A Wild Julian Appeared! Arguably a more succesful race than the Giro, with two stage podiums and a cluster of Top10's. If only we were a wild card entry and not a fully fledged PT team and we could be proud!
First of all, thanks for the outstanding reports, cunego. The quality of screenshots and details was just amazing.
A podium for Morton and a stage win is obviously a nice achievement for us. With Haig doing quite well in his two GT appearances (well, at least in one of those), this gives us a good points haul from those GTs. As with all races with Morton involved, it has been a thrill to follow the results. From a great week with an unexpected stage win to a classic Morton, who dropped to 4th at some point, we got it all. He did well to fight back for a 3rd place, despite not performing amongst the very best in the final week. The lack of breakaway appearances was kinda expected, so it's okay for me. The overall consistency of Morton kinda makes me wonder, if I will stick to my plan to train Haig or rather give Morton a chance to reach 85 MO and fight for those places behind Herklotz in the next seasons.
Congrats to DD for an undisputed victory and to those, who also came away with something here.
Thanks for the reports, real life are making my comments less frequent but I am still following
Great stage from my riders on stage 20. I had hoped that one of them could get in top 10, but alas. Still, great to have a stage win and 1-3 on the stage!
Congrats to DD on a really dominant win, and congrats to the podium finishers and jersey winners, too.
And a huge Thank You to cunego - what a great qualitiy throughout the whole 3 weeks! Thanks for doing such a huge work for a game you're not even taking part in (yet)! It was a great read every single time, and it makes me want a TdF participation even more
Brilliant in-depth reports throughout by cunego59, maintained a very high standard each and every stage, and made it possible to follow all of the the various jersey/positional battles very closely. Thank you sir!
Congrats to DD on Madrazo's victory. When I joined MG at the start of the 2014 season and was looking at the recent MG history, Madrazo looked set to potentially become the dominant GT racer of his generation. For whatever reason he has built a more than solid palmares, but fallen a little short in general when the big battles have taken place. Finally stamped his authority on proceedings here. Off the top of my head suspect this is the longest gap between GT victories in the MG era?
Congrats to the other teams that either fulfilled or exceeded management expectations. There was a lot of great racing throughout, and from a neutral stand-point it looks more or less that most teams got what they deserved out of the race when viewed holistically. Will be very interested to see what impact this has had on the PT standings, the TdeF obviously being such a pivotal point scoring opportunity. Suspect Gazelle now look likely favourites to clinch a maiden PT crown. What it means through the rest of the standings more difficult to discern without a full update.
Brilliant reports all the way through. Great race to follow all the way.
With Eg in the race I was of course rooting for Phinney, so it was sad to see him falter in the final week. Nevertheless, it was a very deserved and convincing victory by Madrazo, so congrats to Gazelle.
Hopefully Eg's learned a lot from this experience and it will help him lead in CT going forward.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
I only now found time for an exhaustive summary, so here we go!
First and foremost, I want to add to the choir of appreciative comments on cunego's reporting, you did the biggest race of the year justice!
Obviously this doesn't come as a surprise for anyone following your stories throughout the years, but I'm very happy your skills translated this well into the MG universe.
And as long as you stay away from my focus region, I'd love to see you get involved on the manager side of the game again as well.
Right after, congratulations to Gazelle for a dominant win and a fast track pass to the title, and to eBuddy and Bennelong for their podium spots who will both enjoy the publicity and points earned.
Furthermore, congrats to Farfetch and Evonik on their jersey wins!
I hope that besides those teams, most other managers will also be able to leave France satisfied with the performance of their team.
Speaking of, it's time to review our race.
In the pre-race post, I stated our goals to be "we can realistically aim for several stage wins and green", and we leave Paris with exactly that!
It's been years of hard work and a lot of money spent, and while MSR has eluded him so far, Arnaud Demare has now ascended to the very elite circle of world famous sprinters who got to wear the green jersey in front of the Arc de Triomphe.
Three stage wins and 19 additional jerseys in his collection are a great bonus, even though we obivously had opportunities for another win or two across the three weeks. We don't look back in anger at those even though they would've given nice points, we achieved our goals and we have to be happy with that.
Especially the 19 days in green that result in Demare having the all-time largest green jersey collection now after just two participations are an amazing achievement, and to lead such an important historic statistic, hopefully forever, is a dream come true.
I would've loved to dedicate a section to our team efforts beyond the excellent flat stage chases and sprint preparations, but sadly we didn't join any breaks even though some additional efforts would've actually helped preserve Demare's advantage, beyond chasing stage honors themselves.
But we choose to not blame Arndt or any other rider for their passive racing here, we won the jersey and that's all that matters.
Our young riders did very well to make it through their first TdF, and we're looking forward to what guys like Cavagna and Niu will show in their next GTs.
Yikui Niu actually scored a point in the U25 classification himself!
It's quite likely that we will return to defend the green jersey next season, so prepare for more of this!
Firstly, what a top job by Cunego with these reports. Releasing them same time everyday without fail really built anticipation and made these reports seem so much more special than any others (and were fantastically written). Thanks a million for doing such a great job.
Incredibly proud of greggy but will be forever disappointed he lost the jersey the last day he could, especially to a rider that only went for points on so few stages. I’d argue that he woulda been the most combative rider of the race, he was in so many breaks I lost count. That was probably his downfall though, being out in front using energy like that on so many stages nearly killed the man. Losing out on two stage wins by a hair and the Kom by less is actually heartbreaking. Congrats to Carthy though, he was too strong that late in the race.
It was pretty cool to see Arifin in a few moves as well, an Indonesian rider riding in an Indonesian team in a break in the TDF was a delight to see! It’s been a wonderful year for Indonesian cycling, apart from us you’ve got Novardianto winning a stage in another GT.
Congrats of course to DD. Madrazo finally pulling through and dominating was great; once he got going he was never really in doubt. And to cio as well, glad that Demare could repay your faith in him.
Had couple days off but came followed it a bit on my mobile.
First of, thanks for some high quality reporting with lots of effort and information making this race a nice one for everyone, not just those involved or successful.
Then congrats to DD for this great win. Was about time PCM is taking Madrazo on this level again since riding for Santander years ago and since struggling far too much.
Behind him a few "surprises" such as Sicard struggling more than expected, Phinney having a hard last week etc. Morton/Lecuisinier were really strong in general and should be exciting to watch once having more training.
For my own team:
Velits obviously was great. Not having that much stage results as I might have hoped (which already didn`t work in Giro and Tour unfortunately) but he basically was one of those annoying attackers on multiple stages. While on PCM15 this would likely have resulted in 1-2 stage wins or podiums, PCM18 seems to be better with making them exhausted against fresher, less strong climbers, who then go on to win the stage.
But fighting hard for the top10 GC and KoM points, he really did a fantastic job scoring pretty good in those two classements.
My team never was a top tier GC team, so it`s great to see that I still was able to finish inside the top10 of all GTs in one season. And if Keinath wouldn`t have dropped to 11th, it would even be 3 different riders as well, which likely is some rarity, too. But it`s good to see I have more riders than Olivier being capable of doing so.
Obviously with Keinath and Velits not getting any younger, this is tough to repeat and changes are needed once again.
Groenewegen with 2 stage wins and a few other decent results did as expected in such field. Could have been worse after a slow start but then again he was 2nd best sprinter and against Demare, there is nothing wrong to lose. Having the Champs Elysees to his palmares is special and as you said, the recovery might have helped him there. Plus Dumoulin, who somehow survived a full GT and by this having an additional team mate for that final.
Dekker did okay being a top30 rider here but with Velits going rant regularly, it was a rather anonymous one for him with just few showings. But obviously also helping Groenewegen a lot in the late phase of the sprints, this is all fine and he was doing a good job here. Just like all others, who though were super anonymous.
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