SSJ2Luigi wrote:



Countered goals:
Easy goal: Top 10 Marseillaise
Medium goal: Stage win Paris-Nice
Hard goal: Podium GC Criterium Interntional

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And we're back, with a great new signing. His name is Christian Schröder, a German rider. He aims to win the Ardennes Triple at least once in his life. We will try to achieve that dream, with him. Life as a pro-cyclist isn't the easiest in Germany, due to the doping affairs and a lack of a GT-contender, the popularity of cycling isn't very high. He wants to change that, also by getting impressive results.

Christian Schröder will get the leadership role in the Ardennes. That doesn't mean at all that we won't think about Voeckler, he will of course get the opportunity to attack and make funny faces in the hilly terrain. But we think that Schröder still has better chances to get a great result, or maybe a win. Of course, he will get leadership in a lot of hilly Continental races as well. Having a strong sprint should definitely help getting some wins. A great signing for the team

Rest of the goals and part of the calendar announced

Team Europcar decided to announce the rest of its season goals and a part of their calendar today. All of the new goals feature French races.
The first new goal is in GP Marseillaise, a hilly race. The goal is to get a Top 10. We consider this goal the easiest of all the 6 goals, but we'll send a strong team to this race.

The second goal is of a Medium-difficulty, but might come close to hard. We have to get a stage win in Paris - Nice. We have got a wildcard for the race, but we're pretty certain that there'll be a lot of strong GT-riders and sprinters present in 'The Race to the Sun'. Nevertheless, our sponsor thinks we can still get this goal, and we'll try to live up to that. So a stage-win it is.

The last goal is getting a GC Top 3 in Criterium International. Well, we're not sure what to expect here, whether it's easy or not. We can imagine, since this race doesn't require a lot of race-days, that a lot of big guys show up here. But who knows? And I bet Rolland can do a good job here, even though there's a 9km TT.

So these are some tough, but realistic goals, to me.

Next part is our Calendar. This is a list of the races we're going to ride for sure. A few might be added later on, but probably not.

WT
Paris - Nice[3-10 March]
E3 Prijs - Harelbeke[22 March]
Gent - Wevelgem[24 March]
Le Tour de France[29 June-21 July]

Some nice races among there. Most importantly, we took hold of the Tour de France, our most important race of the season. We're happy we got the cobbled races of part 1 and Paris - Nice as well

Continental Tour
GP La Marseillaise [27 January]
Tour of Qatar [3–8 February]
Tour of Oman [11–16 February]
Volta ao Algarve [14–17 February]
Omloop Het Nieuwsblad [23 February]
Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne [24 February]
Nokere Koerse [13 March]
Dwars Door Vlaanderen [20 March]
Criterium International [23–24 March]
Driedaagse De Panne - Koksijde [26–28 March]

Again, a lot of cobbled races here. Khamphan probably won't mind that
Not a lot of serious climbing in the first part of the season, but there are certainly some mountains and tough hills in our first part of the season.
We might ask to add a race or two more, but we haven't taken any decisions about that yet.

We're proud to announce that Team Europcar has signed yet another talented youngster. It's the Italian Time-trialist Drago di Silvestro. As a TTist, it's obviously hard to get a lot of leader opportunities(unless you're Po-Ding-like-awesome). But we do our best to give him a lot of opportunities to ride (long)TTs, and even though he's not a fighter-type, he will also get the chance to get in breakaways. Also, he's a good cobbler and can also join us on the cobbles in Belgium & France.
Also, as a bonus, Drago di Silvestro also has an awesome name. It will be a pleasure to fill in his name on the startlist, so we make sure we do that often
Drago di Silvestro gets us to the limit of 6 neo-pros we can sign. Sadly enough, it means that we have 31 riders now, we'll have to fire someone, according to the UCI rules

Franck Bouyer retires

We have an annoucement to make. Franck Bouyer, an Europcar rider, decided to retire from cycling, at least for this season, but probably for ever. He's 38-year-old, fighter, whose most notable results are a Paris - Camembert win and a Tour de Vendée win. He was never a star, but was definitely a great addition to a lot of teams. His retirement is of course a bummer, but it saves us a hard choice to make, since we had to fire someone. Well, we wish him the best and hope he can find a nice job within cycling soon, maybe we can offer him a job even, who knows?

As you know, Team Europcar has its team complete by now. With 6 new young signings and 1 retired oldie, it might be useful to have the new roster publicized. But well, then we had an idea. Half of the cycling fans don't know the exact strengths and weaknesses of most of our riders, especially the new ones. So we got the idea to numerize them, so that it's easy to see for everyone. It ranges from 50 to 85, but we didn't get lower than 55 and higher than 85, since those are reserved for CT & WT. Allright, except Voeckler, he's just an awesome fighter. Here it is:

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Also, sorry for the nationalities, the flags of Iceland, Laos and North Korea weren't in our database, but we hope we've given you satisfying flags

As you can see, our main strength is by far the cobblestones. But we're also a team that likes to attack a lot. We also have a lot of guys that are good on climbs, especially the shorter climbs. For the sprints, we have Coquard, but not a lot more. And for the TTs, Po-Ding is just awesome

Kim Po-ding is not satisfied