Two more months of racing have gone by since the last update here. Now in race free September we have time to take a quick look at the results there.

Races:

2 - 8		Tour de Pologne	C2HC
8 - 13		Tour d'Algerie	C2HC
18		Hill Classic	C2
23 - 26		Tour de Slovenie	C2
25 - 29		Tour d'Indonesia	C2

At the Tour de Pologne there wasn't much to see from the team. In the end Mustafa Sayar managed to bring home a 14th place in GC. At the Tour d'Algerie Sarawut was part of the race deciding break, but in the end didn't manage to hold on to the others. In the end he managed to secure the dotted mountains jersey with further attacks, which made the race a small success afterall.
The Hill classic of the Armenian cylcing federation was a failure for the team. Other the Tour de Slovenie, our leader Vitor Rodrigues was fighting for the win here. In the end he was only beaten by Yasmani Martinez. Peilun Wu came as 10th also in the top 10 and by that was the winner of the white jersey. The Tour d'Indonesia was due to our region focus a very important race for us. Our team knew that and was represented in many breakaways. One resulting in a podium by Sarawut in 2nd on stage 4. Masakazu Ito gave us a second podium spot as 3rd on stage 2. If it wasn't for the timetrial he would've managed better than 8th in the final rankings.

Win(s): 2
Best result: 2nd Tour de Slovenie
Rider of the month: Sarawut Sirironnachai

Races:

3 - 7		Vuelta a Burgos	C2
11 - 15		Tour d'Azerbaijan	C2HC
31		GP Tokyo	C2

August would be very important month for the team with two stage races in which Vitor Rodrigues would be the Team leader. At the Vuelta a Burgos it began promising with Rodrigues winning stage 2 in a sprint. But that result would turn out as the best of the race as Rodrigues had a bad day in the deciding mountain stage. In the end he was only 11th. At our goal race, the Tour d'Azerbaijan everything would be different. After the team time trial which the team finished as 6th. Rodrigues showed already strength with winning stage 2 solo.
In the next stages Rodrigues improved his situation even further and won the race in the end with a gap of more than a minute. Rodrigues managed to finish all stages of that race in the top 10 and in the end it was the third win in our third goal race. Besides the yellow jersey he so won also the green points jersey. At the third race the GP Tokyo we were rather anonymous, but Mark Galedo showed our jersey in the break of the day.

Win(s): 4
Best result: 1st Tour d'Azerbaijan
Rider of the month: Vitor Rodrigues

The good performance of Azerbaijan makes us move back into the Top 10.

The battle for the Top 10 is really close. A lot of teams are fighting for the remaining spots. OUr leader Rodrigues is still participating in to races, so the hope is high that we can succeed and finally fulfill our goal of the top 10. Also worth mentioning is that Rodrigues leads the CT rankings with a huge gap over everyone else, so at least this success seems to be settled.

The season is now over. In this post I'll give a short review on our final month of racing and then look at our achievements during the year.

Races:

2		GP Yekaterinburg	C2
2 - 7		Clasico RCN	C2
14 - 19		Tour of Utah	C2HC
23		Zuri Metzgete	C2HC

Coming into the month as 12th of the rankings, it was clear for the team that it will have to perform in our last four races to achieve our rankings goal. On top of that our last goal race of the season was on the calendar. The month started not good, with Masakazu Ito not even getting into the top 20 in Yekaterinburg in a weak field. Still we were optimistic, as our biggest scoring options were still ahead and Vitor Rodrigues didn't disappoint. Having already scored big in previous stage races he went along and won the Clasico RCN, our goal race, in style along with two stage wins and the points classification. On top of that Peilun Wu won another white jersey.
Also in the US we put our money on the Portuguese and also here he came home as the winner, showing that he can also win at races that we didn't declare as goal races. After getting pretty close to a win in the previous stages he managed to secure the last stage win in a mass sprint, which saw him also take the Points jersey. But that wasn't everything. He also won the KoM jersey. After two that successful races there was still one race ahead, Zuri Metzgete. Considering our previous results in hilly classics our expectations were low, which turned out as unjustified as Mustafa Sayar got his biggest result of the season as 2nd. Stagiare Rustom Lim shone as 21st. It's safe to say that this month was our best of the entire season.

Win(s): 9
Best result: 1st Tour of Utah
Rider of the month: Vitor Rodrigues

We were convinced that our good performances would also show in the rankings and they did.

In the end we managed to jump 6 places in the rankings and only came short by 9 points of a certain promotion spot. We can safely declare ourself as the winner of this promotion battle: https://pcmdaily.com/forum/viewthread....st_1020465. We even moved past a team that wasn't involved.
6th will make us promote and so the season can be considered a big success.

Our standout performer was without a doubt Vitor Rodrigues, scoring more than 9 entire teams. Without him, we would've been one of the bottom teams. Nevertheless, we had 4 more guys in the top 100. Sayar bridging across his team mate Wu in the last race. Latter one made most of his points through winning U25 jerseys and consistent point scorings in the mountains, like when he won the Transfaragasan GP. Poorseyedi was also a consistent scorer in stage races, in classics he was rather disappointing with a 12th place being his best. We also can't forget Sarawut, who gave our team the first win ever. He kept on surprising through results out of a break. His 2nd biggest achievement is a KoM jersey win in Algeria.
Biggest disappointments were Oba, Ito and Uugunbayar. Oba did still okay, as he mostly scored a few points in timetrials but all in all he could've done way better. Ito was expected to be our best puncheur and we hoped of him to be as high up in the rankings as Sayar is now. Uugunbayar was a disgrace. On paper he is one of the stronger sprinters in the CT but in the end he only scored lousy four points, often being dropped on easy stages or way too much behind in the deciding phase.

Go to our first page or open the spoiler to see all our Top 10s in stages, Top 20s in GCs and Classics and Top 3s in jersey competitions.

Counting in our jersey wins we achieved 25 wins over the season. 18 of them by our star Vitor Rodrigues, including 5 GC wins, 8 stage wins and 5 won jerseys. 10 more podium results add him to the legends of Continental ManGame history. Second most wins were achieved by Peilun Wu who won a one day race and 3 U25 jerseys. Sarawut got one classic win in January and later added a KoM jersey to that. The last win was by Mirsamad Poorseyedi who won the first stage of the Tour de Beauce with a late attack. Deducting the classification jersey wins, we still got 16 wins.

At the beginning of the year, several previews for the CT were posted. In this part we'll look back on them and compare them to how we really did in the end.

Maxime86's Biased CT Overview

Maxime's best case scenario is very spot-on.

Knockout's Continental Preview

Like many others knockout draws a rather pessimistic outcome for the team. Even if Rodrigues overperforms he expected a lower midtable result for us. Rodrigues did overperform but even as much that we got into 6th.

jph's House of Foolish Predictions

In the end, it weren't the little results that made the difference, but the big results by Vitor Rodrigues.

The new breed: Smowz's CT preview

Smowz's preview is the one of the ones who made a ranking who rated us the highest. But still he is off by 8 places of our final outcome, which just shows again how surprising our performances were. In the end sign language and ape sounds established itself as the main language of the team.

Stromeon's CT Analysis

Mathematical formulas even predicted us as last. Our leaders were considered the worst and the depth as well. In the end the part about the depth might be true with only one big point scorer, which makes the part about the leader turn out wrong.

In the end there was no preview, except maybe maxime's, which was a bit short though, that got near to our outcome. Of course this is no critics, even I expected us to finish in the higher bottom half of the rankings. It's just interesting to look at this after the season is done.

@knockout: Yeah it's really great to see myself way above the teams, I considered myself to be in a fight with for final rankings positions.

@TMM: Yeah like I said, I expected myself to finish somewhere in the middle of the rankigns. If Rodrigues would have scored like Iglinksy who actually has a little better stats and I would have preferred to sign in the transfer season I'd be 14th.

@Stromeon: Thanks, all the best of luck for you too in your second CT season.
I think my leaders have a way lower AVG then other riders with the same main stats. I guess that's why I was the last team in your preview.

@jph: I don't expect to sign any Sri Lankans. But you never know.