The bad: It was a pretty lackluster final stage. Some weird moves from a lot of the teams here. After screwing up on stage 1, they refused to believe they had done so, and screwed over the team even more. The attacks were nice, but a somewhat boring finish followed. At least good sprinters took the day, fairly.
For us, Trentin obviously was nowhere near where he should be here, and I had hoped Lander might do something sprinting wise, even maybe today, but he wasn't able to. In fact, we basically had no stage points here.
We also failed our win goal, predictably.
The good: Ultimately, we came out of here very well off thanks to Sinkeldam. The lack of gaps after stage 1 helped, and my team, unlike others, was smart enough to switch priority to him so we could preserve our GC spot. 6th is what I reasonably could have expected from Trentin. I get it from Sinkeldam instead, but it all goes towards the same team points tally, so why should that matter?
So, Ramon finishes 6th as the first PCT rider on GC, followed by Trentin and Lander in the 20's for minor points - but those are still noteworthy in a PTHC race. The other PCT teams seemed to have much worse luck. There are barely any other PCT in the top 20. All the other top PCT cobbles riders disappointed like Trentin, but we had Sinkeldam pick up the slack. So, this was a positive race for us in the end, as we, in an unusual way, gained on our competitors.
Wonder how this race could be salvaged AI wise in the future. Maybe switching the first and last stages would help somehow? Or it would make it worse. I have no idea.
Congrats to bikex and thank you for the awesome reports LLS!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
It wasn’t a hard race to report, as much as it was frustrating. Seeing the way that teams set themselves up and how the AI reacted was tough to watch given that it really ruined teams such as Aegon (Van Hooydonck), Podium (Altur, and then Matthews), Isostar (Per), Carlsberg (Trentin, although saved by Sinkeldam) and others.
Unfortunately it did appear that whatever teams sent top sprinters saw none of their riders go for a good GC for themselves. I feel this is just the way the game set itself up for these teams. But you also have the likes of Altur and Blythe who were in teams without sprinters and they still did nothing so it must just have something to do with the AI in these types of races. Then unfortunately the likes of Pedersen and Bewley didn’t sprint because they were considered GC riders not sprinters
I do like the make up of this race so it’s worth keeping but I believe we should do some testing on it to see how different AI react.
Very happy with Kasperkiewicz defending his win here. At the end of the stage his poor sprint was evident but luckily it was still good enough to not have a gap open in front of him. Nice to see Ferreira stay with him and get himself a stage top 10. In the end the only thing I'm not happy with is Hsu's sprint performances. Hope he can do better again in his next race.
Thanks for the great reports throughout the race LLS!
I think I must be happy with 13th overall and 2nd best from PCT. While Baugnies continues making me angry, Garcia Cortina clearly overperformed heavily here. Also Guerao showed his capability in sprints and took some valuable points.
Congrats Bikex and thanks LLS for great reporting.
Kudos to Moricz to make it an interesting race for us, and getting some much needed points by leading and finally claiming the KOM. A good team effort on the final stage means we pick up some depth points. Would've hoped David to be higher up but it wasn't a complete disaster in the end, which is we were expecting after the first stage.
Sad we didn't continue our streak of amazing overachieving here but it was about time it ended. Shoutout to Nikiema for 2nd in KoM and to LLS for reports
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
Too bad there were no gaps in this final stage. Gerts seemed quite aggressive and ready to do some damage. Quite a disappointing result in the end. Felt Gerts could have done way better than 7th.
Actually, there were gaps - Gerts got dropped in the sprint
Bewley with a great last stage, just wish he had entered the sprints in the middle stages, then this could've been a really great race for us. Still, 3rd and a stage win, can't complain
