Deins Kanepejs is supposedly one of three triplets separated at birth, alongside Asgreen and another who cannot be named yet, the trio have practically the exact same stats and Netia dreamed of having three of the same rider, unfortunately it transpired that we only ended up with one, fortunately Deins is talented and has an appropriately hard to spell name, so he's really a perfect fit.
Kwiatkowski to you team is nice, he will do you good..
And getting Vantomme again with his supermegaawesome leadout with hidden +80 stats in FL,SP,ACC Kristian Sobota!!!
Ofc Mads Pedersen is a very good future, you can develop him and I will get in touch in some years.
Filip Bengtsson comes into the team on request of our sponsor, Sandvik, he is our first ever Swedish rider and also our second Scandinavian rider who isn't kind of Danish, which is strange because we used to be half Norwegian. Bengtsson is a young sprinter with a lot of potential who we hope can shine with the team.
Last transfers, neo-pro Szymon Rekita was swept up by the Berg Cycles team, known as Karcher at the time. We had no space in the team to contest him, despite desperately wanting one of Poland's biggest talents on our roster. Late in this transfer window however, we were shocked to see him sacked! Unfortunately we did not have the budget to resign him as a full free agent as we had spent the last on an offer the day before. However, we assembled the best offer we could, the minor wage of a stagiare and waited for an overbid, but, amazingly, he signed with us! Even better, our trainers claim that missing a good portion of the year will not impede his development and that it may even be better for him in the long run, to not over race him this year. Either way, Szymon will experience 2017 and many future seasons in Netia's colours
Rekita is a great signing as a stagiare, I have checked his stats after I saw your bid right after his sacking. If I wanted to take a stagiare this season, I probably would've contested you. Kind of surprised that noone else did, though.
Bikex wrote:
Rekita is a great signing as a stagiare, I have checked his stats after I saw your bid right after his sacking. If I wanted to take a stagiare this season, I probably would've contested you. Kind of surprised that noone else did, though.
Thanks I'm really surprised that nobody else went for him, I guess a lot of people didn't notice him because he wasn't there when they sorted the DB by FAs. But still, I thought somebody would check the stats like you did and make an overbid (or just outright go for him as an FA )
Nice squad, your stagaires look like they have good potential for the future, especially Rekita, and hopefully your leaders like Sanchez and Panayatov will score you lots of points this season. Best of luck mate, as always liking the Central/Eastern European/Scandinavian team theme.
Martii_Scots01 wrote:
Nice squad, your stagaires look like they have good potential for the future, especially Rekita, and hopefully your leaders like Sanchez and Panayatov will score you lots of points this season. Best of luck mate, as always liking the Central/Eastern European/Scandinavian team theme.
Thanks! Unfortunately this year Panayotov has left for VMP - Argon and Sanchez will likely spend a fair bit of the season on domestique duties for Kwiatek, although he will get some chances for himself as well.
Martii_Scots01 wrote:
Nice squad, your stagaires look like they have good potential for the future, especially Rekita, and hopefully your leaders like Sanchez and Panayatov will score you lots of points this season. Best of luck mate, as always liking the Central/Eastern European/Scandinavian team theme.
Thanks! Unfortunately this year Panayotov has left for VMP - Argon and Sanchez will likely spend a fair bit of the season on domestique duties for Kwiatek, although he will get some chances for himself as well.
That's my over-reliance on looking at your squad list on the 1st page been exposed...
With the final deals of the transfers finalising a few days ago, the Netia - Vónin team is fully complete are prepared for the 2017 season.
Karol Andrzej Domagalski
Pawel Bernas
Pawel Franczak
Adrian Honkisz
Mortern Reckweg
Adam Stachowiak
Luis Leon Sanchez
Matteo Rabottini
Michael Mørkøv
Torkil Veyhe
Przemyslaw Kasperkiewicz
Gunnar Dahl-Olsen
Jóanis Albert Nielsen
Iliyan Kolev
Michał Kwiatkowski
Maximme Vantomme
Kristian Sobota
Mads Pedersen
Deins Kanepejs
Mark Padun*
Filip Bengtsson**
Szymon Rekita**
*Loan In
**Stagiare
Departures
Our first ever stage winner left and retired due to his age in Adam Pierzga, a sad moment for the team as he enters our hall of fame, so too does Zsolt Der, who won Tatranska Clasica and the Giro del Capo in our debut season. Our great sprinter duo Maxime Vantomme and Kristian Sobota left, then confusingly came back for cheaper than if we kept them at the start.
Petar Panayotov departs to join Bulgarian team VMP - Argon 18, hoping for a more successful year in the Continental Division. While Andrea Palini was dropped because of his excessive wage demands and he finds a home at Ferrero - Samruk. Cypriot Christos Loizou has chosen to pursue a career outside of cycling and finally Jaroslaw Dabrowski, Tomasz Marcynski and Markus Fahnert will also retire due to their age. We can only wish all these cyclists successful lives outside the team.
Arrivals
With many riders leaving though, many new names can arrive, Michał Kwiatkowski finally comes home to Poland and will lead us in the hills and mountains as our major signing this season, while Faroese riders Jóanis Albert Nielsen and Gunnar Dahl-Olsen will play a role on the cobbles and use their big engines on the flat roads. Maxime Vantomme and Kristian Sobota come back after spending a almost a week off the team and will power us on the flat roads.
Our primary focus in bringing in riders is getting talented guys for the future, we payed dearly for Mads Pedersen but in a few years he will form a deadly duo with Prezemyslaw Kasperkiewicz on the cobbles. Bulgarian Iliyan Kolev will one day support the duo as well, while Latvian Deins Kanepejsjoins as a future man for the hilly terrains. We also grabbed two stagiares; Szymon Rekita will be a future time trial star from Poland and Filip Bengtsson will be a classy sprinter one day. Finally we take in future superstar climber, Mark Padun.
Loaned In Stagiare
Manager's Analysis
First it's important to mention that it's never really been our goal to promote to the PT and Netia would prefer we waited until we had some Poles strong enough to lead us before we had a solid go at it.
However, with Polish rider Kwiatkowski on the market, signing him was a must. He is capable on all terrains and will excel in hilly tours with mountain stages, especially with the training we've given him. Spaniard Luis Leon Sanchez is getting old but seems to have one more strong PCT season left in him so will do domestique work for Kwiatek but also get his own chances to lead. We maintain a decent support cast for the hills from last year with Matteo Rabottini, Adrian Honkisz, Adam Stachowiak and occasionally Michael Mørkøv andPawel Bernas.
We have a secondary team as well, which might as well be almost completely separate from our hills squad, Maximme Vantomme will head a sprint squad largely similar to last season, with Kristian Sobota, Pawel Franczak, Morten Reckweg, Michael Mørkøv and Pawel Bernas aiming to keep things running as if last season never ended.
Barring something extremely surprising happening, these two squads should be enough to surpass or at the very least equal our result last season, which means that we should be safe from relegation. With our most important objective checked off, we could prepare for the long-term, especially as we have a goal for a 2019 or 2020 sling for the PT division. This of course means one thing: talents!
Prezemyslaw "Kaspa" Kasperkiewicz and Torkil Veyhe will race with the squad this season after Kaspa was loaned out and Veyhe raced as a stagiare, both are their nation's respective 'supertalent', with Kaspa hopefully developing to one day be one of the greatest classics riders in the world, while Veyhe is impressively strong on the flat roads and has a really nice kick.
This season however we brought in the one rider who could make Kaspa more deadly, Mads Pedersen, the Dane simply has a massive engine. It's basically impossible to drop him and he can sit in front of the peloton for hours on end. The cobblestones are a minor nuisance to him and at the end of all that, he can sprint against the best! In a few seasons time Kaspa and Mads will be a cobbles duo able to contest any race.
Pedersen isn't the only new young face though, Jóanis Albert Nielsen and Iliyan Kolev join and will be valuable domestiques for the duo in the future, while Rekita comes in as a stagiare who will not be too badly effected by missing a season, he's a strong time-tralist who aims to be Poland's best.
We haven't entitrely neglected our two current departments of hills and sprints either, Kanepejs represents Latvia and our hill department, while Bengtsson gives us a taste of Sweden and some speed in the sprints.
Trianed Kwiatkowski looks great. With this upgrade it made sense for you to pay so much. Couldn't go as high myself. A 1000 points scorer like LLS of old who himself now will gain from having Kwiatkowski as his leader.
@Spilak - Thanks, I was really keen to get him (no matter how high you went ) and can't waste stats like his without training. Was also the plan with LLS like you mentioned, Kwiat's presence will probably boost him a lot.
@Croatia - Thanks, we might be bad in the discipline now but maybe in 2020 we'll dominate.
The team has only participated in 2 classics so far but it's still worth recounting our 2017 debut:
Down Under Classic
Maxime Vantomme kicked off his season in Australia for the second time in a row but this time skipped the tour in Adelaide. This race was an important test of form for him, against a strong field, however he delivered, taking place behind Lo Cicero in the Valio train when he realised many of his key support riders were either held up in crashes or too tired to support. However, he still sprinted to third place behind Óscar Guerao and Mathew Goss.
Result:
1
Óscar Guerao
SPAR - Shimano - SCG
1h33'00
2
Matthew Goss
Indosat Ooredoo - ANZ
s.t.
3
Maxime Vantomme
Netia - Vónin
s.t.
4
Fabio Silvestre
Berg Cycles
s.t.
5
Ivano Lo Cicero
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
28
Pawel Bernas
Netia - Vónin
s.t.
35
Deins Kanepejs
Netia - Vónin
s.t.
74
Kristian Sobota
Netia - Vónin
s.t.
127
Torkil Veyhe
Netia - Vónin
s.t.
136
Michael Mørkøv
Netia - Vónin
+ 2'57
140
Morten Reckweg
Netia - Vónin
+ 4'29
154
Pawel Franczak
Netia - Vónin
+ 5'27
Colombo Classic
This PTHC event in Sri Lanka was Michal Kwiatkowski's first race with the team. We also rather cruelly decided that Mads Pedersen and Mark Padun could begin their pro careers against ProTour teams, so bravo to them.
A break formed on the final climb and Michal was absent, relying on Stachowiak, Honkisz and Rabottini to draw it back together in the peloton, however they were unable and Kwiatek had to sprint it out for 12th, finishing second to Peter Sagan.
Result:
1
Edvald Boasson Hagen
Grieg - Eftel
4h04'17
2
Jack Bobridge
Jayco - Cobra9
+ 38
3
Kristian Dyrnes
Aker - MOT
s.t.
4
Christopher Juul-Jensen
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
s.t.
5
Francesco Ginanni
Gazelle
s.t.
13
Michal Kwiatkowski
Netia - Vónin
+2'11
38
Adrian Honkisz
Netia - Vónin
s.t.
41
Adam Stachowiak
Netia - Vónin
s.t.
49
Matteo Rabottini
Netia - Vónin
s.t.
148
Deins Kanepejs
Netia - Vónin
s.t.
158
Mads Pedersen
Netia - Vónin
s.t.
167
Mark Padun
Netia - Vónin
+ 8'19
172
Przemyslaw Kasperkiewicz
Netia - Vónin
s.t.
All-in-all a pretty decent month for us, Kwiatkowski roughly met expectations in Sri Lanka, while Vantomme exceeded them in Australia. However, perhaps our month was better then we rate it, because current points projections put us at a ludicrous second in the PCT after the month. Although more likely it's just a benefit of our small use of race days so far. On that note however, surely our resident Belgian, Maxime Vantomme is our rider of the month, for being the only man to really have a good race so far.
At the moment our monthly review style rips off other HQs a little, I'll try to develop the design so it's as original as possible but for now, apologies to that and thanks to other managers who use this method.
I think "decent" is an understatement. Third in Down Under is great and Kwiatek in Sri Lanka was also " decent" despite missing the right move. Definitely a (very) good month.
Deins Kanepejs | Age: 22 | OVL: 67.64 | Puncheur | Wage: €50,000 | Pot 4 | Level: 1.00
Filip Bengtsson | Age: 22 | OVL: 66.57 | Sprinter | Wage: €10,000 | Pot: 4 | Level 1.55
Szymon Rekita | Age: 23 | OVL: 66.75 | Time-Trialist | €10,000 | Pot: 7 | Level: 2.67
)
Mortern Reckweg
Luis Leon Sanchez
Matteo Rabottini
Torkil Veyhe
Iliyan Kolev
Maximme Vantomme
Mark Padun*
Down Under Classic 
Colombo Classic 
