Mano's TT was good unfortunately he lost a tad too much in the prologue already. In general I hoped for a bit more from my team, but it's also not too bad. Nice that Sanikwathi still got his top 10 in stage 4. Thanks for the reports, Ulrich and congrats tastasol!
Wow, pretty surprised that Groves actually did it this time! The situation looked pretty much the same as on S2, but this time everyone else faded (or made room for him) and he just was the strongest. I don't need to understand it, but it's good that he at least got one stage win this year. And it's kind of a historic one again, as now we have stage wins in all categories that were available since we started (GT, PT, PTHC, HC, C1, C2HC, C2), so quite a milestone.
And it's the perfect end to a race that turned out to be so much better than we could reaslistically expect. In particular after the first two days, with Chavanne and Groves failing to perform. But we must have been one of the most lucky teams in the long TT, having four riders in the Top 21 by the end of the day. I was definitely afraid that we'd lose at least one of them, but no - everyone was able to finish in the pack. 11th place by Rekita is better than expected, as we knew we'd need an 80+ TTer to have at shot at the Top 10. It turns out that 79 could've been enough with Tanfield taking 4th, but really, I don't know how that happened. And I'm perfectly fine with Rekita in 11th, Bissegger in 13th, Brunel in 20st and in particular Vernon in 21st! The latter winning the white jersey is great to see - it's something we were hoping for, but also something we couldn't expect given the competition.
All in all, an amazing race for us - it looks like if we should indeed stay up, it's in March that we got the big points for that goal. But it's still a long way to go...
Congrats to Grieg on the GC win, and to Oxxo on a fantastic team result (plus the green jersey).
And commiserations to EA, where Wirtgen failed already for the 2nd time this year. And most of all to cycleYorkshire - it's really, really awful to see how much worse Cullaigh performs after that training. Putting that money into a Hayter or Oliveira TT training instead would have brought you far more points to date - let's hope Gabriel can still turn things around!
Good race for us. Lammertink is finally able to combine a great individual TT with not losing time on easy stages, so he finally has a scoring race on his books. Our depth scoring is kinda meh, but 3rd overall more than makes up for it. These could be some important points at the end of season.
Congrats to Tastasol and thanks to Ulrich for the reports
Final stage luckily without any significant gaps for most people, including us. Nice win by Groves means Zmorka stays in green as well, so thank you and congratulations to Fab And congratulations again to Grieg as well on the great GC win here!
Thank you for the reports, Ulrich. Great as always
Obviously, Steimle winning a stage and nearly getting another podium to make a VERY good run at green is amazing, and Kämna had a very valiant attempt at the KoM jersey.
However, when our weaker riders already overperform in such a way, it's also a tiny bit heartbreaking to see them just come short of taking home the respective jersey for their efforts, particularly when it's this close.
And obviously, Kämna having such a disastrous TT to even require going into the break to salvage something isn't the way we wanted to achieve our first serious KoM attempt of the year.
Still, I'm very happy with Steimle's early season, from his Portugal hilly stages to the great duel against Groenewegen in Paris-Nice to this stage win, he proved me right to keep him around.
Congrats Grieg on the favorite win, and thank you UU!
Hey! Apologies for my absence!
Between being busy and basically constantly sick, I feel behind schedule to follow the early races live, and then my ADHD ass kicked in and faltered under that ever-growing backlog again.
I'm back for the Giro and hopefully everything after, and I want to reiterate I'm still very much committed to this game long-term if you want me around.
Happy New Year!
And congratulations again to Grieg as well on the great GC win here!
