We'll see about next year's team, too soon to think about it. Definitely it should be a very successful Tour, we can afford to support two captains and still have enough riders, Blaesi and Dracke mostly, to hunt for stages and the polkadot jersey. But that's gonna be a tough fight against Jarlinson Pantano.
The first of the five consecutive stages in the mountains, finishing on the small-ish Mont Sainte-Odile, seemed the easiest on paper. Jason McLean has a rare fitness level 1 and he was our breakaway rider, if not to fight for the stage, then to support his captains later. And that became necessary, the speed in the peloton was very high as we entered the second half of the stage, with three climbs in quick succession. Our captains had to work uncomfortably hard to make it towards the front of the peloton on the penultimate, also the steepest and longest, climb. But Pinot, Barguil, Van Garderen and Kwiatkowski left the rest behind and caught McLean, the last man standing, before the top.
McLean had to drop back and then pull a group of 12 riders, including his two captains, on the descent at high speed. With his DHI 76 he bridged the whole gap as we hit the foot of the final climb, 8km long.
Barguil and Kwiatkowski attacked again and Jorgensen couldn't quite catch them. Kwiatkowski won the stage, Jorgensen arrived 14'' behind, with Quintana in tow. Frech was an excellent 5th, though without him the gap of his group of 11 riders would have been bigger. Still, they are both in the top 10 now, Frech is 6th, Jorgensen 9th. The new wearer of the yellow jersey is Rohan Dennis, though he is bound to lose it again soon with his MON 76.
Stage 9 featured six decent sized climbs and yet it saw 39 riders arriving together. Only one man got away from the rest and won the stage by 40 seconds – and it was Jorgensen! He's definitely the best climber the team's ever had. And he's completed our 5-star goal already.
Barguil launched an attack towards the top of the last climb and Jorgensen could actually follow the whole attack. And so could Van Garderen, the trio arrived at the top with a gap of 30'' to the other GC contenders. Jorgensen, a good descender, attacked, Van Garderen tried to follow but had to give up. He was caught by Kwiatkowski, who was pulling a whole bunch of riders, including Frech. Kwiatkowski was runner-up, followed by Barguil.
Also worth a note: The wearer of the green jersey, Michael Matthews, crashed and couldn't continue. Jovanovic now has a lead of 30 points over Demare and is set to win the green jersey for the first time.
A day later we were agonisingly close to winning our second stage, Dracke was behind Aru in the downhill sprint and though he had sprint enery to spare he just couldn't overtake him, he didn't even really try, he finished behind the Italian with most of his sprint bar intact. It was a great result for the young American nonetheless, the breakaway was full with riders who were better climbers than him.
In the peloton it looked like it would be an easy ride until the final mountain, a big HC climb, Le Mont du Chat, with the finish after the descent to Yenne. But instead, Barguil, 7th in the GC, decided to attack yet again, 5 km from the top of the penultimate climb, he must have been feeling very strong. Our excellent descender McLean led the remains of the peloton after him, others took over in the small flat sector. But Barguil would never be caught and eventually finished 1'11'' ahead of the the next group, a suspiciously strong solo effort.
Jorgensen and Frech, as always, found themselves dropping back behind 20 or 30 riders early on the final climb and clawed their way back. Pinot, Quintana and Van Garderen were still slightly ahead at the peak, but Kwiatkowski helped Jorgensen to catch them again. Frech wasn't far behind at the top of the mountain, but his poor descending skill cost him 2'30''. Still, he was a minute ahead of Kulpaka and Dennis, with other good riders another minute behind.
The new GC leader is a familiar name, Kwiatkowski. He's just 14'' ahead of Van Garderen and 23'' ahead of Quintana. Despite forcing their decline Kwiatek and Quintana are still the riders to beat. Barguil moved up to 4th with his solo ride, he's also within a minute of the yellow jersey. Dennis dropped from 1st to 5th, 3 minutes down, 2 seconds behind him are both Jorgensen and Frech, they are equal on time for now. Pinot and Kulpaka are only a few seconds further back, behind them is a larger gap to Olivier, while Meintjes is already 9 minutes behind.
We desperately needed the rest day, now all our riders have excellent freshness again. But we have a monster stage coming up, taking us into Italy to Pragelato. Two HC and a cat. 1 climb are very tempting, but the stage is 253 km long, we aren't sure any of our riders can join the breakaway and finish the stage without running out of energy.
Nonetheless, we succumbed to the temptation and picked Blaesi for the breakaway. It's not the smartest move, with MON 76 he is the best climber apart from our captains and we would rather have kept him for another day. And as expected, the breakaway stood no chance of winning the stage. There was no competition for the earlier HC climb, which our man crossed first, and so Blaesi was caught unawares when the others sprinted for the cat. 1, had he been a bit smarter he would ride in the polkadot jersey tomorrow.
The brutal gravel road up the Finestre mercilessly exposed the difference in climbing between our two captains. Frech was 10th on the day and dropped to 10th in the GC, too.
Jorgensen, on the other hand, looked much stronger. He easily made it into the top group, led by the man in yellow, and was able to follow to the peak without running out of energy. He attacked once, wanting to take top points on the Finestre, which didn't succeed, Kwiatkowski had the shorter inside line in the right turn.
Jorgensen overshot a little and suddenly had a small gap, Kwiatkowski and Van Garderen seemed to be waiting for Pinot. Jorgensen took the risk, attacked briefly and rode the descent with an effort which wouldn't leave much for the final, slightly uphill kilometres to Pragelato. But it turned into a great move, Van Garderen and Pinot weren't prepared to work with Kwiatek, so there were a few attacks followed by a few lulls. It allowed Jorgensen to win the stage by 1'09'', it also allowed Quintana and Barguil to catch up with the yellow jersey group.
Victory on the queen stage! A stage I've struggled with across many careers, where my captains usually end up losing a minute or three. Just, wow. Jorgensen is now 5th, 2'03'' behind, but it doesn't look like he can make it onto the podium, which we had secretly hoped he might. A late ITT will cost him 5 minutes or more, against Van Garderen, Kwiatkowski and probably Quintana, too. Well, nothing is decided yet.
The next day, the last of the five mountain stages in a row, Dracke actually ran out of all energy reserves inside the final kilometre, enough to finish 3rd and just enough for the polkadot jersey. Pantano and Rolland outscored him clearly on the day, though, and are just a few points behind. Rolland won the stage ahead of Pantano, the nominally best rider of the breakaway, none other than Talansky, was only 4th.
Most of the stage was into a headwind of 45 kmph and we left it to Kwiatek's Lotto to control the race, nobody made a move before we reached the foot of the final climb to Isola 2000. Again, the ascent was mostly into a headwind and that suits our steady pace just fine, the other GC riders kept attacking into the headwind. With just 3 km to go both our captains attacked and only Quintana managed to join us. Jorgensen and Quintana gained about 30 seconds on the rest, pretty much the whole top 20, with Frech in between.
After all that climbing we had two flat stages to help us recover a little. I played the first one and Biello was 3rd, only beaten by Jovanovic and Demare. I simulated the second, Nathan Haas won from a breakaway.
Hoang Doc Blaesi celebrated his first professional victory on stage 15. He did very well in a breakaway with stronger climbers than him. He didn't put up much of a fight for the mountain points, Pantano has overtaken Dracke in the classification, while our man kept to the back of the group most of the time. Kirchmair was a headache, he was 18th in the GC, about 17 minutes behind, and he took virtual yellow half-way through the stage. He was also Blaesi's toughest opponent for the stage, they arrived together on the last peak and then Blaesi attacked, his DHI is 10 points better, and he won easily.
Three riders were big winners in the GC fight: Quintana, Barguil and Pinot. They were 1'42'' fast than Jorgensen and and 2'19'' faster than Van Garderen and Kwiatkowski. That puts Quintana in yellow, he might well win yet another TdF. Jorgensen dropped back to 6th in the GC, Pinot moved past him. Frech arrived in a group with Kulpaka, Seliga and Olivier, the riders 7th to 10th in the GC.
After the final rest day we have to face three more brutal mountain stages in a row, so the GC is far from decided yet.
The first of the three remaining mountain stages led to Ax-3-Domaines via the Pailhares. It was a bad decision to send a rider, Blaesi, into the breakaway, the breakaway only made it into the early stages of the Pailhares. Though it did give additional protection for Frech, with Berhane already exhausted by then.
Astana's strong train was ahead of the pack for a short while, with only Jorgensen nicely tucked in, it was the windiest day so far, up to 70 kmph. The rest of the top 10 joined in towards the top, the speed dropped and Jorgensen dared an attack. Only Van Garderen mirrored the move and the duo was ahead by 2 minutes at the top of the HC climb. Jorgensen attacked again at this point, being the better descender, so he was alone and so was Van Garderen and so were by then Quintana and Barguil, while Frech and others were in a group where Astana was still working for Kulpaka.
Maybe in hindsight Jorgensen should have kept behind Van Garderen, because the American caught him eventually and won the uphill sprint. Quintana was 35'' behind, Barguil 1'02''. Frech finished in a group with Olivier, Kwiatek and Pinot, a gap of 3'10'', with the other Astana riders Kulpaka and Majka losing an additional minute. Kwiatkowski has dropped off the podium, Quintana's now leading Barguil by 1'22'', Jorgensen is 4th.
On the next stage to Guzet-Neige Barguil excelled again and gained a minute on everybody else. He attacked on the last climb, and once more Pinot joined him. While Jorgensen, Quintana and Van Garderen caught up with Pinot again, Barguil remained out of reach. It certainly makes the Tour even more exciting, Quintana's lead has been reduced to 26 seconds. Kwiatkowski lost more time again, he was only slightly faster than Frech and is now 6th in the GC. Kulpaka also lost more time and is now equal on time with Frech, the two are 7th and 8th. It is now really looking like we can get two riders into the top 10, Jorgensen should definitely make the top 6, no matter how badly the ITT on stage 20 goes.
Oh, and before I forget to mention it – we won the stage! Or, to be more precise, Ruben Fernandez won the stage. He hadn't been in a breakaway yet, Geijo's MON 77 looked like it would be too much for him, but Geijo was in the breakaway a day earlier and couldn't keep up on the final climb. The stage was decided between Fernandez and David De Gregorio, winner of the KOM classification in Paris-Nice this year, though still without a WT win in 6 professional seasons. I always enjoy good results from Fernandez, after all, he was a founding member of the team.
The final mountain stage was a spectacle and our attention was equally divided between two focus points. First off, the fight to become King of the Mountains. Pantano was leading Dracke by 9 points before the start of the stage. And although Pantano is 14th in the GC – though nearly 30 minutes behind – he joined the breakaway. Could Dracke beat the better rider on the stage itself?
We started with an easy cat. 3 and Dracke, with no SPR and ACC to speak off, had to watch Pantano add 2 points to his total. The second climb, the Port de Bales, was an HC climb. Dracke didn't relay, he waited until Pantano completed his turn and dropped back to 8th in the group, then Dracke went to the front, attacked briefly, and Pantano had to sprint from too far back. Dracke took 25 points, Pantano was 2nd, 20 points for him.
Dracke changed tactics a little on the Peyresourde. Instead of attacking, he chose an effort of 90 for the final 2 km. Pantano overtook him briefly, but Dracke's steady speed won out in the end, Alejo Elias was 2nd, 10 points for Dracke, 6 for Pantano. The lead was down to 2 points. Dracke stuck with the tactic on the next two climbs, and was first both times, though Pantano was right behind him both times. After the Col d'Aspin they were equal on points, after the Tourmalet, Dracke was ahead by 5 points.
But we feared it'd all be for naught with the final climb to Luz Ardiden. An HC climb with double points and Pantano was bound to finish ahead of Dracke. Could the other goods climbers in the breakaway, like Elias, Denifl, Meintjes and Craddock, maybe beat Pantano to the top and steal enough points? Stay tuned!
Yes, for once we finish on a cliffhanger to build up a bit of excitement for the grand finale.
And of course, Pantano attacked at the foot of the final climb, 13.3 km @ 7.5% . Maybe that'll be his undoing, but sadly, Dracke had to watch Alejo Elias attack next, the Spaniard caught up to Pantano and was now pulling him along. This was not looking good. The duo's advantage grew to over a minute.
Thankfully, Dracke wasn't alone, but being pulled along by other riders. And suddenly, fortunes began to change. With just 2 km to go Pantano cracked, Elias left him behind. And he cracked badly, his tank was completely empty. Denifl overtook him under the flamme rouge and just 300 metres from the top Meintjes and Dracke caught up with him. Our man had just enough energy for a brief acceleration, he finished 3rd on the day, Meintjes was 4th and Pantano only 5th. 201 KOM points in total for Dracke, 188 for Pantano, and only one cat. 4 on the last stage remaining. Bravo, Rotson Dracke!
The race was also exciting further back. Barguil and Pinot were the first to attack once more, for the umpteenth in this Tour, on the Tourmalet. This time Van Garderen, Quintana, Kwiatkowski and Jorgensen caught them again on the descent. Barguil was ahead the longest which should have been a bad sign for the final climb, but he was once again the strongest rider.
He finished 20 seconds ahead of Quintana, the lead has been reduced to a mere 6 seconds. Jorgensen, Pinot and Kwiatek were close behind, only Van Garderen lost an additional 20 seconds. So Jorgensen got close to the podium, only 15'' at this point, but with the ITT remaining the gap to Kwiatkowski probably isn't big enough to hold onto 4th. However, Frech now looks certain to finish 7th, he is a whopping 12'30'' behind Kwiatkowski, but a couple of minutes ahead of Olivier and Frech is clearly better against the clock.
Biello finally did it, he won his first TdF stage, though admittedly from the early breakaway. A good group got away and when it was 5 minutes ahead and it seemed unlikely anybody would chase it down, Biello decided to bridge the gap. A good decision, the breakaway won by nearly 20 minutes. The sprint itself was no contest, he was even awarded a gap of 22 seconds. There was a small scare 25 km out, in crosswinds the race got really hard and our captains briefly lost contact to the front of the peloton, but we knew the final 12 km were into a headwind and didn't panic, they didn't lose any time.
The final challenge for the GC riders came on stage 20, 49 km against the clock on a completely flat road. As we'd feared, Jorgensen dropped from 4th to 5th in the GC. Though, surprisingly, he wasn't overtaken by Kwiatkowski, who was only 21st on the day. Instead Pinot had an amazing day with his TTR 69, he was over three minutes faster than Jorgensen and overtook him in the GC by less than a second.
Frech easily held onto 7th overall. Van Garderen won the ITT ahead of Dumoulin and Phinney, but it wasn't enough to take 2nd from Barguil, who like Pinot rode a very good ITT. Quintana was 7th on the day and is set to win his third TdF in a row.
Biello was 3rd on the Champs Elysees. He probably couldn't have done better and was lucky he didn't do worse. He was on the wheel of Jovanovic who was following Zabel and while the other two had no problem overtaking the last remainders of the breakaway 1500 metres out, Biello nearly slammed into Hoem and had to start his sprint over again.
But we have no complaints, it was a fantastic TdF. Jorgensen is 5th and he won two stages, beating the best riders in the world. Frech was more anonymous but ends 7th overall, a really good performance. And he receives the white jersey, too. Blaesi, Biello and Ruben Fernandez managed to take a stage each. Dracke won an epic battle against Pantano for the polkadot jersey.
Though as expected, Astana has further increased the gap in the WT rankings. They now have 1548 points while Aviva's at 1037 points, with Trek (1215) still in between. Quintana is now at 666 WT points, Kulpaka has moved into the top 10 (252), Jovanovic also added nearly 100 points to his total (245), winning four stages. Majka scored only a few points, Slagter none at all.
5 Stage victories and two jerseys is a huge result for a 6.5k wage/rider team, congratulations! And the gap in the rankings is closeable with the hilly autumn classic races coming up that very much favour your style of riding!
As always, one of the shortest reports of the season. Goal achieved! We'd hoped Veiby could somehow get away and solo to victory, but he was tightly marked. So instead he had to head a 7-man Aviva sprint train again, just like last year. With his insane speed all our guys were ahead of the rest of the reduced peloton. But one man overtook them all to win comfortably, and it was Astana's Tom Jelte Slagter.
80 WT points for Astana, but 196 points for Aviva? Sadly, not when it comes to the team rankings. Only the top 5 scorers count towards the total. So let me reveal who those top 5 will be at the end of the season, alphabetically:
So in reality it's 80 points for Astana (Slagter) and 64 points for us (Koloda, Tewelde). Note that I don't play strategically, don't try to secure points for my top scorers, I'm more of a "may the best man win" kinda guy.
This year we face the "traditional" variant with five flat and two hilly stages. Biello is back in action and he's the top favourite for mass sprints. I would never have thought that I'd have a sprinter like that in my team. I never really bothered with sprinters in previous careers. But now that I'm on a tight budget I even end up with two fine sprinters.
And Biello won the opening stage, confirming his status as the top favourite. The next day he made it two in a row before losing out to Marino De Windt on stage 3. De Windt rode for Aviva in 2019, this was his first WT win. But Biello struck back with another victory on stage 4.
A day later we tackled the easier of the two hilly stages, starting and ending in the picturesque Zakopane. Wikkelso was in a breakaway with strong riders, including our old star Marrou. The gap was up to 15 minutes with 150 km to go and the peloton clawed back time little by little on the hilly terrain.
With 30 km to go I was sure the breakaway would make it, with 5 km to go I was still sure that Marrou would make it on his own, after everybody else had been caught. But Marrou had to watch three riders overtake him in the final 500 metres: Koloda, who won the stage, Vichot and Lammertink. Wikkelso and Sergienko were also in the group of 9 riders who distanced a larger group by 46''. Krasnopjorov was in the last group, ready for the early breakaway tomorrow on the even tougher hilly stage.
Stage 6 proved that you can't win them all. For a start, Krasnopjorov was not allowed to join the early breakaway despite lagging behind by 24 minutes. And, even worse, none of our riders were able to keep up with the best. Pinot surged ahead and won by 1'06'' ahead of Battaglin, Rui Costa, Vichot, Bardet and Dennis. Zoidl and Dumoulin followed, while our men were a few seconds behind in the next group.
Biello, however, also takes the final stage in Krakow, what a dominant race from him. Definitely a first for me, winning so many stages in mass sprints, helped by the fact that the competition was rather weak. We also have four riders in the top 10 and win the teams classification. Possibly we would have done better with Denis and Tewelde, we gave them a rest. Denis also had a micro-fracture in his shoulder, reducing his fitness by a level.
It's the third overall victory in this race for Pinot, it really seems to suit him. We closed the gap in the WT team rankings by 55 points. Vichot outscored Koloda, but he won't make Astana's top 5, as already revealed.
The Eneco Tour featured a TTT, an ITT, four flat stages and the tough final stage back to Geraadsbergen, which we visited with the TdF this year, too. Due to the two time trials we picked riders who are decent against the clock, all have TTR 70+. Our stage racer Blaesi is so versatile (COB 68) that we just had to include him as well.
I have to admit that I did not play any of the flat stages, so I simulated everything except for the final stage. Which meant that two of the stages went to simulated breakaways: On stage 1 three riders including Dan Martin arrived 1'19'' ahead of the peloton, but Biello won the bunch sprint. He won stage 3 ahead of Bouhanni and Bennett and was 3rd on stage 5, behind Bouhanni and Bennett. In between he won the bunch sprint again, but only behind 7 riders who held off the peloton by 32 seconds.
Vitally for the GC, Aviva won the team time trial on stage 2, with Koloda leading the team across the line. We were 17 seconds faster than United Health Care and 21 seconds ahead of Astana.
Astana's Phinney won the ITT on stage 6, our best rider was Veiby, he was 12th, 23 seconds behind. His team mates lost between 34 and 77 seconds. Biello had collected enough bonus seconds to retain the lead after the time trial, just a second ahead of Phinney, while Veiby was waiting in 4th position, 19 seconds down.
We didn't choose the most aggressive tactic for the final stage. Stybar was in the breakaway but 3 minutes back in the GC, so we saw no need to try and outright catch him and he won the stage. We took to the front of the peloton in the finale, sadly, Hermans was the man to get trapped behind a breakaway rider we caught, he lost about 50 positions and his small chance of a good GC result.
We reached the finale without any real attacks from anybody. Veiby raced away on the cobbled uphill finish, he arrived 51'' behind Stybar and 20'' ahead of Biello, who in turn was 9'' ahead of the rest. The rest being a group of 22 riders who were all awarded the same time despite a few gaps. Had we been a bit more aggressive we probably could have done even better.
However, we did win the race with Veiby, another notch on his belt. Biello was close behind, had I played all the stages in 3D mode he maybe could have picked up more bonus seconds and won the race. Nice GC results for Blaesi and Koloda, too, and even Pozin made the top 10.
Astana is still in a commanding lead with 1628 points. Trek (1264) is also still ahead of Aviva (1246), but only by 18 points. No points for Astana's five riders since Slagter won in San Sebastian, while Koloda collected points in San Sebastian, in Poland and in Holland, too. He's moved up to 14th in the individual standings with 220 points. And of course Veiby won the Eneco Tour, taking his total up to 455 points. He's moved past Kwiatkowski, though Quintana still reigns supreme.
As you can see, Astana's top 5 are well placed in the rankings, they'll all get a chance to score even more points. Dislodging them from the top will be tough. For dramatic purposes I'll report from four one-day races before we get to the Vuelta: Hamburg, Plouay, Quebec and Montreal. We should be able to close the gap of 382 points significantly in these four races, because none of Astana's top 5 is attending any of them.
We had two cards to play in Hamburg: Veiby, who will attempt a late attack, and Biello. Our main sprinter was busy this month and already has over 50 race days in his legs, so we decided not to take him to Spain.
As we entered the final 50 km the speed in the peloton picked up more and more. With 40 km to go the strong wind was coming from behind and half of our riders were dropped despite an effort of 80. Pedrocca, who had been protecting Biello, soon had to give up as well. The peloton was down to just 37 riders, we were left with Veiby, Biello and Tewelde.
With 20 km left the pace slowed – and Veiby used the opportunity to attack. Nobody followed him directly, but Ag2r's Mauro Olaiz set off after him and caught Veiby. Olaiz offers FLA 78 though little else, Veiby did not want to pull him along. There was a tight corner 10 km out and our star used it for another attack. Olaiz was unable to follow and was swallowed by the pack. But Veiby managed to stay ahead and won the Cyclassics by 42 seconds!
Biello was considered the top favourite for the sprint. Instead of sticking behind other sprinters he had a good lead-out from Tewelde, who set him up perfectly for a sprint with 1700 metres to go. Or, as it would happen, not exactly perfectly, because, well, PCM... Biello started overtaking his team mate but somehow got stuck for just a second, enough for the sprinters behind him to overtake him. Sprinting has always been a mystery to me. Groenewegen was 2nd, Lacruz 3rd, Barbero 4th, Biello only 5th. Tewelde just missed the top 10, he was 11th. If that had been the sprint for the win, I would have been pretty upset. But as it stands, another great victory for Veiby, and 80 points for the final team rankings.
Top 10: Veiby, Groenewegen, Jon Angeru Lacruz, Barbero, Biello, Ruffoni, Zabel, Sinkeldam, Stannard, Sagan
Again, it was the easier of the two variants, so no chance for a puncher like Tewelde to attempt a late attack. Instead, Veiby had another go while the rest of the team protected Biello. However, this time Veiby was caught inside the final 5 km and finished 12th, so no points for him.
We still had Biello to fight for victory, he seemed to have found the perfect wheel behind the strong Quickstep duo Viviani and Nizzolo, who were also the best positioned when the sprint started. Biello was able to outsprint them both, but Katusha's Carlos Barbero came from further back and stole the victory at the last second.
Top 10: Barbero, Biello, Vincent Weyzen, Willwohl, Nizzolo, Viviani, Sagan, Gerard Eich (neo-pro with SPR 78), Ruffoni, Goncalves
A fine result for Biello, but no points in the team title race for us. Biello will end the season with 15 victories (while our other sprinter Myles will only have one to his name) and 268 WT points. That's an impressive amount of points for a sprinter, only Jovanovic will collect more.
It was a terrible finale to a boring race. We faced the variant with two similar hills back-to-back, with the finish line on top of the second one – and a wind of 60 kmph blowing right into the riders' faces on both. There was no way to avoid an uphill bunch sprint, with 151 riders arriving together, bunched up towards the front.
In our team it was every man for himself and it was like rolling the dice: Those furthest back as we entered the final kilometre were the most successful. And they were very successful, because Tewelde won the race ahead of Hoem (who'd not scored all season) and our Kazach duo Koloda and Sergienko, Veiby was 8th.
In contrast, Lammertink and Pedrocca were 14th and 15th, Sequeiros 24th and Denis 27th. Those four just couldn't find a gap and were trapped. Only the far right side of the road was open and that's where the others slipped through.
It didn't get better two days later in Montreal. This was the harder of the two variants, so Kipp and Krasnopjorov replaced Sequeiros and Veiby. It became Aviva's most successful race of the season, but it was cheap and cheesy. It couldn't be helped.
All the favourites kept attacking again and again in the final 25 km while our guys just rode stoically at their constant effort, they were at the front entering the descent towards the finish line and just all attacked into a sprint. We didn't even time it well, all riders ran out of sprint energy well ahead of the finish line. But only the defending champion Boily made his way into the top 8.
Veiby has crushed Singh's single season record of 442 points. Just a fantastic rider, he'll be sorely missed.
So these four races seem to have reduced the gap in the WT team rankings from 382 to just 80 points. But that's not entirely true, it's still about 150 points. Myles and Biello counted towards our total in the last update, Tewelde and Frech were still trailing behind.
To win the team rankings we'll have to outscore Astana in the Vuelta, Tewelde will have to beat Slagter in Il Lombardia and we'll have to dominate the Tour of Bejing. Can we do it? You'll find out soon enough. With that in mind, let's head to Spain.
We come to a direct Aviva vs Astana showdown: Jorgensen against Kulpaka, one of these two men will win the race! Will we win our first Grand Tour? Something I never believed could happen in this career? Or will Astana's man triumph? I've been mentioning Jur Kulpaka since the summer of 2016, at the age of 22 he already looked like a future GT winner. And now he's captaining this strong Astana team which has replaced Sky as the stage racing team to beat. Having said that, their Vuelta squad isn't exactly intimidating, Kulpaka has precious little support in the mountains. But it includes two more of their top 5 riders, Slagter and Jovanovic. While Jorgensen will be better supported and we also have Frech, who might do even better than his 7th overall in France.
Sadly, Jorgensen still hasn't made it to MON 82, but he's the best climber in the race. His biggest weakness is riding alone against the clock and there is a long and flat ITT on stage 15 he's dreading and Kulpaka's looking forward to. The two are also up against Giro winner Mohoric, but he's not quite in the same shape anymore. Other contenders are Landa, Ion Izagirre, Kelderman, Boswell and Rivelino Laurie.
Kulpaka drew first blood on the opening day: He led Astana's team across the line in the TTT, winning the stage 22'' ahead of Aviva, so he is already wearing red. In contrast Team Sky, led by Froome, was last, 2'06'' behind, times have certainly changed. With no sprinter I simulated all the flat stages.
Those only added more points to Astana's tally. Jovanovic won stages 2 and 4 and added podium finishes on stages 3, 6, 8 and 19. He went on to finish 3rd in the points classification, behind the duo battling for overall victory and ahead of the other sprinters who won one mass sprint each (Bouhanni, Bennett, Lozano).
The first GC action came on stage 5, a mountain stage, though a pretty tame one. 27 riders arrived with the winner, 27 more were 27 seconds behind (I'm not making that up). The stage went to Boswell, just ahead of Jorgensen, while Frech was 19th. In the GC our captains are now 3rd and 4th, behind the Astana duo Kulpaka and Cattenao.
Yes, we've done it! On stage 7 to Alforja, Pello Bilbao left behind his breakaway companions Cort Nielsen and De Vos, rode the final 30 km alone and arrived 54 seconds ahead of the group of favourites. That makes it a perfect record, 15 out of 15 goals completed. And they said it couldn't be done. That ticks off a major career goal.
That's what you call a clean sweep! Awesome achievement, and one of the PCM-hardcore-players dreams!
Also a very good start to the race. Nice to see Jörgensens stats, it's quite obvious that a lot of skill is needed to get the best out of him and maximise the influence of pure mountain stat on any stage. But your team seems to be prepared to push hard early on mountain stages to dictate the pace for Finn.
Thank you! Jorgensen's main strengths are climbing, climbing as well as climbing. Every hilly stage could become his undoing, he can't lose any time on those and he has to put time into Kulpaka on every MTF to compensate for the time trial. You'll find out soon how it went, it was pretty close.
The winner of the first real test in the mountains, stage 9 with the long final climb up to Rassos de Peguera, is Finn Jorgensen. He was the top favourite according to the bookies and he delivered. Hard to believe that an Aviva rider was the top favourite for a GT mountain stage, that's crazy. Jorgensen only beat Kulpaka by 19 seconds, but it was enough to don the leader's jersey. Also on the podium for now is Frech, he was an excellent 4th on the stage, he arrived right behind Laurie and that duo had a small gap to a group of 9 riders.
After the first rest day we had an even tougher mountain stage to Loudenvielle, across three cat. 1 and an HC climb. This was a stage for Blaesi in the breakaway, he'll try and win the climbers classification. He's just upgraded to MON 77, he left the rest of the breakaway behind early into the penultimate climb, never looked back, won the stage easily and slips into the KOM jersey. Again, we've gone from our man being among the weakest in the breakaway, now the other teams have to fear our riders.
The speed was very high in the peloton towards that penultimate climb and our captains dropped further and further back and took a long time to move towards the front again. Apparently, by that time Kulpaka, Boswell, Mohoric and a few more riders had already left the peloton behind and we didn't notice. Panic time!
Jorgensen managed to catch the group at the peak, but Frech was further back. With the wind coming from behind on the final climb Jorgensen took control and set a brutal pace, his rivals cracked one at a time. He finished 37'' ahead of Mohoric and a whole minute ahead of Kulpaka and Boswell. Frech lost over 2 minutes compared to Mohoric and dropped to 4th in the GC.
Kulpaka closed the gap by 4 seconds with his 3rd place on stage 11. Winner of the day was Jason McLean, his second professional victory after stage 18 of last year's Giro. The peloton didn't want to let a group larger than 3 riders go, in the end it was only McLean against Cort Nielsen. Though hilly on paper McLean looked stronger on all the climbs and left Cort Nielsen behind on the longest, the penultimate climb, a cat. 1. There wasn't much wriggle room left, he won by 44'' ahead of the reduced peloton. No top 10 riders lost any time.
Stage 13 nearly felt like the good old days of other careers with a totally dominant team. We sent Blaesi into the breakaway, he forgot to sprint for the first KOM points on a cat. 1, but easily won the stage 52'' ahead of 35-year old Dan Martin, the Irishman moved up to 10th in the GC.
In the peloton, everybody else left it up to Aviva to chase the breakaway, and our domestiques had to do a fair amount of work to keep the gap in check. It was a really steep final climb to Laguna Negra de Neila, at least the final 6 km. Jorgensen managed to distance the rest of the top 10, who arrived as a group, by 49'', so his lead has extended to 2'03''. Nice, but secretly we had hoped for more.
Next up: The moment of truth, the long and flat ITT. Kulpaka will surely overtake Jorgensen in the GC again, but by how much? TTR 79 vs 64. There's also a battle for the final podium spot. Mohoric (67) is ahead, but Frech (75) could easily overtake him again.
And we're back with the results from the stage 15 time trial, here's how the top 4 in the GC fared:
1
Damien Howson
Movistar Team
5
Jur Kulpaka
Astana Pro Team
+00:41
14
Volker Frech
Aviva Cycling
+01:11
41
Matej Mohoric
Tinkoff - Saxo
+02:54
57
Finn E. Jørgensen
Aviva Cycling
+04:02
Smaller gaps than we'd expected considering the stage was over 50 km long. Probably the best time trial we've seen from Jorgensen. We've not had great ITTs from our captains of late, so it seems only fair that we had a good day. Mohoric did well, too.
Nonetheless, Kulpaka is back in the lead, 1'18'' ahead of Jorgensen. Frech ist back on the podium, just over a minute ahead of Mohoric, Kelderman and Boswell. Should we sacrifice his podium ambitions and make him support Jorgensen? At least not on the following stage, we'll keep Blaesi back and he can support Jorgensen instead.
Stage 16 finishes with a long irregular climb to Alto de Morredero, 22km @5,7%. Stage 17 is hilly with an uphill finish, we worry Jorgesen will lose time. Stage 18 is another mountaintop finish, again not as steep as we'd like, 15.3km @6.1%. Then we follow with two flat stages and a MTT on the final day, Alto de los Leones.
It wasn't a good sign that Kulpaka was the top favourite on stage 16. There were some steep sections, but they are in the first half of the 22 km climb. Against the tried-and-trusted method of picking a steady pace, Jorgensen risked spending most of his energy reserves on those steep sections. Even with a couple of small attacks thrown in he just couldn't shake off Kulpaka. Nor Mohoric, either, which spelled doom for Frech's podium hopes.
We very much feared we'd have to pay dearly in the final kilometres with Jorgensen pretty much exhausted, but he managed to finish first in that threesome and was awarded 4 bonus seconds, because only two breakaway riders had survived. The stage was won by Dracke in convincing fashion, second was Gertjan De Vos. Kulpaka now leads by 1'14''.
Btw, I usually forget to mention such things, but we are down to 7 riders. We lost Wikkelso on stage 4, a fractured thigh, and Berhane on stage 14, a fractured kneecap, so their seasons are already over.
We've reached the hilly stage 17 and we are having a good feeling about these climbs, that they are suited for real climbers. McLean in the breakaway is looking very comfortable while a pure puncher like Piton (MON 68 HIL 80) is struggling. On the final climb, it's between McLean and Pantano and with an attack 3 km from the top McLean distances his rival and wins the stage, Pantano is 2nd. 3rd place and 4 bonus seconds are up for grabs again for the favourites.
The yellow energy bar is no problem here on this final climb. There were no attacks earlier, Astana was leading the peloton at a reasonable pace. Jorgensen, again protected by Blaesi goes to the very front of the peloton. We're a little sorry for Frech, we wanted him to play a road block as Jorgensen picks up more speed, that didn't really work and then Frech found himself a group back and losing more time against Mohoric.
Jorgensen loses Blaesi, Kulpaka takes the lead of the small group, but his riding style makes us hope he has nothing left for a sprint, while Jorgensen's red bar is nearly full. Under the flamme rouge they are riding next to each other... and Jorgensen pulls away with his sprint! What he couldn't do yesterday he manages on this hilltop finish, there's a gap! Jorgensen nearly catches Pantano, he's 3rd, gets the bonus seconds – and Kulpaka is 31 seconds behind. The GC gap is now down to 39 seconds! Frech is now a minute away from the podium, from Mohoric, and he was also overtaken by Boswell and dropped to 5th. But can Jorgensen actually win the Vuelta? It's basically down to the next stage.
And next season, too, since I miscalculated it in this transfer period. You are right about these classics, as you can see...
