Congrats to cio on the win! A dominant race from Herklotz. Also cool to see so much from the Norwegian Tobias Foss during the race. For us it was a great start with Larsen and he also ended it with a top 10, but the middle part was a bit poor. Just not enough quality to challenge from the breaks. Some decent GC depth with Nesset, Vingegaard and APP though.
Thanks to Cunego for all the reports. Brilliant work from start to finish.
Not the best Evonik race, particularly down to the lack of succesful breaks. Not sure how or why those suffered so much but it is what it is. Was the weakest of our GT climbing setups here so i cant complain too much anyway. The highlight of our team here was definitely the sprinting by Thijssen. Didnt have the best season previously but this race makes the loan worth it for us...
Ranking wise i'm very curious where we stand now. We might even have dropped to around 15th or so with how close the most recent update was and how little we scored here so plenty to do for us in the remainder of the race without a ton of great races left.
Congrats to cio, the victory was never much in doubt and good to see him win so convincingly. As said before, his lack of climbing support could and should have opened the door for more break success but teams behind him raced for 2nd, 3rd, etc so didnt mind helping out.
Also to ember, Dainese has been huge this tour. Impressive stuff from an unmaxed loanee.
SotD wrote:
This kept going until the final 3 mountainstages, where Chiarello picked up the depeche and kept running and running and running. 2nd and 3rd on stages respectively and moving up to 8th in the GC which ultimately accumulates into a replica of the Vuelta a España performance, where he was 8th and got a stagewin. There he landed 294 points, and here he lands on 289 points. All this combined see him land on 700 points for the season, breaking the very optimistic expected value of 600. He's almost as strong as last season, when adjusting for lower racedays and altered calender. He truly is a gem!
Damn Hsu again not sprinting. It's really frustrating to have a sprinter in a GT not sprinting in half of the sprint stages. At least he did well the few times he tried with 2 wins and a 3rd. That shows what could've been possible in this race for him. The green jersey could've been very much within reach.
Roglic and Smith in 14th and 28th in GC is about where they could be expected. A bit unfortunate for them that so few stages were given to breakaways, also with teams chasing that had nothing to gain from it. Anyways, with Roglic's stage win we luckily got what we wanted from that part of the team. Other than that it was also nice to see Vanthourenhout and Phodingam active in breaks in the first week of the race.
All in all, I can be mostly satisfied with this edition of the tour. Although the success is a bit tainted by being hit by the 4th strongest sprinter bug, Leung not living up to the expectations in the prologue and some minor things. Chiarello with virtually the same stats also shows what could've been possible for Roglic. Still, 3 stage wins is the most I ever got out of a GT and it's nice that both Hsu and Roglic added these achievements to their palmares.
Congrats to cio for a very dominant three weeks by Herklotz and to the other jersey winners redordead, ember and Oleg. It was cool to see Dainese claw back the green jersey on the last stage.
Finally, thank you Cunego for the great reports throughout all of the race!
