Reddit
84
Azteca- NBCSN
80
Telia-Brussels Airlines
73
Campari - Super Dry
70
Kulczyk - DMTEX
56
Aeropostal Venezuela Ciclismo
55
Wiggle p/b Boardman Bikes
40
Sauber Petronas Racing
38
Xero Racing p/b Octagon
38
The Balkan Cycling Project
28
Andorra Cycling Project
25
SanCor
14
Eddie Stobart
12
Statoil Pro Cycling
3
Goldcorp - Nordstrom Rack
0
Not quite. It is 86 for Philips, 24 for Andorra.
--
The GC race took a little while to get going, but the last 3 stages all made for good action and drama. Valls a deserved winner, with Mannion being the huge surprise. Far and away the strongest on Stage 9, just refusing to crack - while others were doing so.
The crashes were particularly annoying, of course, with Bennett very likely to have been a race contender. I'd have very much liked to see Suaza fighting for stage wins in the mountains, although my feeling is he would have lost time on Stage 10 anyway, to prevent a GC position. Fortunately most teams did have something to celebrate. It's only really Goldcorp that went unnoticed - at least Statoil showed some aggression.
And credit to roturn for rescuing the race results after the final stage, when the game crashed before the podiums.
Yellow Jersey wrote:
It would be interesting if there was a thread for Continental ranking, updated every race.
There will be a monthly CT rankings thread, in line with the detail provided in the PCT and PT threads posted yesterday - but January isn't over for CT yet.
Great reporting SN, and there was eventually some key action to spectate on. Thought took a long time for the race to really kick off with so many of the favourites being really quite passive up until the last couple of stages. I would have expected larger gaps on the GC than occured, but at least it did spread out in the end.
Congrats to the various winners, and especially Valls/Repsol for pulling it out of the bag late in the game.
Shame to see a number of key riders and hence managers impacted by crashes. Don't want to rehash the entire argument again, but in my eyes, this race would have been better both for those managers and neutral spectators if the likes of Bennet and Suaza had been unable to hit the deck with crashes set = zero.
We can come away from this one happy as we got the stage win we came here looking for, we would maybe have liked a second but having a few days in the points jersey and winning the youth jersey instead makes up for it.
Winning the youth jersey did come as a surprise, it's not how we would have liked to have won it but Ahmad Zamri did magnificently to hang on and keep himself in the position to capitalise and take it as going into the race I thought he would have no chance of staying in touch with the better climbers that Aeropostal brought.
Valls is a very deserving winner of the GC battle and he had his work made a lot harder for by the constantly changing threats as different riders came to the fore to look like his strongest challenger at differing points of the race.
Thanks SN for the great reports, hopefully other stage races will also shine a little bit of light on the under 25 fight as you have done here as it is a competition that given the strength of the division might get a little bit forgotten about when the participants aren't necessarily going to be going for any stage honours on their way to challenging for or taking it.
