We finaly have arrived at the greatest classic of them all, the Ronde Van Vlaanderen. Our cobbled season has been very good so far, but it means nothing if we can't perform here. Once again, our tactics will be to anticipate, get one of our guys in the early break and put the favourites to work early. Good teamwork will be the key here one again.
Our main guy will be Mitch Thompson, who should be in top form for this race. Philippe Gilbert has shown he's ready as well, with another free role going to Jurgen Roelandts. Never change a winning team, they say, so we won't. The guys that won the E3 for us, will ride the Ronde as well.
Fully expecting Thompson to be dropped early again Gilbert can now be considered a decent outside favorite, but this is a different beast to E3 with a tougher startlist...
With a tough competition in this race, we are probably aiming for stage wins here. This is team we'll be sending to Pais Vasco next week.
Jan Bakelants Dries Devenyns Philippe Gilbert Ben Hermans Cameron Meyer Simone Ponzi Kristof Vandewalle Maxime Vantomme
Jan Bakelants can win from a breakaway. Dries Devenyns will support our team leaders on the climbs. Philippe Gilbert will aim for stage wins, and a good GC if possible at some point. Ben Hermans will also try to join the breaks. Cameron Meyer will show off his new jersey in the time trial. Simone Ponzi will once again target the sprints, though with little support. Kristof Vandewalle should like the time trial as well. Maxime Vantomme finaly will be another guy for breakaways.
In other news, already 8 teams signed up on the first day for the second edition of The Lost Classics, Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne. Great news, but we're hoping to double that number still!
With a tough competition in this race, we are probably aiming for stage wins here. This is team we'll be sending to Pais Vasco next week.
Jan Bakelants Dries Devenyns Philippe Gilbert Ben Hermans Cameron Meyer Simone Ponzi Kristof Vandewalle Maxime Vantomme
Jan Bakelants can win from a breakaway. Dries Devenyns will support our team leaders on the climbs. Philippe Gilbert will aim for stage wins, and a good GC if possible at some point. Ben Hermans will also try to join the breaks. Cameron Meyer will show off his new jersey in the time trial. Simone Ponzi will once again target the sprints, though with little support. Kristof Vandewalle should like the time trial as well. Maxime Vantomme finaly will be another guy for breakaways.
In other news, already 8 teams signed up on the first day for the second edition of The Lost Classics, Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne. Great news, but we're hoping to double that number still!
Guess what. i'm currently racing the first stage in PV and he's in the break
The 5th stage in Catalunya was another bad one for the team, we did not make the breakaway, our sprint train did not form and Simone Ponzi never got close to any points. There was some shouting in the team bus after the race, I think the message came accross that in a World Tour race, you can't be slacking like this. Time to show ourselves!
Our next Continental Tour races will be the Rund um Köln and Quatre jours de Dunkerque. Both are races with some international fame, so were aiming for good results.
Rund um Köln will most likely be a sprint, so we're sending a team with some fast men. We have several option available, depending on the situation. We should get another good result here.
Finaly, the highly anticipated classic. But it became one giant disappointement.
The race started not too bad for us, with Mitch Thompson anticipating and getting in the early break, giving the rest of the team some rest. Unfortunately, the peleton learned from E3 and did not want a LPU leader too far ahead.
But after that everything went wrong. Thompson was closed in, Gilbert had a mechanical and the rest of the team didn't react fast enough. Suddenly, our race was over with 40km to go.
We tried everything, but a 21th place was the only thing we got. Of course the team is massively disappointed. We did not aim for a win, but we certainly did not expect this. Our cobbled season started well, but this pretty much ruined everything. We'll need some morale booster before we start the Ardennes.
The deciding stage in this year's Volta a Catalunya, and finaly we got some action from Ivan Basso, our leader here.
But is was not meant to be, he could not close the gap and had to settle for another spot outside the top 10. Has age finaly caught up with him? Unless there's a miracle tomorrow, this will be another horrible stage race for us.
In other news, we're still collecting startlists for Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, send in yours if you haven't already!
Edited by Ollfardh on 10-06-2013 08:21
The last day of this year's Volta, and no major time gaps were to be expected. It was only the final sprint left. With no top 10's form our climbers, only Simone Ponzi managed to get some points this race. He would have to bring home some more.
And he did, just missing out the podium, with a good 4th place, his best result so far. While the race was very bad for us, it wasn't a complete fail like the Ronde. Full review will follow later.
After the rough Catalunya we had, we were hoping for a bit more in the Vuelta Cyclista al Pais Vasco. Sending a breakaway team, our aim was some stage wins. Although we initialy missed the break in stage 1, Jan Bakelants went on to cross the gap solo.
He joined the breakaway, recovered a bit, and then went for a devestating attack in the last kilometre.
going..
going..
And he wins it, impressive victory for Jan Bakelants!
winning!
A great start for the team, let's hope we can get back to our Tour Down Under glory days!
We had a very strong startlist, but so did the other teams. But no Mark Cavendish, we were relieved to learn at the start. This would make Peter Sagan the top favourite, but we had confidence in our team, so we went for the mass sprint as well. We wouldn't get any closer to Lier than today, so there was some pressure from our sponsor.
As you can see, we were always taking our responsibility at the front of the peleton, with lots of fans cheering for our team. It was pretty amazing to see the fanbase we have build in only a few months.
Another great win for the team. Not only did we make our sponsor very happy, but we also achieved another one of our goals by winning a Continental Tour classic!
Seems like we passed 10000 views over the night, nice
Also, the Lost Classics could use a few more teams, I don't know if people are still interested, but I might PM those who joined last time to get things moving.
With a tough competition in this race, we are probably aiming for stage wins here. This is team we'll be sending to Pais Vasco next week.
Jan Bakelants Dries Devenyns Philippe Gilbert Ben Hermans Cameron Meyer Simone Ponzi Kristof Vandewalle Maxime Vantomme
Jan Bakelants can win from a breakaway. Dries Devenyns will support our team leaders on the climbs. Philippe Gilbert will aim for stage wins, and a good GC if possible at some point. Ben Hermans will also try to join the breaks. Cameron Meyer will show off his new jersey in the time trial. Simone Ponzi will once again target the sprints, though with little support. Kristof Vandewalle should like the time trial as well. Maxime Vantomme finaly will be another guy for breakaways.
In other news, already 8 teams signed up on the first day for the second edition of The Lost Classics, Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne. Great news, but we're hoping to double that number still!
Guess what. i'm currently racing the first stage in PV and he's in the break
With a tough competition in this race, we are probably aiming for stage wins here. This is team we'll be sending to Pais Vasco next week.
Jan Bakelants Dries Devenyns Philippe Gilbert Ben Hermans Cameron Meyer Simone Ponzi Kristof Vandewalle Maxime Vantomme
Jan Bakelants can win from a breakaway. Dries Devenyns will support our team leaders on the climbs. Philippe Gilbert will aim for stage wins, and a good GC if possible at some point. Ben Hermans will also try to join the breaks. Cameron Meyer will show off his new jersey in the time trial. Simone Ponzi will once again target the sprints, though with little support. Kristof Vandewalle should like the time trial as well. Maxime Vantomme finaly will be another guy for breakaways.
In other news, already 8 teams signed up on the first day for the second edition of The Lost Classics, Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne. Great news, but we're hoping to double that number still!
Guess what. i'm currently racing the first stage in PV and he's in the break
The GP Indarain was slightly better, Philippe Gilbert finished 3rd, though at a great distance from Rodriguez, which does not bode well with the Ardennes classics coming up.
In the World Tour, we finished Pais Vasco with few points, we can safely say the small stage races are going horrible for us so far.
Onto the Ardennes then, Amstel was not that good, with Gilbert underperforming finishing 6th. We remember a good breakaway from Devolder.
Then came our highlight, La Fleche Wallon. The team was very strong, working hard and protecting Philippe Gilbert. Thompson, Bakelants and Devenyns all finished quite high, and Stijn Devolder managed to help Phil until the last Mur. From there, He had to finish the sprint against his nemesis.
Wow, this is really steep!
Showing the sponsors
Another great win for Philippe Gilbert, though this time he has to give a lot of credit to the team for the good support. It's a season with ups and down for him, but with a few nice wins already, we can't complain. now we're off to one of our main goals of the season: La Doyenne!
Edited by Ollfardh on 03-07-2013 09:41
Dries Devenyns
Mitch Thompson
Gilbert can now be considered a decent outside favorite, but this is a different beast to E3 with a tougher startlist...
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
Cameron Meyer 
Simone Ponzi
Arnaud Démare
Egidijus Juodvalkis
