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AC Sparta Praha || 2014 | May
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| valverde321 |
Posted on 26-11-2013 19:34
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World Champion
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World Tour Teams Part 3/3
 Team NetApp Endura
NetApp is instantly improved into one of the better teams in the peloton with the addition of Marcel Kittel who has fled Argos Shimano due to their relegation! Bouhanni is another new rider and should be a huge boost in depth on the flat stages. On the climbs the team have two strong men, Machado and Konig who are both strong for the World Tour, however neither are stars and would be unlikely for them to win any major races. The team looks really strong on the flat and should also be strong against the clock! In terms of climbers they have no really strong riders, and not much depth either.
Prediction (WT) 10th - 14th
 Omega Pharma Quick Step
The biggest change in the squad is the addition of Rigoberto Uran who was looking for his own chance to lead at the Tour de France and he should get that opportunity with this team! Petacchi also joins, wanting to lead out Cavendish in his twilight, while they have a hurdle to overcome as it seems Marcel Kittel is the new #1 sprinter in the world! Mark will want to prove the doubters wrong this year! The future looks bright with the team too! Two future stars have joined from their development Etixx, Alaphilippe and Vakoc.
Prediction (WT) 5th - 9th
 Orica - GreenEDGE
Orica are heading into the new season with largely the same squad! Chaves is the marque signing and gives the team a climber! He's still one for the future, speaking of which, Caleb Ewan who is also expected to be a top sprinter in the years to come! I dont see the team being all that strong this year, but Im sure all the Australian fans are hoping they can stay in the top division!
Prediction (WT) 13th - 18th
 Team Saxo Bank
Saxo is another team with only minor differences to the previous years squad! The one major change is Kwiatkowski who is probably going to make the team the most followed team in Poland, but aside from that he will be great for the one day races the one place they probably needed the most help in, that was until Daniele Bennati left the team! With almost no WT capable sprinters the team is taking a gamble, but hopefully it will pay off with some great uphill results!
Prediction (WT) 13th - 15th
 Team Sky
Speaking of Bennati, here he is in his new team, Sky! Other new additions include Nieve, Zabriskie, Earle and Sebastien Henao. Sky should be the top team again this year, but its not a given and it largely depends on Chris Froome. The team has immense depth in climbers and a strong supporting cast of sprinters and classic specialists.
Prediction (WT) 1st - 3rd
 Trek Factory Racing
As previously mentioned, Argos have been relegated and John Degenkolb felt he was too good for the Continental division, so a move to Trek was the solution for him! He will be a huge boost to the teams point totals, as I'm fairly sure he will score quite a bit for them in the sprints Schleck and Hermans lead the team in the hills and newcomer Arredondo will probably be the top climber! Overall the team looks strong, lead by Cancellara and I think they will be fairly secure somewhere in the middle of the pack!
Prediction (WT) 7th - 12th
@ all - thats finally it for the WT teams! Sorry for taking a while to get the 3rd installment. I've been really busy the past few days.
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| Jesleyh |
Posted on 26-11-2013 19:39
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Tour de France Champion
Posts: 15274
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Nice team presentations Valv 
Feyenoord(football) and Kelderman fanboy
PCMdaily Awards: 12x nomination, 9x runner-up, 0x win.
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| Ian Butler |
Posted on 26-11-2013 21:14
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Tour de France Champion
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Great job in introducing the teams for the coming season  |
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 22-11-2024 14:37
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| sutty68 |
Posted on 26-11-2013 22:58
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Tour de France Champion
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There are a lot of strong teams in the World Tour and it makes for an exciting season ahead |
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| valverde321 |
Posted on 28-11-2013 04:27
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World Champion
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@ Jesleyh - Thanks a lot for the comment! Glad you like the presentation, I will do some quicker ones for the PCT and important CT teams before the Sparta 2014 update 
@ Ian - Thanks
@ Sutty - Yeah, there are! Im personally rooting for Movistar and NetApp!
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| sutty68 |
Posted on 28-11-2013 13:09
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Tour de France Champion
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valverde321 wrote:
@ Jesleyh - Thanks a lot for the comment! Glad you like the presentation, I will do some quicker ones for the PCT and important CT teams before the Sparta 2014 update
@ Ian - Thanks
@ Sutty - Yeah, there are! Im personally rooting for Movistar and NetApp!
I agree too, it would be Great to see NetApp do well |
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| valverde321 |
Posted on 28-11-2013 19:51
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World Champion
Posts: 12986
Joined: 20-05-2009
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ProContinental Teams
I had decided to show the rosters of the ProConti teams, but to be honest, they really aren't that interesting and most haven't really changed all that much, so I will simply list the major transfers in! Kaiku takes over for Euskaltel and have many of the Basque riders still, but the top quality ones have all moved on!
 Pieter Weening | -> | Accent.Jobs | | Laurens Ten Dam | -> | Argos Shimano | | Kris Boeckamns | -> | Argos Shimano | | Chris Anker Sorensen | -> | Christina Watches |  Tanel Kangert | -> | Cofidis |  Winner Anacona | -> | Colombia |  Borut Bozic | -> | De Rijke |  Riccardo Zoidl | -> | IAM |  Sylvain Chavanel | -> | IAM | | Chris Sutton | -> | Synergy Baku |  Rinaldo Nocentini | -> | Vini Fantini |
And actually, just looking at them again, Im not really sure I want to go over my main rivals squads either. Some of them have changed a little bit, but not loads, and they are all still generally just as strong/weak. I can show them if you guys would like, but just let me know, otherwise the next update will (finally) be about AC Sparta Praha!
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| sutty68 |
Posted on 28-11-2013 20:39
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Tour de France Champion
Posts: 34654
Joined: 22-08-2010
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Argos have got a couple of good signings in Laurens Ten Dam and Kris Boeckamns |
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| andy222c |
Posted on 28-11-2013 21:22
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Sprinter
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IAM will be strong with both Chavanel and Zoidl for the upcomming season! Also great to see Netapp in the highest ranks. They seem like a really tough team especially for the sprints
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| tsmoha |
Posted on 28-11-2013 21:23
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Directeur Sportif
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Bring on Sparta's preview 
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| Ian Butler |
Posted on 29-11-2013 12:18
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Tour de France Champion
Posts: 21854
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Zoidl to ProConti
If you don't feel like presenting all the teams (because they didn't really change), then don't |
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| cunego59 |
Posted on 29-11-2013 12:21
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Team Manager
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Kaiku's jersey (or at least the small part we can see) looks, uhm, interesting Looking forward to the new season!
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| valverde321 |
Posted on 01-12-2013 21:16
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World Champion
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@ sutty - Indeed! I think they might be able to come right back up into the World Tour!
@ andy - I agree! Zoidl was a really good signing. Yeah, NetApp could now be the new HTC
@ tsmoha - Okay, hopefully it will come tonight
@ Ian - Okay! I think I'll go ahead and do the Sparta preview. If anyone wants to see any teams I can do them individually later.
@ cunego - Im pretty sure its based on the real life jersey, from when they were a team before If thats anything to go by, they will certainly be a nice replacement for Euskaltel as the brightest jersey in the peloton, and once again a Basque team with those honors.
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| valverde321 |
Posted on 01-12-2013 22:30
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World Champion
Posts: 12986
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2013 AC Sparta Praha Team Presentation
Its finally time to present the new squad for the upcoming season, after what must have been a month of fiddling around with things in the save, and generally being short on time and sometimes being lazy. Sorry for the wait, Im super excited to finally present this to you!
First lets start off with the squad!
The biggest addition to the team is Bronislav Hruska who will be the teams leader in the one day hilly races! He's a huge talent and Sparta will have to do well to hold on to him for longer than this one season! Im sure the big teams will be calling by the end of the season!
Overall, the team is very capable in the sprints and with Svorada and Haller joining we may just be one of the stronger CT teams on the flats now! Last year we raced a lot of flat stages, and most of the time we felt helpless to getting any results! We had to hope that Hunal or Krotky could scrape out a result, but really they weren't the strongest. Now we have a couple true sprinters and we hope to see better results. Svorada has also really developed into a strong sprinter too. so there is a lot of depth too!
As mentioned earlier, Hruska is the leader in the hills, but there is also Hunal, Haller and Poljanski who are fairly strong as well! We should be able to see some strong results from all four, but Hruska is the type of rider that can win us races this year!
For the mountains we still aren't all that strong! For CT last season, Hunal was able to achieve a few alright results but with Petrus and Hruska the team should be able to finish in the Top 5 of some stage races now! Winning a mountain stage is something that is probably still out of reach though!
Surprise, surprise its Hruska again who is our best rider for the Cobbled Classics! We dont expect to be racing on many cobbles this year, but Hruska really is our only decent rider for the cobbles! Who knows, maybe with his combination of climbing and cobble abilities he will be able to win a hilly cobble classic. That really would be a stroke of luck though!
Overall the team has really improved and the young riders on the team are still getting better! Krotky looks to be on the decline, at 37 years of age, its no real surprise, and if this was his last year we wouldn't be shocked either! Lets hope he can have one more successful year with us atleast, as well as the rest of the team! Looking forward to hitting the road and doing some real racing soon!
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| admirschleck |
Posted on 01-12-2013 22:42
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Team Leader
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Hruska , Haller and Svorada are great additions to team. Branislav especially, great overall skills. |
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| Shonak |
Posted on 01-12-2013 23:21
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Tour de France Champion
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Really like this squad. Good luck for the season and hopefuly Pro Continental status in the future. I imagine racing these guys on extreme is somewhat the ultimate challenge in this game?
"It’s a little bit scary when Contador attacks." - Tommy V
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| sutty68 |
Posted on 01-12-2013 23:35
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Tour de France Champion
Posts: 34654
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Hruska certainly looks good
Lets hope Svorada gets some sprint wins though |
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| Ian Butler |
Posted on 02-12-2013 06:47
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Tour de France Champion
Posts: 21854
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A pretty nice squad! ProContinental status is in the air |
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| valverde321 |
Posted on 02-12-2013 19:29
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World Champion
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@ admir - Yeah, they all look very strong!
@ Shonak - Thanks, I do too Thats the hope! I was actually not too far off of ProContinental last season, but a poor end to the year had us drop down and out of contention.
I like to think of it as the ultimate challenge! Starting with a weaker CT team and keep that team relatively nationality focused while gradually improving the team! There are some crazier ones though, like trying this with only riders from a very small country like Iceland for example.
@ sutty - Indeed! He's expected to do a lot for the team this year! Lets hope so too!
@ Ian - Thank you! Like I said above, I hope to get Pro Continental, but I dont think the team is much better than most others in CT.
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| cunego59 |
Posted on 03-12-2013 01:51
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Team Manager
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Some really strong additions there, should make for more opportunities to score some results. Promotion would be nice but you'd have to sacrifice a good part of the Czech identity to survive in ProConti I guess, although that may be inevitable in the future anyway. But that's a long way ahead, I'm looking forward to the first races for now
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