Is it getting boring yet? There are only limited ways I can sugar coat this dominance. I didn't consider beforehand that by posting, I'd make an extra effort to deliver. These early attacks require more attention, micromanaging the effort, keeping watch on other groups. So usually I'd only do it once in a while. Just concentrating on the finale I claim many great results, but not quite as sickening as this. Poor competition.
Cheers, guys! Well, I find the Cycling Manager damn addictive, once I start a season it's difficult to stop. Thankfully, preparing a season is always a hassle and I'm able to take a break for weeks or even months.
Since we are now moving into the proper stage racing season, here is an overview of the best stage racers currently. 41 riders have MON of 80 or more, I sorted them by AVG. 15 of those 41 ride for my team, only Morante and Iessnig didn't make the cut (both MON 79). Hähnge is the only rider who's out of a job this season.
We started with a short mountain TT, which had a few short flat and even a downhill section, so I played it in 3D mode, switching between 64 and 84 effort. Le Gall, that rare 8 potential beast, sadly managed to win the stage, but we took the rest of the WT points available.
Stage 3 was a bit messy, we attacked after the first intermediate sprint and wasted a fair amount of energy, because we were caught again before the cat. 3 climb. Only four of my riders had any energy left for another attack, Morillas again leading the way, they gained 54 seconds on a group of 31 riders.
For stage 4 all my riders were down to good freshness and the queen stage loomed ahead, so I wasn't prepared to lead the peloton and eight escapees got away, which thankfully made other teams react and pull us along. The early break wasn't caught, but Le Gall was caught out and lost 90 seconds on my team and the other favorites.
Well, I may not have mentioned this before, but while early or rather mid-stage attacks in one-day races are always a bit risky, likely to get caught again and then a waste of energy, nothing is more devastating than attacking early with a whole team of climbers on a stage full of mountains.
Case in point, the queen stage of this Romandie. I let others do the work up the cat. 2 climb, which wasn't very steep but when we reached the first of the three cat. 1 climbs, I set the whole team's effort around 72. This created a group of roughly 20 riders, including the co-favorites and their best helpers. But when we attacked on the peak, nobody reacted. Le Gall had Schmid with him, Beffort had Brenna and still, they just rolled along, maybe waiting for the next group but that was also doing nothing and waiting for the peloton to catch up.
And so, without much effort, we reached the foot of the next climb with an advantage of 11 minutes! 11 minutes just downhill and on a short flat. Of the dozen escapees we caught up with, Rypan (MON 78) was able to hold on for a long time with the easy tempo (60-64) we set for the final big climbs and he will be rewarded with a 9th overall. Beffort and Le Gall and Polyakov all reacted too late, one after the other they set off on their own, chasing and attacking each other.
The final flat 20.2 km ITT was won by the specialists, Le Gall's 3rd place was not enough to break back into the top 10. Iruarrizaga won the mountain jersey and overall victory went once again to Morillas. He also won Paris-Nice and the Basque Country Tour, plus he was 2nd in Catalunya.
Morillas currently leads the WT ranking with 439 points ahead of Lorenzen with 379 points. Lorenzen won Tirenno-Adriatico and the Tour of Catalunya, was 2nd in the Basque Country and now 4th in the Romandie. At this point we already hold the top 21 spots in the WT ranking. Worst rider so far is Salvati with 140 points, but he's still ahead of Okorochkov (128) and Olivier (92).
Edited by Ripley on 05-06-2020 12:09
We'll have to wait until stage 12 to see any mountains. We started off with a just 1.1 km long prologue which was won by Stroek, followed by Turner and Howson, Morante was 5th. I expect more for the other two ITTs in this race, they are both classified as hilly, which should suit my riders.
The next two flat stages went to the sprinters, after the early rest day the first hilly stage awaited. Van der Lem completed the squad for this Giro and is the only world class puncher in the field and was thus favorite ahead of Morillas. We did nothing to help catch the six escapees, but as expected they didn't stand a chance. On the final hill we had to leave our weaker riders behind and settled the victory from a group of nine, van der Lem claiming the expected victory ahead of old faithful Nijpels.
Nijpels is now in his 9th professional season, all with our team. He may not be the best at anything but is a good allrounder who never charges too much for his services. His WT rankings so far: 55, 26, 9, 9, 6, 15, 6 and 5. He won the Giro once and was runner-up twice.
35 year old Kelderman won the simulated flat stage 5 with a minute on the peloton and is the new leader of the Giro. On the final cat. 1 climb of the hilly stage 6 we dropped most of the opposition, bar Kelderman and Brenna who had support from two team mates. Dropping those three with another attack left only Morillas with energy to spare so he attacked his team mates and Kelderman and won by a minute. The best stage racers participating in this Giro have already lost a lot of time after these two hilly stages: Brenna (MON 85) is already 4:45 behind, Mohoric (MON 82) 7:12, Olivier 9:33.
Stage 8: We didn't manage to get clear of the peloton on or after the cat. 2 climb and couldn't shake the last few riders on the last up- and downhill and had to concede the stage to Zemlinsky. Kelderman lost 3:44 and dropped back to 11th.
The first hilly TT wasn't difficult enough and too long to have any chance of winning against a strong field of specialists. Howson (TT 85) won the stage ahead of Ros (TT 84) and Lönngren (TT 85), Morillas and Morante at least beat Stroek (TT 85). This is the top 20 after stage 9.
Zemlinksy (MON 80) and Salinas (MON 81) aren't a great worry for the GC. I'll let van der Lem drop out of the Giro at this point, since there aren't any hilly stages left. Just six flat and five (tough) mountain stages as well as another ITT on stage 19.
Edited by Ripley on 05-06-2020 12:11
Ah, here it is, the last dirty little secret. I'm not certain what conditions are necessary to trigger this, but when you lead quite comfortably with several riders, you can often send somebody into the break and nobody will bother chasing. I've won stage with over 30 minutes on the peloton in such situations and Grand Tours will often end up with a surprise winner from one of these breakaways.
Here it was the work of my team which kept Salvati to “only” 10 minutes, I chased down the rest of the breakaway. Brenna was no problem, only his better placed team mate Salinas followed my attack over the cat 3. climb and was kind enough to even lead our group for a while, since we'd dropped Zemlinsky.
The Giro now has an Italian leader, 31 year old Salvati, who celebrated his first WT victory – though he did win the Tour of Qinghai Lake twice when he was younger.
Instead of sending a rider into the breakaway on stage 14, I decided to use this stage to really put some time between my riders and the rest. Since other teams were unhappy with the large breakaway, they pulled the peloton hard in the flat and up most of the unclassified mountain. As soon as they gave up the chase, I attacked and my riders were in the clear with nobody wanting or able to chase.
After the gap had grown to 15 minutes I conserved some energy by setting the effort at 32, at a heart rate below 145 the green bar doesn't get reduced. While my opponents spent a lot more energy catching up and attacking each other. At the bottom of the final climb they were 6 minutes behind but with an effort of 72 the gap opened up again. Zamora was allowed to win the stage, also his first ever WT win.
On the very next day, I sent Zamora into the breakaway and he won the stage and is now leading the Giro by over 7 minutes. We didn't catch enough of the breakaway for more top 5 places and instead Brenna displayed his superior climbing skill and gained back 2 minutes on our riders, but the gap is still over 14 minutes to 8th place.
A rest day and two flat stages – both won from breakaways – brought us to stage 18 where it was our best climber, Iruarrizuga, who was allowed into the break and he won as comfortably as his team mates before him and is now second in the Giro behind his compatriot Zamora – two Venezuelans are now in the lead. Brenna and Salinas were taking turn in our group after the cat. 1 climb which meant no problem staying with Brenna up the final climb.
Stage 19 was a hilly ITT, with the usual tactics Morillas recorded his 13th victory of the season so far.
The penultimate stage was the last chance to shake up the general classification and I messed up a bit. These are the kinds of problems I face: I wanted Cisco Salvati to win the Giro. He has the fewest WT points of the group and he's an Italian. But I also felt like catching the rest of the escapees, there are a few WT points for stage positions down to 5th place after all.
I should have given the escapees a larger advantage and known that Brenna will try his luck on the HC climb and I wasn't going to let him drop us – well, with his MON 85 he did drop my team but we caught him again going downhill. Long story short – Salvati failed to claim the Giro victory by 36 seconds.
The final stage was won by another breakaway. Zamora wins the Giro ahead of Salvati, Irarrizuga is third and also claims the mountain jersey. And Zualing wins the team title with an advantage of 2:34:12 over Gayko. Not much fun racing against my team...
Cheers guys! Salvati may be disappointed at first, he was in virtual pink by several minutes on that stage. But later he should be very happy with a podium finish. Before he joined my team he had the two overall victories at Qinghai Lake, a 19th place in the Giro and a 20th in the Vuelta. Now he's a star! And, yes, two good Venezuelans, and they have an even better compatriot as a team mate, Olivares. He'll be in action soon.
Here are the standings in the World Tour rankings after the Giro:
The punchers will have plenty of chances to gain more points in the remaining one-day races and the Tour of Poland. Though that goes for Okorochkov, too. As for the final 9 riders, they warmed up with the Tours of Norway and/or Bavaria and will do the Luxemberg Tour next, then they'll be ready for the Tour de Suisse, except for Prazenica, who'll ride the Dauphine instead.
Edited by Ripley on 05-06-2020 12:16
The stage racing team for the first half of the season remains together for the Dauphine. Since Prazenica will join from the second team I have to rest one rider, being such an equal-opportunity employer this season I benched WT leader Morillas. A bit unfair because the course is tailor made for him with several hilly stages. But I am - and you surely also are by now - quite confident we'll do just fine without him.
The opening stage went to the sprinters, stage 2 was already hilly but with an easy finale and others profited from our work to keep the sprinters at bay, with Schmid winning ahead of Beffort and Miles. No time difference was recorded for the first 60 riders.
On the third stage we failed to catch the small breakaway, but with a late team attack managed to gain 28 seconds on the opposition, which was enough for David Miles to become the new leader of the race.
Stage 4 was a flat ITT over 38.4 km, despite a couple of small hills I simulated the stage. Unsurprisingly, Marco Stroek (TT 85) won the stage, but Prazenica (TT 81) was just 8 seconds behind and slips into the leader's jersey. Third was good old Nijpels. Iruarrizaga and Salvati lost 4:20 and 4:41 and dropped back considerably in the rankings.
Next was a typical Mont Ventoux stage, nearly flat until the hard final climb. So I didn't send anybody into the breakaway and trusted the other teams to contain it.
With 18 km of high percentages ahead, I went on the dot at 72 and had trouble keeping the team together, riders kept getting caught behind slower opponents, but the further uphill we got, the more the situation cleared.
Iruarrizaga was holding back to keep his team mates nearby and had a lot of energy left, so I let him take off on his own with 6 km to go and he won by nearly 2 minutes and returned into the top 10. We couldn't prevent Pankov (MON 84) from grabbing 2nd place, on equal time with my riders plus Le Gall and Schmid, while Beffort and Brenna faded, still getting into their rhythm for the TdF, I presume.
Stage 6 featured one steep cat. 2 hill with a fast descent to the finish line. We could do no more than create a group of 15 riders, but since Le Gall was missing (he eventually lost 1:51 on this stage) we were prepared to distance him and Beffort took the stage, Schmid came 2nd and Parada 3rd.
Stage 7 offered seven categorised climbs and was thus perfect for an early team attack. Responding to early breakaway attempts the peloton rode hard up the first climb and we were down to a group of 40 riders at the top. The team took off and when no chase was organised, pressed on, though it was still a long way to the finish line.
Despite a lead of nearly 5 minutes, we were prepared to slow down again and rejoin the peloton for a while, but then Gayko's Beffort and Brenna attacked together and we upped the tempo again. Shortly after, Le Gall took off on his own, didn't coordinate the chase with his team mate, Schmid, who went on a solo attack later instead.
On the HC climb Beffort dropped Brenna and came within 90 seconds to our team but was already tiring. At the summit we were ahead by 2 minutes on Beffort, 3 on Brenna, 5 on Le Gall, 8 on Schmid and 10 on the peloton.
Our weakest link was Salvati, I wanted him to win the stage for more WT points but his green bar emptied on the last descent and his team mates had to slow down to near standstill so that he would get his victory. It still produced a comfortable margin and we held the top 8 spots again at the end of the stage.
The final stage was slightly disappointing, the two remaining breakaway riders held off a large group, none of our riders made the top 5. Nijpels managed to win overall as well as the sprinter jersey, Iruarrizaga takes the mountain jersey. The final classification:
Even if I only comment every few updates (they are coming so quickly 
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