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Tour of South Africa Discussions
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| Jakstar22 |
Posted on 06-12-2023 13:55
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Extremely happy with that! TTTs are never our strong suit but we focused on it during transfers. No bridge is in an incredible position with 2 stages left. He seems strong this race so I am really hoping he can convert this into a high GC place. 6 seconds behind in GC and 2 big hill stages to go.
Tomorrow will have to be where he strikes though as I fear Demare will dominate the final day
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| cunego59 |
Posted on 06-12-2023 14:16
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Second race in a row where Izagirre gets to wear the yellow jersey after a team time trial, it's really great to see our strategy during transfers paying off. Hopefully, he's able to hang on a bit better than in Pais Vasco, but especially the upcoming stage feels extremely unpredictable. With Uwi and Hadi in the Top 15, we should have a good shot at scoring decently with multiple riders again. Congrats on the win Fab, Errazkin is still within range of a high GC finish I think.
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| Fabianski |
Posted on 06-12-2023 17:35
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Good to win the TTT, but most awful team tactics possible. Masnada, who would've been our best bet for the GC now, didn't care on stage 2 and lost the race. And the team was stupid enough to not wait for the only rider still in GC contention.
That's a potential high GC finish, a sponsor goal and therefore a lot of money thrown out of the window for a handful points. Awful. Hate PCM22, but that's nothing new.
Sorry for Pollos, completely screwed by the engine (like Indosat in Pais Vasco). More generally speaking, TTTs might be worse than ever in this version, in terms of dropping team leaders. Although I still have no clue why dudes like Bagioli or Narvaez aren't dropped, when better TTer Errazkin is - probably because they weren't their team's worst ones ^^
Congrats to those who did well today and were lucky to still have some guys in the GC race.
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| sammyt93 |
Posted on 06-12-2023 23:19
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Of course we drop Hirschi by 6 minutes on the TTT ruining our chances of getting a young riders or GC result out of this one.
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 22-11-2024 00:29
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| Eden95 |
Posted on 07-12-2023 02:30
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Jesus, what carnage. So many of the big guns losing massive time and unable to follow their teams. Commiserations with that, not good. The final GC is going to be very strange I think.
We were awful, should have been quite a bit better but we have no aspirations here anyway so no biggie. Prasetyo riding out of his skin, doing well in the points classification through intermediates and would possibly be leading if it weren’t for the French monster whose name I dare not speak 
Thanks for the reports, much appreciated!
Indosat - ANZ HQ
"This Schleck sandwich is going to cause serious indigestion for Evans" - Phil Liggett |
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| Ulrich Ulriksen |
Posted on 07-12-2023 02:51
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This is a race with no parallel IRL and therefore I always hesitate to criticize the AI too much. But not clear the TTT algorithm was broken before so not sure why a change for PCM22 would have been needed.
For us not a bad result except we managed to drop Boswell, his losses weren't as severe as others so so I can't complain too much, but not sure if any of our top placed guys can survive tomorrow. Probably we ought to ride for Warbasse.
Bobridge and Izaguirre seem like the favorites at this point but Stage 5 could be very weird given the misalignment between the GC and the top contenders.
Congrats to JURA on the continued TTT dominance.
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| AbhishekLFC |
Posted on 07-12-2023 10:32
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So they decided to bring back this shit TTT feature in PCM 22  Benoot starting to get screwed over regularly now, not good for our season! Hopefully he is still interested in Stage 5 because that should suit him very well.
Congrats to Jura and thanks for the report
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| roturn |
Posted on 07-12-2023 11:31
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Seems repeating but the hilly stages are not enjoyable to read from my team`s perspective.
On the one hybrid stage really, Vasnevenant shouldn`t lose that much, but again he is sitting in last positions and just drop without need and going home slow.
Expectations were small in the hills due to not having a strong 80+ leader but just not doing anything is still far below expectations.
Denz and Van Hooydonck in the break is at least something.
Congrats to Los Pollos, Higuita really seasting this season as also Bralirwa for the defending GC lead and commiserations to Spark for the huge Bobridge loss on the more hybrid stage.
Thanks for the report. |
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| cunego59 |
Posted on 07-12-2023 11:41
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Oh man, what a ride from Izagirre. Obviously super lucky that the group stretched out the way it did to allow him to sneak in with the same time as the winner, otherwise I assume it would've been a time loss in the 40s range or so. But now, he actually has a chance to win this race, which is incredible. The final stage should suit him better and he was in the first group without too much trouble on the first three days, so I'm hopeful, but a lot can still change.
Not too excited about how Uwizeyimana and Hadi just gave up on their good GC spots, I expected better of them, especially as they should have supported Izagirre more. But if Izagirre wins, that's obviously completely irrelevant in the big picture.
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| Fabianski |
Posted on 07-12-2023 11:42
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Interesting outcome for sure... First of all, big congrats to Los Pollos, with Higuita at least getting them something from this race after all.
No clue what it took to stay up front today - you'd think climbing did matter, but then Démare is the big, big exception (would rather expect Hoelgaard in his place). And some big absents, most notably Bobridge. Was surprised Izagirre finally made it - pretty surprising GC winner incoming imho (if he does, OVL formulas should be adjusted quite a bit, his 73.55 looks ridiculously low after all he's already done this year).
For my own team, obviously relieved that both Errazkin and Masnada made the split. Errazkin even tried something, which was good to see, although he didn't get anything out of it in the end.
But most of all I'm still really, really bummed by Masnada's stupid, random time loss on stage 2. He should be leading the race now, which imho wouldn't be an unrealistic scenario at all. But well, I guess our lucky streak is over - at least it now looks like we'll still get some points out of this race. But the failed sponsor goal (the easiest one by far) clearly is a massive disappointment.
Thanks for the report, congrats to those who did well, and commiserations to those who failed - most notably to Spark.
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| cio93 |
Posted on 07-12-2023 11:52
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Pretty expected outcome imo from a hilly stage that certainly required some MO on that circuit.
Demare making it while Bobridge didn't could be explained with positioning, although second on GC should give you priority in that regard just as much as the points jersey does. It looks like the AI rightfully viewed hybrids as favorites here, and Demare's inclusion among them stems from his overall stats just like Pidcock in prior races this season.
If Bobridge indeed was 10-15 positions further back than Demare on average, that could have been the main factor.
From my perspective, getting dropped in splits or after repeated efforts is usually not down to the uphill energy loss in itself (=mo/hill stat), but more about having to sprint to stay in contact once a flat part is reached again.
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| Nemolito |
Posted on 07-12-2023 13:14
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Great way to bounce back by Higuita and still make something out of this race If he still manages to finish 12th in GC (where he is now) it's worse than hoped/expected, but definitely better than what I thought would be the final result yesterday. A shame guys like Osorio and Lopez Nolasco lost so much time again, but it seems to be the same for most of us. Let's hope Higuita doesn't do something stupid tomorrow, and there isn't a random break of 20 that wins ans contains several riders passing him in GC.
Thanks for the congratulations, and thanks for another great report Imladrik!
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| Sykkel_Freak |
Posted on 07-12-2023 13:21
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Nice to see Chaves advance even further. If he can secure a podium place here, that would be a great result. Gesbert has been consistent in his performances as well, would be nice if he could end the race on a high note with a podium on stage 6.
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| Fabianski |
Posted on 07-12-2023 16:40
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Ulrich Ulriksen wrote:
But not clear the TTT algorithm was broken before so not sure why a change for PCM22 would have been needed.
I do think it was broken at some point before, but that was before I entered ManGame (maybe PCM15?). In PCM18/20 it was more about team leaders not ideally positioned inside the team, sometimes losing a couple of seconds. That issue is still there. But I don't remember any team leader losing minutes in my first 4 MG years. On this same course, Moscon - who is a worse TTer than Errazkin - was never dropped (although we admittedly didn't have the same TTT power).
So I think they did improve consistency (although there's always a pretty massive outlier, like Indosat in Pais Vasco and Pollos here). However, they clearly broke the "protect the leader" thing, if it ever existed and wasn't there just by chance anyway.
I think this is something we can adapt to with our TTT lineups - and it obviously increases the value of riders of this dying-out type like Izagirre and Bobridge. Not massively, as there aren't tons of such races on the calendar (maybe only Lithuania besides TOSA, as Slovenia has a far too long ITT for "just" decent TTers).
Kudos to those who saw that coming - would definitely have been nice to know about that behaviour pre-season. But I'm fully aware that not every scenario can be tested - I guess now we all know.
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| Croatia14 |
Posted on 07-12-2023 16:58
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ooooooh Sergio Higuita 
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| KaiserAdler |
Posted on 07-12-2023 21:49
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The disappointment is immense once again. I gambled on Kelderman and Reis and clearly lost so far. Sad xd
Congrats to my loverboy Nemo on winning and the other winners so far. And thank you for the reports.
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| tsmoha |
Posted on 07-12-2023 22:05
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Bobridge struggled on that stage in the past, too, iirc. Obviously not ideal from my romantic point of view regarding him, but not too surprising.
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| Ulrich Ulriksen |
Posted on 08-12-2023 01:51
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Well we have very anonymously worked our way into a really good position with Narvaez 2nd overall and 3 more it the top 20 plus the teams lead and Bagioli 2nd on young rider. Protecting Narvaez versus Boswell made great sense given the relative GC positions so good to see that. Thought we had Izaguirre gapped as well but the call didn't go our way and hard to see him losing time on Narvaez tomorrow.
Hopefully we don't throw it away on the last day.
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| MacC |
Posted on 08-12-2023 09:14
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Mission accomplished here if Kent Main scores a top 20 after our successful TTT.
It's a bit whack if the AI is not protecting the GC guy
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| MacC |
Posted on 08-12-2023 11:49
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MacC wrote:
Mission accomplished here if Kent Main scores a top 20 after our successful TTT.
It's a bit whack if the AI is not protecting the GC guy
Mission accomplished I guess...thanks for the great reports Imladrik..
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