@Kiserlovski and croatia: That was one of those sweet unexpected victories. Whatever I do when the late attacks come I seem to go wrong. Giving Albasini a 50'' head start? No way Goos could catch him, I was certain of that.
I wasn't going to turn the new signings into a big mystery, it's more a case of not feeling excited about any of them. There wasn't anybody on the level of our best riders, they all looked like domestiques at that point. I can reveal that we finally have a cobblestone specialist, though his other stats look deceptively weak. PCM creates riders who reach COB 80+, but FLA, HIL, STA 70 or less. This looks like one of them, but he was the only option in our limited price range.
Race squad: Brown, Franczak, Golem, Gougeard, Hoem, Laengen, Manaia, B. Silva, R. Silva
Welcome to a star-studded Tour de France 2016. The top favourite is, of course, Chris Froome (now with Movistar), the winner of the previous two editions (3 counting the real life 2013 TdF). Right behind him is Nairo Quintana (Quickstep), who is the best climber in the world. The current MON ranking: Quintana 85, Froome 84, Kreuziger 83, Porte 83, Uran 81, Nibali 81, then 10 riders with MON 80, nearly all of them riding the Tour. MIssing are only Ag2r's Barguil and the unemployed Van Garderen. Which also means the whole top 5 of the Giro – bar Mollema – is in attendence.
We start in Sedan with a prologue and the first winner and wearer of the yellow jersey is Dumoulin, who beat Cancellara and Kwiatkowski by 3''. The second stage to Charleville Mezieres was already hilly and Bjorn Tore Hoem was our first rider to join a breakaway at the Tour de France. It was hard to to even make it into the group of 6 good riders and all hopes of WT points were dashed when the peloton caught us. But Hoem collected 6 KOM points and slipped into the first polkadot jersey, to the delight of our sponsor. The stage was decided among the GC favourites, with Quintana winning ahead of Kwiatek and Dan Martin. Our other riders lost up to 19'49'' on the stage, a quartett arrived behind everybody else, possibly we cut it close with the time limit again.
Degenkolb won stage 3, Cavendish stage 4, Sagan stage 5. The next day had an uphill finish, Dan Martin took the stage ahead of Kwiatkowski and Quintana, Rafael Silva had been in the unsuccessful breakaway. Then Sagan claimed another stage, beating the pure sprinters again. Will he win his next green jersey?
Day 8 took us from Bourg en Bresse to Grenoble over six summits and would end the GC ambitions of several riders. Brown joined the escapees, but they were caught easily. Quintana was the big winner of the day, taking the stage by over a minute ahead of Froome, 2 minutes ahead of Betancur, Kwiatkowski, Kreuziger and Martin, everybody else lost considerably more time. The podium trio of the Giro – Porte, Uran and Nibali – all arrived 4'15'' behind.
Another mountain stage followed a day later and with high hopes a breakaway could take the stage we let our our best climber escape, Golem. He was up against a bunch of good riders, Jungels, Firsanov, Samoilau, Coppel, Hardy, Bakelandts and Lövquist, but only one rider actually matched his climbing skill, Levarlet. As we'd hoped, the peloton didn't chase hard and the stage would be decided among the breakaway riders.
Golem saved as much energy as possible for the final climb, didn't sprint for the mountain points, kept to the back of the group a few times. He matched his steady speed to the steady final climb, Coppel initiated a few attacks, but Golem caught them all. The last to falter was Levarlet with 2 km to go and Golem was overjoyed as he crossed the finish line. A TdF stage! Woohoo!
Golem leaves Levarlet behind on his way to our first TdF stage
And only a day later after Golem's coup another Aviva rider claimed the second TdF stage for us! This time Hoem was part of a trio together with Vachon and Cort Nielsen. Hoem's HIL stat was clearly the best in the group, but the hills on the stage to Carpentras were quite tame. Nonetheless, Hoem attacked, and attacked again, and again, and was rewarded with an advantage of just 10 to 15 seconds but it proved to be enough, he had just enough energy left to keep up a high speed and maintain the gap. Seemingly out of nowhere, Kwiatkowski suddenly appeared and overtook the others, but thankfully he didn't reach Hoem in time. Kwiatek gained 50'' on his GC opponents with that late attack.
In case anybody thought we'd follow up with more stage wins, we didn't. But I dare say two TdF stages are plenty. And there was still the polkadot jersey on the menu, and that is what Golem concentrated on next. Nathan Brown made the breakaway on stage 13 to Ax 3 Domaines and finished a good 9th, once more Quintana was victorious.
Golem picked the next two stages for his personal goal and both went to the breakaway. He was 3rd on stage 14 behind Landa and Cataldo, and 4th on stage 15. Gesink won the stage ahead of Levarlet and Jungels – Levarlet arrived 3'46'' ahead of Golem that day, which only makes beating him on stage 9 than much more precious. Our man spent himself fighting for the KOM points and it was worth it: Only in theory somebody could take it off him – or he could crash out of the race, of course.
Since he was still fresh, Golem joined the breakaway once more on stage 18, the final mountain stage with many medium-sized climbs scattered across 231 km. With riders like Porte (the Giro winner was well outside the top 20 by then) and Landa in the group he wasn't going to win the stage, but another 4th place would have been possible had he not crashed 15 km from the finish line. Thankfully, he wasn't seriously hurt and could continue the race.
But the far bigger news of the day was that the man in yellow, Nairo Quintana, who by now was leading by over 5 minutes, had to step off his bike and get into the team car, a broken rib was causing too much pain. Quintana had really dominated in the mountains up to that point, taking time off his rivals on just about every stage. Even Froome could only keep up on stage 13, though the Brit won stage 11, the MTT, by 10'' ahead of Quintana.
Not the most satisfying way for Froome to win the Tour, but that's cycling. On stage 18 Froome arrived over 22 minutes behind stage winner Landa, the Spaniard jumped to 6th in the GC, Cataldo to 7th, Bakelandts to 8th. However, only Bakelandts would finish in the top 10, Landa and Cataldo lost too much time in the ITT on stage 20.
The final time trial also spelled doom for Betancur, he dropped off the podium and was replaced by Kwiatkowski. Nibali had a good day, losing only 15'' to the suprise stage winner, Boasson Hagen, and just squeezed into the top 10 with that performance. Froome thus wins ahead of Kreuziger and Kwiatkowski. Kreuziger missed the Giro podium, but apparently he was building up form for the Tour. Unlike Richie Porte, who won the Giro but was only 37th in the Tour, Sky's best rider was Rolland, who finished 14th. His Giro rivals Uran and Nibali finished 8th and 9th. Since it's the Tour, here a rare top 10 table:
1
Chris Froome
Movistar Team
2
Roman Kreuziger
Team Katusha
+02'37''
3
Michal Kwiatkowski
Ag2r La Mondiale
+04'42''
4
Carlos Alberto Betancur
Trek Factory Racing
+07'37''
5
Daniel Martin
Orica - GreenEDGE
+09'25''
6
Peter Velits
BMC Racing Team
+15'19''
7
Rui Costa
Lotto - Belisol
+16'18''
8
Rigoberto Uran
FDJ.fr
+16'37''
9
Vincenzo Nibali
Astana Pro Team
+17'14''
10
Jan Bakelants
Belkin Pro Cycling Team
+17'39''
Meanwhile there was also an unexpected fight for green. Sagan had been wearing the jersey since stage 5, extending his lead when he won stage 7. But Cavendish won the sprint on stage 12 and closed the gap and, unlike Sagan, competed for the intermediate sprints on the next mountain stages: 11 points on stage 13, 6 on stage 14, 8 on stage 15, 1 on stage 17 and 5 on stage 18 and suddenly he took the jersey off Sagan. Sagan struck back on stage 19 but only took a lead of 6 points into the final stage. And victory on the Champs Elysees went to... drumroll... Mark Cavendish, ahead of Kristoff and Sagan. His third stage, 48 points on the day, only 30 for Sagan and so Cavendish wins the points classification 12 points ahead of Sagan, Demare is a distant 3rd.
Once again the climbers classification goes to Aviva and again it felt all too easy. Fredy Golem collected 154 points, Cancellara in second just 58, Landa 52. Admittedly, Golem needed 4 breakaways to collect his points while Landa and Cancellara were in two breakaways each. Two GTs, two KOMs... can we make it a triple? Confidence is high, the first two jerseys were pretty easy to capture. However, we'll hit a serious obstacle in Spain, but we'll get to that soon enough.
@croatia: Quiet? Golem won the polkadot jersey and that makes him our first star rider! It has no real consequence, of course, but it's another thing that makes the sponsor very happy. Not that he could be any happier at this point anyway.
Standings 1st of August 2016
What a difference two months can make. Golem hasn't only become a star, he has moved up to 52nd in the WT rankings with 42 points. Adding Gougeard (30), Hoem (27), Goos (10) and Meinert (8) the team now has 117 points, enough to squeeze past Lampre (107) and Europcar (109), Garmin still sits at the bottom of the table with 55 points.
A team that is really flying is Ag2r, though: 574 WT points for a Conti Pro team, 10th, ahead of Team Sky, despite Porte's Giro victory! How's that possible? Well, they do have a rider called Kwiatkowski on their team, 3rd in the TdF, 2nd in the Romandie, currently 6th in the WT individual rankings. Which is now being led by Froome (558) ahead of Kreuziger (533), Uran (516) slipped down to 3rd.
Quickstep (971) even dropped from 1st to 4th in the last two months. Currently Movistar (1125) is ahead of Katusha (1048) and BMC (1008). Those four teams have a good lead on the rest of the pack, Trek is now 5th with 680 points, the gaps behind are very small.
Getting close to the top 10 in all Ardennes Week races made us confident for the Clasica San Sebastian. Especially Hoem is a top 10 candidate after he just gained another +1 HIL, taking him to HIL 78. Sadly, he crashed early on in the race. He was in pain and only finished 164th out of 168 riders.
So our team focussed entirely on Rafael Silva. Just about everybody got a chance to protect him and it paid off: Silva made it into the top group of 7 strong riders consisting of TdF champ Froome, Ulissi, Betancur, Jungels, Polanc and Jelle Vanendert. Silva even briefly attacked with 7 km to go, hoping to cause a rivalry amongst the others. But Jungels countered the attack and then rode to victory, Silva saved up his last bit of energy to latch onto Froome and he beat the TdF winner in the sprint for 5th. 30 points for him, just like for Gougeard back in Gent-Wevelgem, a great result.
The full top 10: Jungels, Polanc, Ulissi, Betancur, R. Silva, Froome, J. Vanendert, Nibali, Cancellara, A. Yates
Just a few comments on the goal races – as I haven’t had time to comment or even follow on a regular basis.
Roma Maxima - lovely result with fuc¤%&/ 3 riders meeting you sponsor coal.
Rafael Silva's did good in PN even if the goal was not fulfilled.
Tirreno-Adriatico – Pomoshnikov’s podium in T-A could be OK to keep the sponsors content, and with Hoem will they must be very satisfied.
Criterium International: Yes stage goals are sometimes a bad choice
Three Days of De Panne: Franczak stage podium should be enough not to disappoint too much.
Volta Limburg Classic: Bingo
Vuelta al Pais Vasco: After success in Limburg, not so great here.
Thanks, mate! Can't complete every goal, some are just too tough and some I should have selected more carefully. But considering that we just got promoted and our wage budget is so small it's been a very good season already and the sponsor has been very happy the whole time - that hasn't always been the case in previous careers.
Race squad: Bettencourt, Hoem, Pomoshnikov, Rafael Silva, Skjerping, Wojtasik
Thankfully Hoem wasn't seriously injured in San Sebastian, we needed him for a hilly Tour de Pologne. This is the first WT stage race where we can realistically target the top 10, especially with Hoem. Secretly we hoped that the peloton would ignore one of the breakaways with local hero Wojtasik. He had two chances, on stages 1 and 6, both times the gap grew large but not large enough. He won the mountain jersey for his efforts, though, to add to our ever growing collection. On the opening stage Silva and Hoem rode intelligently in the last kilometres and Silva was 3rd behind Matthews and Vanbilsen, Hoem 5th.
The first five stages whittled down the GC competition to 22 riders who were within 24'' of each other. Some of them were sprinters who should struggle on the tough stage 6, up and down all day. Wojtasik was in a breakaway with Wiggins, Boem, Broeckx and Edward King (nickname King Edward, obviously). Wojtasik came out top in the KOM rankings with 82 points, adding to the 48 points he'd collected on the first stage.
But the breakaway wouldn't survive and we could concentrate on Silva and Hoem. The decisive attack came near the top of the penultimate climb. We were prepared for that and set our captains to follow the attacking riders. But in good old PCM fashion they quickly decided to ignore the order. I often have trouble with the follow attack order, I should have just selected the normal attack.
Five riders got away and they wouldn't be seen again. Possibly they were too strong for our men anyway. Mollema won the stage just ahead of Ion Izagirre, Fuglsang was 3rd, 30'' behind, then came Trofimov and Moser, who lost a little more time.
A slightly frustrated directeur sportif told Hoem and Silva to just attack together after those five had gotten away. Frustration turned into joy when they finished 6th and 7th, 2'07'' behind Mollema but with a small gap to the next group led by Majka and Cataldo. With only a flat stage to go they'd finish 6th and 7th in the GC as well! 70 more WT points, yeah! Our first top 10 results in a WT stage race.
Cavendish added two more victories to his palmares by winning stages 4 and 7, though Matthews took the points classification. The final top 10: Mollema, I. Izagirre, Fuglsang, Trofimov, Moser, R. Silva, Hoem, Majka, Cataldo, Matthews
We now have three simultaneous stage races ahead, not exactly ideal that our sponsor chose both the Tour de l'Ain and the Vuelta a Burgos as goal races, while we also hoped to get something out of the WT race, the Eneco Tour. We only sent 6 riders to each race.
August 2016: Eneco Tour
Race squad: Bibby, Gougeard, Hansen, Lemesle, R. Silva, Sütterlin
Just one small cobbled sector, a hilly stage that might lead to some time gaps, but also a prologue and an ITT of 15 km... we didn't think we'd get anything out of it. Thomas won the prologue, Degenkolb stage 2, Sagan stage 3. We sent Rafael Silva into the breakaway on the hilly stage 4, hoping against hope, but he was caught by the best riders 20 km out. He could just about keep up with the group, though, and even finished 7th on the day. EBH won ahead of GVA and Stybar, Silva was part of a group of 7 riders, 44'' seconds behind. Everybody else lost a lot of time, all our other riders lost 4'02'', though they still finished in a group ahead of most of the peloton.
Silva was 9th overall after the stage. As expected, he followed up with a bad time trial, 93th, 2'30'' behind Tony Martin. But thanks to the large gaps on the previous stage he only dropped one position in the GC. Our TT specialist Sütterlin (73) was 13th, 24'' behind.
We only had two flat stages left. Stage 6 was won by Kristoff, somehow GVA managed to lose 1'37'', but he stayed ahead of Silva. The last stage was a little more difficult with a few very short but steep hills. Gourgeard joined the breakaway, the gap grew quite large but the peloton sped up accordingly and was reduced to just 60 riders when the breakaway was caught.
With nothing to lose a couple of our riders tried late attacks, hoping to win with a short solo ride. But the sprinter teams were alert. The stage eventually went to Bouhanni, who beat Kristoff and Viviani, our best rider was Bibby as 20th. However, we had failed to notice that the peloton had been split into pieces. Only 28 riders, including our men bar Gourgeard, were awarded the same time as the winner. And only 13 more were in the next group which lost 2'33''. Everybody else lost at least 5'06'' – and that included a few top 10 riders: Bauer lost 2'33'', Durbridge, Vandewalle and Van Avermaet 5'06'', Ignatiev and Rovny even 6'41''.
So we ended with two riders in the top 10, 8th and 9th, and three more just outside. Never give up, I guess. Boasson Hagen won the Eneco Tour 2016 by 35'' ahead of Thomas and 44'' ahead of Sagan. Next were Boom, Stybar, Belkin's climber De Maar, Roux, Rafael Silva, Sütterlin and Tony Martin.
PCM never fails to surprise, even after so many years. That last stage was clearly a stage for a mass sprint, no real difficulties, not a single cobbled sector, moderately windy. And yet the peloton was down to 60 riders even before the finale and half of them were dropped in the end, losing up to 5 minutes. We certainly won't complain, two riders in the top 10, a nice surprise.
Even though missing the decisive move in Pologne, some fine points collected, also Eneco Tour with good top 10 results, that split
Im not sure it is very unrealistic though, strange things happen on my TV if a few good tempo riders push very hard up front, especially in late stages where many riders do not have much left to fight for
I also wouldn't refer to the second half of Le Tour to be silent, good racing just didn't lead to another win then. Congrats on securing your second GT mountain jersey.
San Sebastián, Pologne and Eneco all were very solid follow up results. No stage wins but the GC positions did earn you additional (and much needed) WT points.
@Tamijo: Not unrealistic, just unexpected. Plus I hadn't been watching closely, I was sure I was seeing a normal mass sprint and suddenly it stopped after 30 riders. The last split must have happened very late.
@Kiserlovski: Stage wins are still tough to achieve, of course, can only come from a breakway. But top 10 GC results make for a nice change after the season start which felt like a pro cyclist career, I only had to care about the breakaway rider. Which will remain true for quite some time yet for most races.
Race squad: Bolivar, Garby, Goos, Morton, Puccio, B. Silva
The Tour de l'Ain is only a 2.1 race, but making the top 5 seemed like a tough ask nonetheless. There were two mountain stages, but both with flat finishes. Our adventure started with the hilly stage 3 when Puccio made it into the breakaway. A late hill reduced the group to a duo, the stage would go to either Puccio or Hoogerland – and Puccio won the stage, his only notable result all season. The peloton arrived 1'06'' behind.
This would prove to be an important gap. The following two mountain stages were very tame, or rather, the peloton rode an unusually slow pace both times despite riders like Boswell and Landa (both MON 78). Hoogerland with his MON 65 had little trouble staying in the top group on both days and nearly won the race. Stage 4 saw a group of 27 riders arrive together, this included Hoogerland as well as Bolivar and Morton.
Our Australian champion then snuck into the breakaway on the final day. He's improved slightly to MON 73 HIL 73, but his AVG 70 made him unthreatening enough even at the lower level. The breakaway arrived at the foot of the HC climb with slightly over 4 minutes to spare, Morton set a high pace and was soon riding solo. His DHI 64 wasn't ideal for the descent, but he kept the gap around 2 minutes. He won the stage, 1'47'' ahead of the reduced peloton, and that also means he won the race!
Top 10: Morton, Hoogerland, Dyachenko, El Fares, Van Niekerk, Belda, Moreno, Land, Boswell, Jesper Hansen
Race squad: Aregger, N. Brown, Del Pino, Manaia, Meinert, Skjerping
And now our last goal of the season, one we coudn't possibly complete. The first four stages were completely flat, while the final stage was the queen stage with a mountaintop finish, Lagunas de Neila. Did I say I wouldn't mention Del Pino again? Ok, I was wrong, I can report that he was our breakaway option on the final day, our only hope in completing the goal. But unsurprisingly, the escape group didn't stand a chance.
The top favourite was Chris Froome and he won by a comically large margin, 5'12'' ahead of Kelderman. Our best rider was Nathan Brown, he finished 11th, exactly 9 minutes behind Froome. He just squeezed into the final top 10 as 9th. The top 10: Froome, Adam Yates, Kelderman, Aru, Ruben Fernandez, Elissonde, Zakarin, Mate, Nathan Brown, Daniel Silva
Since it was the last sponsor objective of the season, here's the overview of our performance in the 2016 goal races:
10 out of 15 completed, a very good result if I may say so. One long-term goal is to fulfil all season objectives the sponsor throws at us. It won't be easy, the better we do, the tougher the goals will get.
Morton with an impressive win in l'Ain - major result contratz !
10 out of 15 completed quite an achievement
Aiming for all season objectives will be very tough but love that you are optimistic.
@Tamijo: Thank you! Seemed impossible, it was a long way from the final climb to the finish line and it was Morton against the whole peloton. But miraculously the gap just didn't shrink. With the objectives we'll have to see, needs the right combination of goal races and riders and luck. But yeah, even repeating 10/15 will be tough enough for now.
Nothing much to report from this race. We didn't do much but protect our sprinter Franczak (SPR 75 ACC 75). However, he had a bad day and was only 23rd, even beaten by his lead-out rider Gougeard. The Cyclassics was won by Cavendish ahead of Modolo and Degenkolb. Next were Morkov, Roelandts, Bouhanni, Farrar, Juodvalkis, Stannard and Boasson Hagen.
We didn't even bother bringing a sprinter to the GP Quest. On this easier variant victory from a mass sprint is quite likely, our plan was to let our captains Hoem and Silva attack at the top of the final ramp 5 km from the finish line, it might lead to a result. But that's not how it played out.
Our men were well proctected and remained near the front going into the final 50 km. On the short climbs they'd push harder, trying to soften up the sprinters. With over a lap to go Gilbert attacked on the steepest climb. He'd solo to victory, that soon become clear. The speed in the peloton didn't pick up much and with 15 km to go only Sergio Henao was doing all the work.
All the sudden, with the protection of Goos and Pomoshnikov, Hoem and Silva broke free without attacking, about 10 km out. This was a chance we weren't going to miss and Hoem and Silva finished 2nd and 3rd behind Gilbert and ahead of the rest. Pomoshnikov even ended 7th, though he had been dropped by his captains with 5 km to go, only Modolo, Roelandts and Bouhanni overtook him.
What a result, our first WT podium. Well, what can I say? Being handed such a result on the plate, 80 effort and the peloton can't keep up? Great and slightly disappointing.
The final top 10: Gilbert, Hoem, R. Silva, Modolo, Roelandts, Bouhanni, Pomoshnikov, Venturini, Jules and Kreder. The problem may have been that too few good sprinters had booked this race. There's just Bouhanni and Modolo, Roelandts isn't a real sprinter and then Venturini (SPR 77), Jules (76), Kreder (76)... and it's not like there were better sprinters who missed the top 10.
Well, 124 combined WT points, that puts the last of the relegation worries to rest. What a great August: 5th in San Sebastian, 6th and 7th in the Tour of Poland, 8th and 9th in the Eneco Tour and now 2nd and 3rd in Plouay. No win, but we can easily live with that. That's just PCM, unbalanced, slightly frustrating. Remember our team fighting so hard without much luck in the first few months? Every WT point worth celebrating. But the longer the season lasts, the easier it gets.
