Early in the season, we have a special race for many reasons. Bayern Rundfahrt is a home race for us, our sponsors want a win and it marked the debut of our leader Luis Leon Sanchez in our team colors.

Our whole team was prepared to help him to a big result : Even sprinter Simon Geschke sacrificed his chances in the sprint finishes for his role as luxury domestique for Luis Leon.

Pre-race Sanchez had to be considered as one of the top favourites for the GC aside of riders like Costa and Fiedler. But in a very disappointing TT (normally one of his strengths) he lost 2'21'' to stage winner Jacob Fiedler.

It was obvious that a huge performance had to follow on the queen stage (#4) to get the expected result. - And it followed. First, the team did a terrific job to control the pace allowing LLS to attack everyone else and ride to a solo victory par excellence.

It was enough to podium the race behind Kristjan Koren and Ian Bibby which is (yet another) great result for a newly promoted team!

As said above, the rest of the team focussed on protecting LLS. Nevertheless, upcoming sprinter Janis Dakteris stole some unexpected ranking points on stage 1 as he finished the stage as 7th. He surely benefitted from the lack of motivation of some more established sprinters like Alexander Krieger and Steele von Hoff.

- Geschke seems to be a huge Claus Weselsky fan #tourDownUnder #Barcelona
- These late attack seems to get our signature move #tourDownUnder2 #tourDownUnder4
- If Fablok joins a break you've got to follow #tourDownUnder5
- One gotta love aggressive loanees #tourDownUnder6 #kigali
- Perhaps I should try to hype Dzamastagic even more? #Barcelona
- Mediocre cobble debut: Boonen 10th #kigali

On the beautiful roads of Tuscany, Strade Bianche is always a real feast to the eyes. But this year we did not came for the enviroment but we wanted to shine ourselves on the gravel roads.

Together with teams like Kenya Airways or the Irish Rovers our young talents Mohoric, Smirnovs and Bekmanis controlled the gap to the early break to deliver Sanchez into a position where he can fight for the victory.

It was all down to 8 team leaders when Luis Leon tried to solo the last 8 kilometres to the finish. But others cooperated well to give him no edge over the rest of the favourites so his attempt ended just before the final hill. With a lot of lactat in his legs he stood no chance for the win and ended 6th. We cant blame him for his brave attempt. Still a respectable result !

- LLS still has PT legs #Grand-Dusche
- It's all about the break #Gisborne

After a good start to the season we could celebrate yet another milestone. We never won the general classification of a stage race. Until now. But after today's final stage of the Tour of Ukraine this isnt true anymore.

After a strong performance leading to a solo stage win on the queen stage to Chernyk LLS could defend his GC lead in the crucial 45 km long time trial. A strong second place finish also got him the points classification.

The whole team shows more confidence than ever before and not only our leaders profit from that. Smukulis and Siskevicius both finish inside the top 30 GC positions while Emils Liepins, Latvian RR champion, only closely fails to get a top ten result in the mass sprint on stage 1.

This puts up quite high in the rankings as we are already over 650 points (23,4 PPRD) and the next three races are Dwars Door Vlaanderen, Gent-Wevelgem and E3. A slow fall in the rankings afterwards is expected though.

It is the highlight for the PCT elite cobblers: The flemish triple. Within just a few weeks 3 of the biggest PCT cobbled events took place: Dwars Door Vlaanderen, Gent - Wevelgem and E3 Prijs. It was no secret that Belgian legend Boonen peaked for these races. Especially Gent-Wevelgem is one of his favourite races having won 3 editions already and having finished a stunning 7 times out of 8 editions on the podium. Only in 2013 he missed out the podium after Pokerstars.com surprisingly appointed Frederik Nolf as leader for the race and Boonen worked a lot at the front in early race situations.

It started with Dwaars Door Vlaanderen. Lacking man power due to a very arguably wildcard decision Kulppi went into the 6-man BotD to get rid of the chasing duty.

Meanwhile in the back, Boonen missed three decisive attacks by Joseph, Summerhill and Baugnies so he could only fight for 4th. Together with Aegon's Sep Vanmarck he attacked his 8-man group very close to the finish and could outsprint him for 4th. Nick Ingels finished as respectable 20th while Kulppi finished on a strong 34th place.

Next station: Gent-Wevelgem. It's one of Boonen's favourite races but unlike everybody's expectations he tried it from 59 km out. Since this attack only lasted 22km it was an unnecessary waste of energy. Isolated from this point he had to play it calm and effectively lacked the wasted energy in the final mass sprint which was won by Maxime Daniel. Boonen finished second to make it 8 podiums in 9 editions. What a legend!

And most recently: E3 Prijs. A tougher race was expected and so it turned out. Vanspeybrouck and Summerhill were simply too strong for Boonen. Vanmarcke and two early attackers also finished ahead so Boonen had to settle for 6th.

Janis Dakteris performed very well as 17th and Nick Ingels could add some ranking points as well as 27th.

The first ranking update has been published and after the Flemish Triple we currently sit in the direct promotion spots. It is very close at the top and a lot can happen but this surely proves the great work that we have done lately.

Luis Leon Sanchez Gil even leads the individual rankings until now.

The cobbled season ain't over yet. Our one big season highlight is coming now: The Hell of the North a.k.a Paris Roubaix.
It is Boonen's absolute favourite race and we are proud to have received a wildcard for it's 9th edition. 8 editions have been hosted and Boonen won 4 of them! In 3 other editions he finished on the podium while only missing out in back in 2008 where he finished 4th.

Just 3 days later Boonen will hopefully be recovered already as the KBC De Panne Tour starts.

Meanwhile, Evaldas Siskevius and Simon Geschke compete in the Sean Kelly Classic on Seskin Hill. They are competing against a tough opposition so we have low expectations. A bit TV time at least would be cool.

The King of the Classics and his heir. Tom Boonen and Sam Bewley. Two legends of their sport rode together to the legendary Velodrome. Who could have scripted it better?

Everyone expected the battle of the B's: Bewley, Burghardt, Blythe. And eventhough Bewley is the big winner in the end he has to share the spotlight with a man who was already written off.

Despite of his good recent form Tom Boonen other favourites underestimated him.
Thus, unlike in previous years, Tommeke could hide deep inside the pack waiting for the crucial move. But when Bewley really went for it Boonen was the only one capable of following.

The duo rode together until close to the velodrome when Bewley successfully attacked Boonen for the win.

It was a day of records for both of them: Bewley as the first rider to win the Monument Triple in a single season and only second one with the Career Monument Triple after Tom Boonen and 3 consecutive Roubaix victories while Boonen features for the 7th consecutive edition on the podium and finishing at least 4th in all 9 P-R editions. This also is Boonen's 15th Monument podium ( 10 of which were wins).

The huge performances of Olli Kulppi and Andzs Flaksis who both finished in the top 25 nearly went unnoticed.