Die Berg Komt Er is proud to announce that we have found a leader who can reach our team goals this season. It's the Spanish climber David Arroyo, who will ride his last year as a non-deteriorating rider with us. Apart from him, we have also signed Kevin De Weert as his main domestique, and Antton Ibarguren as a 24-year old (did someone say white jersey?) climbing talent. Our mountain squad will be completed by Tyron Giogieri, Andrii Bratashcuk, Clement Chevrier and Stefan Petrovski, all on loan.

As annouced, our unofficial 6th goal is to attrect attention from possible sponsors in countries that have the same problem as us Dutchies, no mountains. Therefore we have signed 5 (five!) sprinters who are all capable of winning races in both C1 and C2. The names? Jíri Hochmann, Emanuele Rizza, Sébastien Chavanel, Igor Abakoumovand Leonardo Duque. The latter may be the worst sprinter, but has a secret weapon: His ability to survive hills. Mikhail Kochetkov will make sure that our sprinters will be in the right position at the 3km-mark.

Since there also are cobbles in the Benelux, we have signed Niki Østergaard. He will get full leadership in all C2 cobble races. In the remaining races he will be an awesome domestique for our sprinters. Bert-Jan Lindeman has also been signed, but prefered to get some experience in the PT this year, so we loaned him out to Koeningsegg.

And now, Dutch press, please stand up! We may have riders from a lot of countries, to attract sponsors from as many countries as possible, but we have also thought about our fans! We are pleased to announce that Rick Flens has prefered leadership in a CT team over the TTT trains in the ProTour. He will help to give Frederik Frison as much experience as possible. Stage races with TTs, beware!

Quite early in the transfer season, we signed Sergey Firsanov, a decent puncheur who could be a great domestique. But since we were unable to sign a good puncheur, we have decided to loan him out and give him shared leadership at Banco Nacional de Costa Rica instead. As mentioned before, we recieved top sprinter Emanuele Rizza in return.

Last but not least, our leader, Thijs Zonneveld, has trained a lot over the past season to be a worthy addition to the team. Whether he'll be fit enough to race is not sure yet, but we signed him, just in case.

First of all, David Arroyo, the CT transfer of the season? After missing out on Denifl, Abal and Serpa (wtf, 1.250.000 for him?), we were lucky enough to hear that the best bid on Arroyo was 600,000, which we could improve. He should be able to reach our goals this season, which is, as announced, more important than the standings to me. We signed Kevin de Weert and Antton Ibarguren, which were the best domestiques I could sign for 50k. But hey, they both have some nice backup stats, and most C1/C2 tours only have one mountain per stage, so it wasn't very important to me to get better domestiques. Tyron Giogieri, Andrii Bratashcuk, Clement Chevrier and Stefan Petrovski, all loaned, make me able to send a 7-man squad full of climbers. We're ready for 34 days of domination!

I remember that, in my application, I wrote that I wasn't interested in sprinters and that I'd probably only get one for 50k. I think I've overdone it a bit because I signed 5 of them.. But that way I should be able to send at least 2 sprinters to every race! The names are Jíri "No speedbump please" Hochmann, Emanuele Rizza, Sébastien Chavanel, Igor Abakoumov, and a rider who has a much better hillstat than most CT sprinters, Leonardo Duque. Since sprints are extremely random in pcm12, the results of our sprinters will depend out final ranking in the CT tour. And oh yeah, we also got Mikhail Kochetkov on loan, who is completely worthless but might be handy in long TTs and to catch the break.

I expected the whole CT tour to get mad about puncheurs, so I hoped to get some cheap points by getting a cobbler for the 10 C2 races (Niki Østergaard). But now that there are at least three much better cobblers, we'll let him try to get some top 5's and be a top domestique in the other races. We also signed Bert-Jan Lindeman, who I loaned out to Koeningsegg. The 100k compensation I got for that made me able to sign Østergaard. Duque and Chavanel both have 70 COB, so they will support Østergaard and participate in the bunch sprints, if there will be any.

Now for this season's dark horse, Rick Flens. I signed him for 50k and thought he'd be a nice addition for the TTTs, but I slowly found out that he could be worth A LOT of points. As far as I know he's the best flat TTer in the CT, shared with Larsson. I should be able to win a lot of prologues with him, and make him get some points for the Africa tour at the Windhoek ITT. We also got Frederik Frison on loan, with 70 TT I'll send him to as many TTTs as possible.

We have made one big fail this transfer season, which was expecting that everybody would try to get a puncheur, which didn't happen. So there were no puncheurs left for me; Westra, Barredo and Oss all got overbid by about 20k more than my budget. I hope I anticipated early enough by swapping Sergey Firsanov for Emanuele Rizza, but that did make dev4ever able to get Steegmans... So was that a smart move?

Oh, one more thing. To keep our story trustworthy, we were forced to sign Thijs Zonneveld, who's just a waste of 50k and will probably only ride like 2 races, just for fun. Ohwell, at least I didn't have to look at countries, like other teams did.