Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Ramunas Navardauskas - the Lithuanian TT champion will join the Baltic-centric PT team Evonik - ELKO. As part of the deal we'll get the Belarusian climber Andrei Sakalou, becomming the first rider from Belarus to ride for the team.

We've also made a loan deal with Zwift Pro Cycling to take Louis Visser from South Africa on loan for the season. As part of the agreement (which includes 1->3 level up) our team will cover half of his 50k wage for the duration of the loan.

Earlier in the morning we've secured the services of 3 new riders. Karl Patrick Lauck and Jasper Philipsen will come over from Polar on a loan with our team covering half of their wages. And later in the day Tormod Jacobsen penned a deal for € 50,000

More transfers came up in the last 24+ hours. After Andrey Zeits being in our team during our formative year, we've secured the services of not one, but two riders from Kazakhstan - firstly the team acquired Bakhtiyar Kozhatayev from Isostar - Specialized for € 600,000 and nearly 24 hours later for the minimal deal of € 50,000 came Mikhail Kochetkov from Team Popo4ever p/b Nemiroff, bolstering our TT contingent. But we weren't done making moves -we've also secured the services of Emmaniel Morin from Festina - OAKA and after a single season in the new defunct Air France - KLM, Fredrik Ludvigsson joins the team as a free agent with a contract of € 50,000

baseballlover312 wrote:
As I said on the last page, Lander was not really in my plans. Obviously I'm happy to have him now, though I'm sorry it came at a time of necessity and I couldn't really offer fair value. Would have been cool to see him in CT.

On the bright side, Kozhatayev is an awesome addition.

William Barta, 25, €100.000

FL	MO	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FI	DH	PL
69	76	72	73	71	74	70	54	72	67	65	56	75

Michael Valgren Andersen, 29, €60.000

FL	MO	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FI	DH	PL
70	55	64	77	73	74	67	54	51	65	66	62	77

Tormod Jacobsen, 28, €50.000

FL	MO	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FI	DH	PL
70	73	73	72	71	70	71	57	59	67	73	63	73

Fredrik Ludvigsson, 27, €50.000

FL	MO	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FI	DH	PL
67	63	76	69	74	70	69	53	67	76	78	68	69

Chequan Richardson, 28, €50.000

FL	MO	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FI	DH	PL
71	61	67	63	68	68	64	78	60	61	75	66	63

Siim Kiskonen, 24, €50.000

FL	MO	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FI	DH	PL
71	59	68	68	76	74	68	69	73	74	68	72	67

Dobrin Lilovski, 26, €0 (acquired in the CT Draft)

FL	MO	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FI	DH	PL
68	67	77	66	70	70	73	54	65	73	69	71	70

Rudy Barbier, 29, €0 (acquired in the CT Draft)

FL	MO	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FI	DH	PL
75	50	67	56	72	71	76	68	77	79	65	64	60

Andrei Sakalou, 28, €75,000

FL	MO	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FI	DH	PL
66	76	75	65	63	72	72	54	60	72	77	62	65

Bakhtiyar Kozhatayev, 29, €155,000

FL	MO	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FI	DH	PL
74	77	74	72	71	75	71	70	52	69	62	74	72

Mikhail Kochetkov, 30, €50,000

FL	MO	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FI	DH	PL
72	64	60	76	72	69	69	52	71	78	74	60	58

Michael Vink, 30, €50,000

FL	MO	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FI	DH	PL
71	67	75	69	74	71	68	60	64	68	74	74	69

Emmanuel Morin, 26, €50,000

FL	MO	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FI	DH	PL
69	63	74	63	72	71	66	63	68	74	64	66	65

Despite having only 2 and a half months passed in the 2021 MGUCI season, there are already rumours surrounding the BWT Hyundai N Cycling team and their presence in the MGUCI peloton going forward. Despite making moves in the off-season, the team is only 11th after the February update with 158 points - 493 behind Hello Fresh and 148 behind 5th placed McCormick Pro Cycling. The team has spent 31 race days in only 2 months - more than any other team in the CT division, and with 5.1 PPRD it's the third worst team in the division with projected final tally of 765 points (this is only if the current PPRD ratio remains the same). As it stands, 14th placed Tafjord Kraft is closer to the team (98 points behind) than BWT Hyundai is to the promotion guaranteeing places (assuming that the Top 5 teams will grant promotion)

During the off-season the team was in a tough spot - it had been relagated from the PCT division long before the season ended and they couldn't keep hold on it's top riders. Alexander Kristoff and Leopold Konig were released right away, while the team tried to re-sign Georg Preidler, but he rejected the offer forcing the team to release him as well. After other minor releases only 7 riders remained - Momchil Robov, Valentin Stoenchev, Krzysztof Marchewka, Tom Thill, Max Losch, Sebastian Lander and Ramunas Navardauskas. It was clear that the team will start from scratch using these riders as building blocks.

As the transfer season commenced the team made it's first free agency moves. The first got a bit under the radar, but perhaps was considered one of the steals of the transfer season - William Barta signed for only €100.000. Then the team signed Michael Valgren as part of the TT squad and later got Tormod Jacobsen (a multi-purpose rider) for only 50k. Fredrik Ludvigsson also came to the team with 50k wage. Trade wise the team parted ways with Navardauskas and as part of the deal from Evonik - ELKO came Andrei Sakalou. Then the team stuck a deal with Isostar - Specialized to acquire Kazakh Bakhtiyar Kozhatayev as one of the leading riders and his compatriot Mikhail Kochetkov came from Team Popo4Ever p/b Nemiroff to bolster the TTT squad. Michael Vink came from Tafjord Kraft*. In the meantime the team made some loan deals - from Zwift Pro Cycling came Louis Visser with a 1-3 level up clause, then Polar sent Jasper Philipsen and K.P. Lauk on loan at the team as well. Also, the team acquired Frenchman Emmanuel Morin from Festina - OAKA.

[spoler]* Vink was actually acquired by Isostar - Specialized, who later sold him to BWT Hyundai N Cycling[/spoiler]

However, the team made miscalculation bringing them over the cap, forcing the team to sell Lander to whoever was interested. In the end, Carlsberg - Danske Bank paid 100k to acquire his service. With cap space now being freed up the team had made more moves. Despite not concentrating on cobbles, the team signed Chequan Richardson to get some points in the cobbled C2HC races. The team also signed the recently released Siim Kiskonen and made an agreement with Grieg - Maersk to take Andreas Stokbro on loan. However the team was also searching home in the PCT division for Morin (as he couldn't level up in the CT division regardless). In the end a loan swap deal was arranged with Jura - Fiat which saw Gergely Szarka joining with 1-3 clause. In the CT draft the team selected Dobrin Lilovski and Rudy Barbier

Despite all these moves the team is at the bottom - why? In Gisborne GP there were some minor points gathered, but nothing spectacular. At Tachira Barta finished just shy of Top 10 and was beaten by Brandon McNulty in the U25 classification, while Jacobsen was a whisker of the overall KOM win. At Gent - Wevelgem Richardson was in the Top 20, but it wasn't anything noteworthy to brag for. In Catalunya a promising start turned into a crushing disappointment as the team finished 4th in the TTT hampering severely the GC chances, but Kozhatayev recovered to finish 5th overall. Tour of Ukraine turned to be a waste of race days as the team was nowhere near the level of the PCT teams competing here while Southland was also terrible excursion.

By the time of writing this article, the team also competed in 4 races - in Geraardsbergen-Bosberg Richardson and Max Losch finished 9th and 11th respectively, in Jelajah SKL Barta finished 8th, while Badalling and Coppa Placci were pretty much forgettable

To sum up: the season currently is an unmittigated disaster. Though it's still early on, the team could be looking at its worst season since 2017. While there is a chance to salvage the season in the next months, it has been clear to everyone that perhaps a hard reset in on the books for next season. Though it won't be a complete teardown of the team, some riders will be kept. At this moment riders that have the potential to stay are William Barta, Bakhtiyar Kozhatayev, Tormod Jacobsen, Chequan Richardson, Siim Kiskonen and Mikhail Kochetkov. The remaining riders on the roster must improve their results in order to have a spot for next season

Laurens147 wrote:
I can imagine it was hard to build a competitive squad in the off-seaon. Hopefully things will turn around soon!

cunego59 wrote:
Tough to lose a guy like Lander that way when you don't have many other riders who are guaranteed points scorers. Especially when you're in a tricky situation after a division change already. I think you got it right that much of this season is now evaluation of riders for the future, but also that you do have some solid building blocks. If you streamline your squad a bit, making room for one or two really strong leaders in addition to guys like Barta and Kozhatayev, I don't think you're far away from building a promotion contender again. And like Laurens said, maybe things do still turn around this season, too

Ulrich Ulriksen wrote:
Love Barta for obvious reasons. McNulty shouldn't beat him so can definitely see more from him in the rest of the season. Hopefully the luck will even out for you on some other fronts as well.

Luis Leon Sanchez wrote:
Still a team with riders who can score very well. Definitely positive times ahead for Barta and Kozhatayev. Worth remembering that despite your team having used a few RDs, there have been very few for the Climbing Stage Racers so far so I’d hold onto hope of a push towards the promotion spots!

Tour of Vancouver has just recently finished and the BWT Hyundai N Cycling team was in an optimistic mood after some tough races in the past few months. Prior to the Tour of Vancouver, the team wasn't having the best of times with the team scoring less than 100 points in every race (stage or 1-day) the team entered with only the Tour of Catalunya being their only race (from the officially published in the rankings list) where the team scored more than 50 points. And things weren't that better in the next few races either - in the Lincoln GP the team got 14 points, in the USA Pro Cycling Challenge 38 points were gathered, in Romandie the team got only 5 points, in Burkina Faso the team performed a bit better with 37 points and in the Olympia's Tour the team got...0 points. That's only 94 points which come the race in Canada was something the team wanted to erradicate and fast as they have already written off this season and will only serve as a roster evaluation for the next one.

In Vancouver the team has sent what they've called the "core triangle" (i.e. their best 3 options for the GC). They've sent Bakhtiyar Kozhatayev (fresh off from his African cobble visit), William Barta (last seen at the USA Pro Cycling Challenge) and Andrei Sakalou (who was in Romandie). However other teams have sent their top riders - Aramco sent Mas and Borisavljevic, Hello Fresh was with Kenny Elissonde, Volcanica put their trust in Andrey Amador, McCormick had Sepp Kuss and Brandon McNulty, while Jaime Roson was Gjensidige's pick. Though the team was one of the favorites in the TTT and if the cards fell right they had a chance for the win.

Stage one was a TT climbing stage where the climbers had the advantage. Kozhatayev and Barta with their TT skills managed to stay in touch with the favorites there. The following two stages were flat ones, where the team hadn't field any sprinters so the team wasn't looking for any meaningful results. However Mikhail Kochetkov managed to finish 5th in Stage 3. Stage 4 was the first real test. Sakalou has managed to break away from the peloton in the first few kilometers and collected few KoM points. But once he was caught it was all free fall from there on. Kozhatayev did finish 7th, but was on over 3 minutes from Amador and about a minute from Mas. Barta finished in a group of 9 riders, 1 minute after Kozhatayev. Between this stage and Stage 6 there was another flat stage where Kochetkov finished 9th, falling short of adding 1 ranking point (in the rankings only the Top 8 get points for stage result). In the queen stage it was now or never. Unfortunately Mas and Amador were in the Top 3, solidifying their GC positions. Kozhatayev finished 5th, which secured him another Top 5 finish while Barta finished nearly 2 minutes behind Mas, but was around 20 seconds behind Roson and with good TTT the American could be in the Top 10. And in the TTT the team delivered - while they couldn't beat Aramco's TTT train, BWT's time was enough for Barta (though he finished 2 seconds later) to leapfrog to 8th place which brought even more points. The final result - ranking wise, was 111 points. That's more points than any other race they've entered so far. And maybe it won't be topped for the remainder of the season, but it gives a ray of light in what has been a very mediocre season at best.

However in the post-seson there will be some questions to be resolved. The first is what to do with Sakalou. He was in ToV finishig 33rd in the GC and 5th in the KoM standings. Not what was expected from him as part of the team's core triangle for the race and contract negotiations will be tense. Chequan Richardson on the other hand is almost safe with performances on cobble-specific races, but as the team hadn't really planned around a cobbler and the team is inferior to teams like Crabbe and Trans in that regard, questions will arise on whether or not to invest more in cobble squad. Though the challenge will be how to do it without sacrificing their other departments and the fact that Richardson could ask for a pay raise (though the board has recommended it). Strenghtening the TT squad could also be on the books as Marchewka and Stoenchev have been inconsistent in the TTT stages (Stoenchev was 4 seconds behind the main group at the ToV TTT stage) while Valgren hasn't been the TT general they hoped for. The silver lining is Kochetkov, who has been a very reliable TT'er and had solid finishes in non-TT stages. There are more races to go and everything can change.

As the season reaches the halfway point, the BWT Hyundai N Cycling team took part in four races after the very successful Tour of Vancouver. The result in the Canadian race lifted the spirits within the team after a really mediocre season. But these four races saw the team going through ups and downs.

The first of those four races was the 3-day Irish stage race Ras Tailteann. A flat endavour, the team has sent its best sprinters, but unfortunately there was nothing to brag about in Ireland. The best stage finish was 23rd place from Karl Patrick Lauk, while Andreas Stokbro was the best placed in the GC in 14th. The only highlights were Stokbro's role in the breakaway on Stage 3 as well as finishing 2nd in the U25 standings, while the team was classified 2nd. Again, nothing that screams WOW.

Expectations in the Tour of South Africa (a race which the team has competed before) weren't that high to begin with and perhaps wasn't a wise choice to send Will Barta there (will get to that). However, the star of the team was Momchil Robov. His season so far wasn't great, but in South Africa he finally found something to fight for - the KoM jersey. He was present in the breaks of the first two stages and once he wore the jersey, he never looked back and he was in the Stage 6 break (despite having no KoM sprints) just for fun. Michael Vink was present in the final 2 breaks, while Sakalou finished 14th in the GC after valiant effort on Stage 5.

Hopes were high for the team in Giro del Trentino - one of the regular stops for the team. The hopes were to win it all again after Petar Panayotov won the 2018 edition. And the start was great with a solid win on the TTT opener after falling short in Vancouver's TTT stage. This put Bakhtiyar Kozhatayev in a prime position to win the race, but unfortunately things have gone from great to worse in an instant. Kozhatayev finished 26th in Stage 2, over 3 minutes behind stage winner Dan Martin. This put the Kazakh outside the Top 10, nearly 3 minutes behind new leader Andrei Amador. And the final stage wasn't anything good either - Kozhatayev finished in the main group, but so did the other GC favorites and was only enough for 9th. Perhaps Barta would've been a better fit there.

The failure in Trentino had to be quickly forgotten as the team made the trip to Mexico and the annual Monterrey TTT. Team time trails have been a good hunting ground for this team as one of their wins was on TTT - the 2018 Vilnius GP. This season the team finished 2nd in the Tour of Vancouver TTT and won the Trentino one. You could tell that the team was aiming to win a TTT race. Given its profile, the team without a doubt decided to put the Kozhatayev-Barta duo once more and they were helped by the versatile Jacobsen and Thill, TT specialists in Valgren, Kochetkov, Stoenchev and Marchewka as well as Max Losch. The team was one of the heavy favorites and they delivered, beating Trans Looney Tunes by 4 seconds. With this win the team has achieved its third pre-season goal for the season.

These four races yet leave some questions unanswered for next season. Robov's breakway heroics in South Africa clearly help his cause to grab a new contract, but sadly the same cannot be said about his compatriot Stoenchev or Marchewka. Both have been with the team since 2018 and had proven their worth in the TTT stages in the past, but this season their performances are mixed bag as at some points both were 1-2 seconds behind the main group. Still, they're very useful and could be retained. Sakalou's future is still unknown - he was supposed to be a key contributor, yet his results don't reflect that. Still, he has value that could be very useful in the off-season. But there are more races left for the riders to demonstrate their skills.