21 riders will wear the Puma jersey in 2015, with 4 more riders loaned out for the season.
We have only 8 maxed out riders, but at the same time there will be 7 talents who sadly won't be able to join them after the season. We need every point and every good team mate that's available.
THE CLIMBERS
An area much improved compared to last season, better and more consistent scoring by our stage racing core is going to be a crucial point when it comes to our promotion chances.
We are well aware of the increased quality of competition in PCT this season, therefore we sent Dominik Nerz to some heavy training camps to make him able to hopefully stay with the best for a longer time and surprise on a good day.
As well as having a better leader, we also strenghtened his support. Francesco Bongiorno and Nikias Arndt are going to be the German's best helpers on the road and may also score well themselves.
Especially Arndt as a new signing will go into the season with high expectations on his shoulders, as his sprint can make the difference if a bigger group arrives at the finish in easier stages.
A small step below them, but still an important part of the team should be Johannes Heider, who got relegated to 4th best climber from second best last season, and the reasons why Silvio Herklotz is a Puma rider don't have to be mentioned here again.
He has any freedoms he wants, but neither the management nor Silvio expect the same kind of season as he had in 2014 again.
THE PUNCHEURS
Wilco Kelderman is finally at the end of his development and arrived at a point where he can win races and influence our overall standings quite a lot. His 2014 season was abysmal even for his then weaker stats, so while we have big hopes in him to step up to a Top 20 campaign in the individual standings, Wilco himself is sufficiently motivated to prove his talent as well.
At his side in the classics and hilly stage races at all times will be a great trio of riders.
Mario Vogt hasn't had the same kind of off-season as Kelderman did, but that should hopefully only help the bigger cause as contrary to last season, there won't be any doubts to who will lead the squad coming into the race.
While Vogt lacks some secondary stats, his two compatriots Fabio Felline and Jetse Bol are completely different riders in that regard.
Felline packs a deadly sprint among the good and great puncheurs of the division, so whenever the winner and podium spots can't be decided early enough, he can pounce and overperform in the last 3k or 1000 metres.
Bol doesn't have the same kind of sprint, but his valuable stat is FL which will massively help him to stay fresh throughout the race and pace Kelderman or the group he's in in the last hour or two.
THE SPRINTERS
As the division's most successful sprinter last season, the final result of Puma's promotion campaign relies heavily on Gerald Ciolek proving his value in 2015 as well.
With Lo Cicero out of PCT, we hope Gerald can use his sprint advantage over everyone else even better than before.
To ensure the best conditions for his success, we assisted him by keeping his usual leadout intact, and two of those three riders gaining an XP level will certainly help as well.
Arnaud Demare is possibly an even bigger prospect than Herklotz thanks to his sadly not unique, but one day definitely superior sprint and puncheur abilities to most riders.
For now, his sprint is still more impressive than his uphill ability, so the main use of Demare will be in stage races with a couple of flat stages and some hilly classics that can end in a sprint.
THE COBBLERS
A terrain left rather untouched last season after the Nuyens catastrophe in ProTour, the cobbles are impossible to ignore for a complete team that plans to be amongst the best of the divison.
Leading this part of the team is a highly motivated Maxime Daniel who returns from two loan years.
With the return of BPost and the new attraction Summerhill, the PCT hasn't exactly become more cobbler friendly, but if Daniel can hang on through the hard parts, his sprint is well above average (we learned from Nuyens!).
Support in those races will come from Tim Declerq, who also has a nice hill stat to help in other races, and Sascha Weber, another new signing and an even better sprinter than Daniel.
The aforementioned leadouts will also be valuable team mates for those three.
Last but not least, a small fun fact: this will be first season in the Puma jersey for Bongiorno, Daniel and Demare despite them having a contract with us for 3 years now.
As all our PT loanees from last season won't max out on HC race days alone, we requested wildcards again as we already had great success in those races in every PCT season.
Therefore we're happy to announce that we were granted a spot at our home tour Deutschland Tour again, where we will hope to be as competitive as possible to hopefully put Gerald Ciolek in the leaders jersey just like last year.
With no PCT races clashing, we should be able to send our strongest possible lineup (considering the XP needs).
Additionally and very unexpectedly, we will also ride Tirreno-Adriatico, a race we had limited success in at our only participation in 2013.
We are very happy to receive a second wildcard for a race that initially only was included in our planning as a backup for a failed Deutschland application, and despite some unfortunate clashes, we will be able to at least send our strong climbers there.
Definitely a solid roster.
Kelderman and Ciolek will bug me very often this season, probably.
Nerz looks good, but won't be as awesome as hoped with the new mountain goats in PCT, even when trained, as you might've figured
Nice to see you're in Deutschland Tour, and just like you, TomTom will try to make an impact there as well.
Some great depth and 2 fantastic leaders in Ciolek and Kelderman. Especially Ciolek with such a beasty leadout... - awesome.
And while you are not happy about so many talents who don't make the next step this year you can still max out your strongest ones on your own.
I just hope for you that you can promote. Otherwise, it could be difficult to get all those riders under your salary cap...
I still really like your team but i just hope that it doesn't annoy me too much now that i have to race against Kelderman, Ciolek, Felline, etc. myself
There are no big surprises in our race planning this season, as we can't risk to take a gamble à la ToA or similar.
Our enourmous variety of leaders this time around allows us (for the first time ever) to send a clear leader to each race as there is no need for pure XP gain purpose lineups anymore.
Therefore, I don't think leader schedules are necessary to give everyone a good idea which Puma star to expect where.
Two little interesting facts are that we will once again start and finish the season as early/late as possible with DUC and Japan Cup, and that our September and October schedules look very packed with races to hopefully take plenty of points on the back end of the season in case a late surge is necessary to secure a promotion spot.
January Preview
There's only one race for Team Puma - SAP in January as both TDU and Tachira scared us away after the recent surge of punchy sprinters in PCT and the Maillet debacle.
Down Under Classic
Gerald Ciolek
Arnaud Demare
Jocelyn Bar
Sascha Weber
Barry Markus
Patrick Bercz
Maxime Daniel
Victor Shishelov
The first race of the season is always something special, and the hectic nature of the Down Under Classic only makes predictions worse.
Nevertheless, noone needs a crystal ball to predict that Gerald Ciolek will be the best sprinter on paper in every race he enters throughout the season, so we have to strive to get him into the perfect position to use that advantage in the last kilometre every day of the week.
As this is an HC race, we deemed it reasonable to further strenghten his leadout beyond the usual 77 sprinters he'll always have at his side and send Arnaud Demare to Australia as well. He should take over from Jocelyn Bar with Gerald in his wheel.
To ensure a puncture or crash by one of our leadouts won't ruin the whole day, the rest of the lineup mostly consists of further minor sprinters to replace them that also can easily be used for relaying duties if the race goes as planned.
Finally, Shishelov is our breakaway catching beast to help with the general chase as many eyes in the peloton will certainly be on us to take care of that.
Last year's race saw Ciolek finish 3rd after a hectic finale in which we were unable to form a train for him. He had to come from 9th position inside the last 500 metres and luckily still stormed past many riders to achieve our first goal of the season.
We hope that our approach will change this time and that the result at least stays the same.
Post #3 is now updated with the calendar and will continuously be updated throughout the season with links to discussion threads and reports.Edited by cio93 on 03-06-2015 15:24
With the season slowly coming to an end and everyone else giving updates on their talents, Team Puma - SAP also wants to inform everyone about the progress our young riders made this year.
10 very promising riders gained an xp level, which will still leave us with 11 unmaxed riders ahead of the next transfer season (10x lvl4, 1x lvl3).
We're far from done!
We would like to use the opportunity to thank In'N'Out, Quickstep and BelarusBank for taking care of our riders for this season. Thanks for the great cooperation!
The credit for the template goes to Aidan (and SotD for making me more aware of it), thanks for creating a beautiful layout.
Clement Chevrier
3.88 -> 4.00
Climber v1
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Chevrier was a 50k signing due to his ability to cover mountain and hill domestique work equally well.
His low secondary stats might seem detrimental at first, but they will allow him to attend nearly any race on tough terrain, although his TT might keep him out of GT lineups if they contain a TTT.
With some luck, the FA market might offer a more allround rider for minimum wage at some point, so his future in our team isn't entirely certain.
Maxime Daniel
4.77 -> 4.100
Cobbles
Fl
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The first of many of our talents to lead the team straight away after maxing out, Maxime Daniel already has a cobbled classic win to his palmares this season and his great sprint will come in handy in whatever division we'll ride next season.
It also allows us to use him as a leadout man, and the full REC bonus he receives might even make him attend a GT here or there.
To go for the big classic wins, he might require some training, so it'll be interesting to see if we can save up some money for that in the future.
Arnaud Demare
4.80 -> 4.100
Hills
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Finally, the time has come. Arnaud Demare is maxed out.
Don't be a fool and believe this is his final form though.
So lock up your daughter, lock up your wife.
Lock up your back door and run for your life.
Nikias Arndt
4.99 -> 4.100
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Arndt was our marquee signing of the 2015 transfer season. Likely ruled out of GC contention in most, if not all stage races due to his TT, he makes that up with a sprint better than anyone but Phinney and Trofimov in those MO dimensions.
In all "easy" mountain and hill stages as well as towards the end of draining stage races, he can compete for the win or at least first place from the first major group.
Especially last PT season, we also saw 79 mountain riders fight for the big KoM jerseys, so maybe Arndt can attempt similar somewhere.
Silvio Herklotz
2.75 -> 3.99
Stage Race
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Silvio Herklotz will undoubtedly be the cornerstone of Team Puma - SAP together with Demare as long as this team exists.
Taking a slower approach to developing into a GT win candidate, he will continue his luxury domestique work next season before likely receiving a leader role in 2017.
Additionally, thanks to his versatility Silvio will look for his own success in a multitude of races through breakaway attempts, which already proved to be a very successful approach in the last two seasons.
Christian Mager
3.52 -> 4.00
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Similar to Chevrier, we signed Christian Mager a couple seasons ago to secure great depth in both our mountain and hill lineups in the future. You can never have enough of those riders on cheap wages, so we're happy to be able to fill at least one of these spots with a young German.
Even on level 4, he already can do important work for our captains, especially Kelderman, and he should be allowed into several breaks where he can be competitive in.
Jasha Sütterlin
4.09 -> 4.100
Time Trial
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Jasha is with us since the team started in 2012, and it's great to see him max out now and straight away challenge Schädlich for the "title" of third best German TTer.
Time trialing is an aspect we always lacked in our squad, so he will be an important reinforcement to lead all TTTs and keep time losses there within an acceptable region for our leaders.
Furthermore, some smallers stage races with less opposition might allow him to challenge for stage wins himself.
Mario Vogt
4.95 -> 4.100
Hills
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Always in the shadow of Kelderman, Mario Vogt had quiet seasons with Puma so far, but now he can be an unpredictable element as a co-leader.
Whenever the mo/hill ratio turns unfavourable for him, he's ready to be one of the best domestiques for those races to ensure Wilco stays in contention.
With only the 4 main stats for a puncheur (besides ACC) above 70, his amount of race days should allow him to cover more races than other riders with a similar hill stat.
Francesco Bongiorno
4.79 -> 4.100
Stage Race
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Bongiorno finally maxed out as well and will have a lot of freedom next season.
He's just below Top 10 material for now, but likely there will still be chances for him to go for his own results besides being the last helper for Nerz or whoever climber we might sign.
On the other hand, he had loads of PM offers ever since we got him years ago....
Dylan van Baarle
3.93 -> 4.00
Time Trial
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Any PT team needs TTers, and since we had to get rid of Dumoulin among others throughout the seasons, Dylan van Baarle is actually our second best in that discipline at the moment.
He's a decent helper for the flat and on the hills as well, so we'll likely keep him around for the "standard workhorse and occasional breakaway" position, and once we focus on GT success in a couple of seasons, we'll appreciate him a lot more.
Mainly strong riders in that bunch. I am looking forward to see how they will fare in the PT next season. Maxime Daniel has been on my shortlist ever since he was implemented into the game, and he remains to be so.
Bongiorno is looking very interesting at this point, and could well battle for a lot of top 15s including stagewins and KOM Jerseys. In the past history, teams without clear leaders have struggled, but with the depth here I cant see you failing a top 10 spot next season - And I really welcome you in the ranks :-)
Gerald Ciolek
Arnaud Demare
Barry Markus
Victor Shishelov
