@ lluuiiggii: Yes, Duque is a monster in the early season in most of my careers. About the Brazilian: You're indeed right, it was one Brazilian with the wrong shirt. The problem is that I play with a self-made 2011 DB, which includes a couple of new teams who replaced the ones who don't exist anymore. Funvic is one of them. And I just didn't find the jerseys of every new team, so some of them are racing with the ones of their forerunner teams. This is why you'll maybe spot the old Cervelo-jersey on a screenshot sometimes, that's the Letua-team took Cervelo's place.
While I wrote this post, I looked up the shirt database once again and suddenly I found the Funvic shirt. So from now on, you can enjoy the real jersey of that team!
This is a list of the jersey that are missing. If anyone has a fitting jersey, I would be really glad and thankful if he/she would post it here (or if anyone would find the time and leisure to do one, of couse, but it's not that necessary, imo)
EPM
Letua Cycling Team
MTN – Qhubeka
Thanks a lot for the jerseys Squire!
@ Valverde321: What a praise, thanks a lot But I agree with Squire, don't be too hasty. Plus, yours is great, too!
@ Squire: Thanks a lot. I hope that he'll be able to get one or another good result, too. But as he rides mostly ProTour-races, that'll be really hard.
This is a list of the jersey that are missing. If anyone has a fitting jersey, I would be really glad and thankful if he/she would post it here (or if anyone would find the time and leisure to do one, of couse, but it's not that necessary, imo)
Hope I'm not polluting your thread with these jerseys. I'm updating the post as I find more jerseys.
@ squire:That is really great, thanks a lot! The first two worked and the Ora one as well, but with the rest, a have this 417kb-problem again. It strangely affects only the shirts of certain shirt makers. Therefore, I guess it has something to do with their template, but I really don't know.
The last stage is another one classified as hilly. The last climb up to the Puerto de Tocal seems quite hard, but it's followed by a rather long descent. Dominik told us that the main goal of the team is of course to keep Tiziano Dall'Antonia's fourth place.
Km 0: Two riders attack right from the start: It's Diego Gallego (Burgos 2016) and a Liquigas rider... let's see who it is...
Km 1: It's Dominik Nerz! Wow, it seems like he's on to something today.
Km 3:Miguel Angel Candil (LA Antarte) tries to follow the two leaders, while Rein Taaramäe starts to do the pace in the pack...
Km 7: A last, desperate try from the two escapees.
Km 13: A couple of riders attack for the mountain points, Dominik Nerz is back in the pack again.
Km 36: Although Garmin is now pacing, a group of 11 broke free. Best of them is Cofidis' Julien El Fares, who's 1'26 down in the GC.
Km 77: On the second climb, lots of riders have problems to follow. But Dominik Nerz and most of the other Liquigas riders are still there. The escapees are now 5'40 in front.
Km 110: The leading group dissolves: Julien El Fares is now leading solo in front of RadioShack's Muravyev, but his advance is decreasing.
Km 120:El Fares takes the points on the second-to-last mountain sprint and overtakes the KoM-jersey. Meanwhile, Dominik has problems to cling on to the peloton.
Km 129:Tiziano Dall'Antonia managed to jump into the main chasing group, which consists of 31 riders. He's accompanied by two other Liquigas riders, unfortunatly not Dominik.
Km 142: On the foot of the last climb, Rubens Bertogliati (Team Type 1; GC 7th) and Leonardo Duque attack.
Km 147: A couple of other riders, among them GC leader Heinrich Haussler try to follow them. The Liquigas riders don't seem able to counter.
Km 153:Duque passes the last mountain with an advance of about half a minut to Heinrich Haussler. Chris Horner (RadioShack) follows another minte behind.
Km 156: Within a couple of kilometres, Duque has brought a gap of 3'30 between himself and the biggest chasing group. This guy is amazing!
Km 164:Leonardo Duque rides towards his fourth victory in a row. Heinrich Haussler collapsed completely and was passed by Horner.
Km 166: The Colombian has a lot time to celebrate his victory. Horner comes in second.
Km 166:Tiziano Dall'Antonia comes in about 4 minutes behind the winner. He will lose some places today.
Km 166:Dominik Nerz finishes about 7'25 minutes down.
It's starting to get difficult to find another picture for this man...
Hi guys,
I'm home for half a day now, and I want to use that to tell you a rumour that I heard:
Our captain, Ivan Basso, has refused a contract offer for next season, and he shall be in negotiations with the spanish Geox-Team. I hope that this is untrue, because it would be an enormous weakening for our team. We'll see.
This evening, I'm going to drive to Belgium for the Beverbeek Classics tomorrow. I hope you follow the live ticker.
Good luck in Beverbeck! Duque is quite awesome atm, that's true.. I've never seen him so dominating Like Dominik said in his blog, I hope for Basso to stay with Liquigas, too!
@tsmoha: Thanks. Riders like Duque, rather good sprinters with good hilly stats, have a lot of possibilities to shine in the early season, even more as the shape is very important.
I really hope for Basso to stay, too, but according to my experiences, it's not very likely that a rider stays when he said he was thinking about it. But we'll see. I'm already looking for a replacement, but the transfer market isn't full of good stage racers who would be realistic transfers...
The Giro di Sardegna didn't start very well for us. Vicenzo Nibali was the huge favorite for the race, but on the first stage, the team underestimated the breakaway of Massimo Codol (Acqua&Sapone) and Bert De Waele (Landbouwkredit), and Nibali last nearly two minutes on them.
On the mountain top finish on stage 2, he made up one and a half minutes to Codol and was now second, only 10 seconds behind. Peter Sagan and Valerio Agnoli performed really well, too, and occupied the places 4 and 5 at that moment.
On the first flat stage, an escapee dominated most of the stage: Stijn Joseph (Topsport Vlaanderen) soloed for a long time. To chase him, our team paced really hard. Though, only 42 riders were able to stay in the first group. During the sprint preparations, Vicenzo Nibali felt the weakness of the other riders. He therefore decided to try his luck and saved 22 seconds of advance to the finish. Thus, he overtook the leaders jersey!
The fourth stage was won by Bobby Traksel (Landbouwkredit), who was the only rider left from a breakaway. Vicenzo Nibali won the uphill sprint for the second place.
On the fifth stage, Vicenzo Nibali and Mauro Finetto led out Peter Sagan absolutely perfect, and the latter had no problems to claim the stage win.
The first cobbled classic of the year. Paolo Longo Borghini is our captain for all cobbled races, so he's there as well. On the paper, the concurrence was rather close, except for one rider: The huge favorite was Quick·Step's Sylvain Chavanel. One cannot say that he didn't live up with the expectations.
With about 70km to go, he freed himself from the pack without even attacking, and then he rode, and rode and rode. In the end, he finished first with the incredible advance of 6'54, his maximum advance were even 8 minutes!
Due to his incredible ride, only 87 riders were able to finish within the time limit, which means that 73 riders had to give up. Pretty remarkable for a race like this.
The great thing is that Paolo Longo Borghini was the best of the rest. He broke free from the chasing group and managed to keep a little advance to Tyler Farrar, who finished third. I called Paolo to congratulate him, and he told me that he had great legs and feeled relatively fresh the whole day long. I guess that's why he could cope with riders who are usually better cobbled riders, like Gert Steegmans.
I don't know if I've ever seen such a dominant win like this...
The first classic for Dominik this season. It's completely flat, with one little cobbled section, which should be selective at all. Dominik told us that the DS told him to be aggressive and try to get into a break. We'll see how if he manages to do that...
Km 0: Man, Dominik takes his advice seriously. He counters the very first attack and tries his luck.
Km 18: Too many riders followed Dominik, and although he tried really hard to stay free, the pack wasn't willing to let a 13-men group go.
Km 35: At the moment, a ten-men break is in front, but the pack doesn't let them go...
Km 61: Strange. All of a sudden, the pack stops chasing and 14 riders build the break. They are now about 2 and a half men, er, minutes in front.
Km 87: From a free element to a domestique: Dominik falls back to bring water bottles.
Km 95: A maximum advance of 4 minutes seems to be considered enough, as the peloton starts to increase the pace.
Km 133: The pack is down by 2 minutes now.
Km 142: Three riders around David Kopp (Eddy Merckx – Indeland) try to brigde to the escapees. A strange move, considering that the pack is riding with a high tempo.
Km 155: The advance is now below a minute. All the last, desperate attacks seem to fail...
Km 159: Uh? The sprint preparations already begin, as another couple of riders try to escape. Among them are the former German champion Martin Reimer (Skil) and Preben Van Hecke (Topsport).
Km 163: Could this attack maybe succeed? With 5 km to go, the escapees hold a small advance, while Dominik Nerz starts the Liquigas train.
Km 166:Dominik did a good job, but the pack can't counter this attack and won't catch the escapees.
Km 168:Preben Van Hecke indeed wins this race. His team mate Jarl Salomein makes it an impressive 1-2 for Topsport Vlaanderen. Ronan Van Zandbeek (Skil) completes the podium, and Jong Vlaanderen's Steven De Neef finishes in front of the peloton as well.
Km 168: A little later, Jacopo Guarnieri and Tiziano Dall'Antonia lead the peloton over the finish line.
Preben Van Hecke celebrates his first and the team's second season victory.
Result
1 Preben Van Hecke
Topsport Vlaanderen - Mercator
4h13'30
2 Jarl Solomein
Topsport Vlaanderen - Mercator
+ 22
3 Ronan Van Zandbeek
Skil - Shimano
s.t.
4 Steven De Neef
Jong Vlaanderen – Bauknecht
s.t.
5 Jacopo Guarnieri
Liquigas – Cannondale
+ 51
…
23 Dominik Nerz
Liquigas – Cannondale
s.t.
Dominik's comment
Damn. Damn! That wasn't like we planned it. This late attack really caught us off-guarded.
It's even more annoying as we would have won the bunch sprint easily. But that is the only good point, too: Our lead out worked quite well today and I won praise for my contribution for that, although I again didn't make it to the breakaway.
I hope that we can continue like that (at least regarding the sprints) tomorrow in Spain. The Clasica AlmerÃa is on then.
After Omloop Het Nieuwsblad yesterday, it's another traditional cobbled classic today. The team remains the same and the concurrence didn't grew either, rather the contrary. Again, Sylvain Chavanel was the big favorite.
Chavanel didn't show any weakness today either. But he wasn't as dominant as yesterday at all.
Another one tried his move: With about 50 km to go, Pieter Vanspeybroeck (Topsport) sneaked away from the pack. A long time, a group of five chased him, mostly led by Sylvain Chavanel. Paolo Longo Borghini was present there, too.
With 10 km to go, Chavanel attacked, followed by Preben Van Hecke (Topsport). They closed up to Vanspeybroeck, but soon, both Belgians couldn't follow Chavanel anymore and he took the win easily.
In the sprint of the remaining three chasers, Paolo Longo Borghini achieved the fifth place, between Nico Eeckhout (An Post – Sean Kelly) and his team mate Kim Borry.
This, dear followers of Dominik Nerz, is his last continental race this season. That's right, after today, he will only ride in ProTour races – well, except for the national championships. Therefore, this is his last chance to enjoy a rather weak concurrence, and maybe his best chance for a good placement. But then, on the other hand, it's a rather flat stage. Let's just see what happens.
Km 1:Dominik Nerz presents himself very aggressive in the last days. Again, he attacks really early. He never made it into the final break, though.
Km 33: What a fight: Dominik was already caught again, but then he countered another attack and is now located in a 8 men strong chasing group, about two minutes in front of the pack, and about half a minute down to the two riders in front.
Km 36: The groups are together now and lead the race by nearly three minutes. Great for Dominik that he finally managed to jump to a break of the day.
Km 52: The escapees are now on top of the first hill and have an advance of 4'30 to the pack, where the Tavira – Prio team controls the race for their leader Candido Barbosa
Km 145: The main pack enters the last 35 km. The escapees are still 2'25 in front, Garcia Acosta has a small advance of about half a minute.
Km 160: The escapees put up a good show: With 20 km to go, the peloton is still down by 1'50. Will they succeed?
Km 167: With 13 km to go, David Navarro and Maksym Gourov attack out of the front group. Dominik Nerz counters! Rafael Valls makes his move as well.
Km 173:Valls and Dominik overtook David Navarro and Maksym Gourov, those two are down by 20 seconds. With 7 km to go, the pack is still 1'30 behind, it seems like those two, maybe four escapees will stay clear!
Km 176: The pack did enormous efforts on the last kilometres and is most probably catching up to Navarro and Gourov. Will they reach Valls and Dominik, too?
Km 179:Dominik overtook Valls easily, but the pack is coming closer very fast. Come on, Dominik, you can do it!
Aaargh!!! Damn, that was so close! Within the last 5 km, I really thought that this could be MY day. I guess it'll take me some time to get over that...
But if I try to look at it positively, I think that I impressed a lot of people today. I performed really courageous and in the end, I did better then established guys like David Navarro.
So I look at his today's race with mixed feelings.
But I agree with Squire, don't be too hasty. Plus, yours is great, too!
