I like the Rowsell pick a lot! Indeed Cohen may be a bit redundant after signing Stepniak, but it's not like there were a ton of better options out there anyway.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
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
That Stüssi training is scary! Here I was thinking that I could turn Schlegel into one of the race favourites... I think you're going to have lots of fun scrapping with McCormick this season. It's between Stüssi & Warbasse for the stage races and then Moscon and Boswell for the hilly classics, and then in Rekita you have someone who will be a favourite for anything run against the clock as well (Keough territory much?). With favourites on three terrains I can't see how you don't end up yo-yoing straight back up to the PCT.
Stüssi training is a great move although bad news for me, home rider and a really nice stat combination.
Good news is I figured you and Leif were out of reach anyway, bad news is that it means more competition for the stage racing points upon which we are over-reliant.
Although a CT budget is rather tight, we were able to convince our sponsors to spend some money on a training camp this year. The cash received for Nairo Quintana allowed us to send one of our riders to a top-level camp, where he was trained by some of the most prestigious coaches.
We even had enough money to allow two riders to get significant training, but finally opted to send only one. The question was - who?
Given that Fausto Masnada was our first marquee signing, he would have been the obvious choice. However, we love his versatility, and would not have liked to have him race less due to this training.
Hence, the rider selected to join the high-mountain training camp in the Swiss Alps was our new signing Colin Stüssi! Colin may be less versatile than Fausto - especially weaker on the hills and with less kick - but he's stronger in time trials, and hence was our prime choice for being our main stage race leader for the 2022 season!
Let's take a look at Colin's skillset after completion of his training:
FL
MO
HI
TT
ST
RS
RC
CB
SP
AC
FG
DH
PR
OVL
2021
71
77
73
75
77
73
78
55
63
66
65
69
69
75.4
↓↓↓
2022
71
79
73
75
77
73
78
55
63
66
65
69
69
76.49
This makes Colin our second strongest rider in terms of OVL - and likely Switzerland's best stage racer from 2023 onwards, where Patrick Schelling will start to decline. We're looking forward to have such a great CT-level climber in our line-up, and are hoping for a lot of great results this year! He should be the division's strongest stage racer now, alongside Larry Warbasse, who's slightly weaker on climbs and in TTs, but stronger on hills. So expectations are definitely high!
While training someone else might have made more sense in terms of pure points scoring potential, we're happy to have a local rider available for significant and hopefully reasonable training! What do you think of the new version of Colin Stüssi?
Croatia Same feelings for me Hapy with Rowsell, not the greatest planning for the R2 pick with Cohen, though. Happy with the draft, although I hope it was the last one for a long time
bbl Erick adds some climbing skills - which we do have on top level, but not much domestique-wise. So yeah, we like him, too
jandal Thanks
MacC I hope we are, but we first have to get the planning right. Not my biggest strength so far
lief If it's scary enough that nobody even wants to fight against him, I'm in
I like your Schlegel training a lot, too - he'll be hard to beat in pure mountain races without TT, and even more in tough hybrid races. He'll definitely be a pain for the division's puncheurs and climbers, well done
I agree that we should be fighting for the top spots, not only against McCormick, but also against Tryg. Schlegel is the 3rd best CT rider now according to OVL, and you have numbers 3 and 5, so no understatement please
Ulrich Thanks We like the training a lot, too - we'll definitely have some great fights against Larry!
Yeah, definitely one of the title contenders with the second strongest stage racer in the division, as you forgot Alarcon Very nice to see you invested in a Swiss rider.
Awesome rider to have brought in, and even more awesome now that you've trained him Really really cool rider. Hopefully I get to report on a few races he's taking part in this season
Now you have even less need for that rider you didn't sell me
Great training and I agree that you're probably favourite for the CT title with the team you've built. Also cool pickup in Rowsell. Was my backup along with McEvoy if I missed out on Velasco.
red I'd say that Stüssi and Pog are pretty much equivalent this year; Pog's great energy stats and good acceleration alongside better hill make up for those -1 in Mo and TT. But next year I'll definitely have to disagree with your statement
bbl I guess I'll have to accept the label "title favorite", indeed - I think it might be my greatest chance ever to win a division. But PCM can f**k your plans up anytime ^^
Nemo Define stage racer I agree that Alarcon is the best pure climber in the division, and also still has a nice acc helping him to win mountain stages. If energy stats really had the value we give them with our OVL calc, though, I wouldn't even consider him to be the best climber. And as soon as TTs are involved, he shouldn't stand a chance - hence why I don't consider him the best "stage racer".
Eden Agree, I really like him Would be even better with a stronger acceleration and especially a younger age, but for CT he's definitely a cool guy to have on board No matter who reports his races, I hope there will be some good results included
hillis Thanks We should be title contenders indeed, maybe even favorites, but let's see if I can get the planning right We'll not have enough RDs available to fill all the spots, so that's already a first disadvantage compared to our competitors. Will hopefully still be able to join you up in PCT next year (except if you promote )!
Abhi Which one are you talking about?
He'll likely be available next year if I promote, as I'd have to get some more top-level quality in and he looks to be a good "asset" for a nice little swap deal But yeah, I always say he might be available and never traded him so far
Pound-for-pound maybe one of the scariest trainings this year given the CT context, love that it's a Swiss rider as well who can lead your title challenge. Have to say I disagree with Nemo and expect him to be the #1 over Alarcon
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
Last year, after promotion to PCT, we held a big season opening event where we also presented our team. This year, we have much less budget for such events unfortunately - especially after receiving the invoice for the mini-bar of Stüssi's training camp hotel room...
But let's talk about more serious things now. After relegation to CT, we obviously have a smaller roster this time - and we had to let go of some big quality riders unfortunately. However, we still want to make a quick comparison between this and last year's roster - just to see if we really lost that much quality.
Without further ado, let's move to the first - and probably most important - category:
Climbers & Stage Racers
2021
Spoiler
Admittedly, those two categories are pretty similar. And to be honest, we don't have any pure climbers without any TT capability this year, so let's just call all of them stage racers.
Obviously, we lost our strongest rider of this type, as Nairo Quintana just was too expensive for a CT wage cap. Nonetheless, we think that we were able to keep a very high level - we actually expect to be the strongest stage race team in CT.
In Colin Stüssi, we even have a local rider leading us in stage races this year - and after his offseason training, there aren't many opponents he has to fear. Alarcon is the division's strongest pure climber, and Schlegel will be very dangerous in mountains and hills as well, but the closest rival in stage races containing some TT kilometers should be Larry Warbasse.
But moreover, we have two very competent domestiques in Fausto Masnada and newly maxed and U25 eligible Gino Mäder. They both can climb well and TT well, too - and will have some leadership duties in races Colin won't attend. Our big advantage in focus races with all three of them participating is that even if one of them has an off-day, there are still two backups who could take over.
Compared with last year, we also lost our Italian (one-dimensional) climber Andrea Manfredi, as well as local hero Mirco Saggiorato, who will likely end his career after not having signed another contract. So we have less top-level quality, and less one-dimensional climbing skills - but a very well rounded leading trio this year!
Puncheurs
2021
Spoiler
We cheated a bit this year, allowing riders to be listed in multiple categories so the list doesn't look too empty. On the other hand, with last year's rules we'd have taken Schmid in here as well.
What has not changed, though, is our lead puncheur - for the 3rd season in a row, we'll have Gianni Moscon trying to go for glory on those short, sharp climbs. While he's not among the three 80+ hill riders, he's still the 2nd strongest puncheur according to overall value, behind Ian Boswell. Or #3 if you count Schlegel as a puncheur, too.
Which obviously means that he's more versatile than some of those "pure" puncheurs. Indeed, his decent climbing skills and especially his physical capacities have often helped him get the edge over presumably stronger riders - go ask Wilco if you don't believe us. We hesitated to send him to a training camp this year, but we didn't really like the idea of making one of Schmid's future opponents even stronger...
When speaking of strong, our hills support unfortunately isn't that much. Obviously, Fausto Masnada is a strong domestique, but he won't only ride hilly races. But he will accompany Gianni in quite some races, and that's one of the reasons why we didn't train him, either - we want to have him race as much as possible.
Else, as mentioned before, we lost some firepower in this department. Hermann Pernsteiner left the team in a swap deal, while both Fabian Lienhard and Cyrille Thièry didn't get a new contract with us. Both having found a new team shows that they're definitely quality riders, and we will miss them!
Time Trialists
2021
Spoiler
This is a department where we haven't lost any quality at the top level - on the contrary! With Szymon Rekita reaching his peak, we even have the division's sole strongest time trialist in our roster. However, compared to some slightly slower riders, it's all he does well, so it's clear which kinds of races he will be mainly attending.
The same holds for his fellow countryman Krzysztof Marchewka[/b], runner-up behind Szymon in the Polish TT NC. We wanted to get Stefan Kung for this position, but well, there's quite a difference between 75k and 400k wage... Nonetheless, Krzysztof should be a good backup for Szymon, and - most importantly - another great engine for our TTT setup in stage races.
This time, we also included prologue specialists in this list. And just like for longer TTs, we have the division's #1 in our team - Gabriel "Gabby" Chavanne! While prologues usually have even more random outcomes than longer time trials, it's definitely good to have one of the world's top specialists in our team - back in the days where he was riding for Sauber, he got some really good results!
While our time trial specialists are also good prologue riders, we find as well in this list two riders having their main strenghts in other domains; sprinter Marcel Aregger, and stage racer Gino Mäder. This is definitely a handy skill for stage races, so we're happy to have a bit more depth in this department. If you have many aces up your sleeve, one might win it all, right?
Sprinters
2021
Spoiler
This is easily the domain where we had the most painfull loss - not only did Theo Reinhardt ask for a wage that was far beyond reasonable, he even ended up signing for a measly 75k per year - less than 1/3 of last year's wage!
We also lost Thomas Boudat, who ended up signing for just slightly more than what we offered... No, we weren't treated well by our sprinters this offseason and are wondering what we did to them last season...
But let's leave the past behind, and turn our attention to the almost fully new sprint department! In terms of pure topspeed, we unfortunately had to take a step down, but we believe that Marcel Aregger is a very well-rounded sprinter and will also try his luck on bumpier stages. And in prologues, as seen before.
Grzegorz Stepniak is the third member of our Polish trio, and he'll take care of the pan-flat stages. While having the same topspeed and acceleration as Marcel, he's clearly less versatile and doesn't like uphill sections at all.
Through rather bad planning of our draft, we signed a third sprinter in Noam Cohen. Being half a level below our sprint leaders, he won't get to race many stages as our sprint leader, but rather accompany and support Marcel and Grzegorz.
The same can be said of Manuel Stocker, who has been a great leadout rider since he joined us in our first season. The situation is similar yet slightly different for Gabriel Chavanne, who will be our leader in very specific races, but also act as a leadout or breakaway rider in other races he'll attend.
Domestiques
We can't really compare this category to the previous years, having made different selections. But we can clearly see that our depth isn't great, given that we only have 3 riders in this category. You can add the leadout riders, talents, and loan-ins just to get the numbers up, but they won't be quite as valuable as this trio.
Mauro Schmid is only at level 3, but definitely deserves to be listed here - he'll even be in a different category next year already... In 2022, he'll mainly support Gianni in the hills, but will also get to race a couple of mountainous stage races. It's great to have such a versatile and strong talent on board!
When speaking of versatile, we obviously can't look past Leonardo Basso. He's one of just 4 riders who were always on the team (or loaned out) since we started in 2019, and there's a good reason for this. He'll do lots of hilly races as well, and he still is an important part of our TTT setup. Unfortunately, we're not going to make use of his cobble skills this year - maybe he'll do something else instead and try a couple of breakaways?
Last but not least, we were able to sign our #1 pick in the CT draft; Erick Rowsell will not only support our stage racers, but also gets our TTT quality up quite a bit.
Talents
Despite being already one of our most important helpers, let's not forget that Mauro Schmid is still developing - and he has only done 1 out of 3 years needed to get to his peak! Together with Marc Hirschi, he'll form a great Swiss puncheur duo for the next couple of years - both potentially getting to world-class level eventually. We're looking forward to see him in action this year, with even more great results, and even more points hopefully!
Christoph Janssen is one year behind Schmid in terms of development - and let's be honest, he won't ever get to his compatriot's level. However, he'll develop into a very handy TTT member, and will already get some first experiences this year!
Unfortunately, given the tight wage budget, we weren't able to take on another Swiss talent - and we especially regret not having been able to compete for Alex Balmer this year. We're hoping to again get more involved next year!
Loan-ins
We have a long and strong tradition of helping out other teams by taking their talents on loan. Just like in our first year, we did loaning business with manager SotD, and finally a Greek and a Cypriot ended up with us.
Panagiotis Karatsivis is a very young rider, and will take one year more than most other talents to fully develop. We're glad to have him this year, allowing him to take the first steps in professional cycling. He will mainly gain experience in mountainous races, but the goal is to give him as many opportunities to ride as possible.
Alexandros Matsangos on the other hand already has some experience, having ridden as a stagiaire for EA Vesuvio last year. The few race days he had were however not enough to make significant progress, so it's our task to catch up in terms of development, allowing him to gain two levels this year. We think that he might be developed as a good cobbler - which unfortunately is the terrain we can't offer him any races on. But he seems to like uphills quite a lot as well - and we definitely have some of those on our calendar!
Loan-outs
Our original goal was to level up all these riders on our own. Which would have been perfectly feasible in PCT for our TT talents, with the help of a couple of PT wildcards.
However, as you know, we didn't manage to stay up, and so had to loan out both Stefan Bissegger and Alexys Brunel to a PT team. We received countless calls from teams wanting to take them on, but finally got an unbeatable offer from Team Puma - SAP, offering us half a million for the duo. So that's where they'll be riding - we'll try to follow them as closely as possible!
Loaning out Gergely Szarka was absolutely no necessity, but we finally opted for it to make room for another (maxed out) sprinter. Gergely will be riding for Duolingo, after having spent the 2021 season out on loan as well (with BWT).
Jura GIANTS 2022
2021
Spoiler
We have obviously lost a lot of quantity - from 25 down to 17 riders - but also quite some quality. Which is a logical consequence of relegation.
On the other hand, we were able to keep a really strong core with our long awaited "Triple-M-Threat" (Moscon, Masnada, Mäder) - which was even augmented by Colin Stüssi's arrival. The latter's mountain training was just the icing on the top.
So we believe that we should be CT's #1 in terms of stage racing - especially when there's a TT included. Moscon should ensure that we're still very competitive in hilly races, while we have the division's top riders in terms of time trialing and prologue riding (by the way, Stüssi is #2 in terms of pure climbing skills). However, while our TTT setup is good, it's clearly not the division's strongest - we'll have to wait for our TT talents to return fully maxed for that.
Where we have lost quite a bit of quality is in sprints - and even worse, we don't have a long-term solution for those right now. This will be a main focus for next year. However, our sprinters should still be competitive if we find the right races for them.
We haven't talked at all about cobbles. We don't need to - there are no cobbled races for us this year. However, should we promote to PCT, that would be the second big project to finally start working on!
In terms of overall expectations, let's be honest: this team has to promote. And the 2022 season might even be a once-in-a-lifetime chance for us to win a division. While promotion came as a surprise two years ago, missing out on it would be a huge disappointment this time. We're not saying this to belittle our competitors. But as a relegated team, with the financial power we have and the moves we did, and looking at the other teams' rosters, promotion seems to be the most probable outcome.
However, bad planning could still ruin all the good work we believe we did during transfers. Or we might have gone too far with our race selection, likely having the least C2 and the most HC race days of the division, and hence often facing very strong competition. But we're confident that our game plan will work out - what do you think?
jandal Thanks I might have spent that cash diferently if I was really going for maximum points, but from a role-play PoV Stüssi's training just made so much sense Maybe not the strongest possible core for a second attempt in PCT next year - hopefully - but with all of my "uphill leaders" (and even Rekita) being U30, I think I have a pretty decent lineup for the next couple of years - and especially for the current CT season
Your team presentation basically confirms what I already said. You're the title favorite. But not only that, you're super well set up for when you return to CT.
That top 3 stage racer cohort is ridiculous for CT. Moscon is a top 3 puncheur in the division, and Rekita is the best time trialist. Those guys will easily promote you once you tailor your schedule to them.
Besides cobbles, which can now be entirely avoided with C2HC gone, sprints are the only area where you're not clearly at the top. And even, then, it's more just that you have too many of them in my opinion, not that they're bad. Aregger is a really awesome rider. Not many sprinters out there with good backups, climbing ability, and prologue. I think he probably best fits as a seconday sprinter in PCT (hence why I bid on him), but he will score a lot in CT I think. At 55k he will be your best value scorer.
And of course, the coolest thing about all this is that you are doing it predominantly with a young core, and you still have Schmid waiting in the wings to be a superstar in a couple of years.
It was a very tough relegation, but you're very well set up now, both short and long term.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
A really great team presentation and appreciate your willingness to acknowledge your promotion favorite status which I agree with as well.
If I had to pick a weakness it would be the 78/77 sprinters, not sure they are good enough to get consistent AI treatment, particularly in the sprint GC races with deep fields. The use of unraced mountain stages to address the GC bug in these races should reduce the ability of second tier sprinters to grab good results. Although if they are allowed to sprint then coming from far back is not a bad thing.
But I don't think they need to have great seasons, the rest of the team should score more than enough to secure promotion and a very good shot at first.
bbl A return to CT is not possible this year anyway, and I hope we won't get down again soon if we promote this year But I guess you meant PCT
Complete freedom with the CT calendar obviously allows to create a pretty well-suited schedule - although I have to admit that there will be some less-than-optimal races in terms of planning, due to having a small roster with too few total RDs available. More about this once planning deadline is over.
My schedule also means that a "secondary sprinter" will mostly be good enough, so yeah, I think Aregger should do a good job indeed. He definitely did well for Puma, be it as a leadout or as a main sprinter (winning a TdS stage last year), so let's hope he can repeat that for his final maxed season
Concerning the youth stuff, I'm actually still getting used to the idea that 28/29 is still "young" in MG, so yeah, I agree that most of the team can easily stay around for a couple more years or at least have some value for trades/sales
Relegation was bitter, indeed, but it forced me to narrow down my roster to the most essential riders - although it admittedly hurt to part ways with the likes of Thièry, Lienhard, Reinhardt or Boudat. But I agree that we should be well set-up for our next PCT attempt which will hopefully happen next year!
Ulrich I clearly get what you mean by the "not good enough" sprinters - and I'd honestly have loved to keep Boudat around or re-sign Reinhardt. However, knowing that I won't have a top-level CT sprinter by the time I did C1/C2 selection, my hope is that the lack of a top sprinter won't really matter in most races. I'm not going into details yet, but let's say that races like Ras or Guadeloupe weren't my top priority when selecting my schedule
With my roster, I definitely have to agree on being a promotion contender - as I said, I don't want to belittle our competitors, as there are some really nice teams around. But non-promotion would really be a disaster and would be entirely my fault due to bad planning. I hope this won't happen, though
Mainly regional riders (Swiss and Italians) in a team that is one of the title favourites, which is great to see. Except for a smaller, less important part of the squad, declining next season, you are indeed already set up quite nicely for PCT 2023. And with talents like Schmid and also Janssen (sorry again ) Swiss cycling will only continue developing nicely. Liked the 'comparison pics' with last year, fun idea.
Colin Stüssi! Colin may be less versatile than Fausto - especially weaker on the hills and with less kick - but he's stronger in time trials, and hence was our prime choice for being our main stage race leader for the 2022 season!
Fausto Masnada and newly maxed and U25 eligible 
Szymon Rekita reaching his peak, we even have the division's sole strongest time trialist in our roster. However, compared to some slightly slower riders, it's all he does well, so it's clear which kinds of races he will be mainly attending.
Noam Cohen. Being half a level below our sprint leaders, he won't get to race many stages as our sprint leader, but rather accompany and support Marcel and Grzegorz.
Erick Rowsell will not only support our stage racers, but also gets our TTT quality up quite a bit.
Panagiotis Karatsivis is a very young rider, and will take one year more than most other talents to fully develop. We're glad to have him this year, allowing him to take the first steps in professional cycling. He will mainly gain experience in mountainous races, but the goal is to give him as many opportunities to ride as possible.
Alexandros Matsangos on the other hand already has some experience, having ridden as a stagiaire for EA Vesuvio last year. The few race days he had were however not enough to make significant progress, so it's our task to catch up in terms of development, allowing him to gain two levels this year. We think that he might be developed as a good cobbler - which unfortunately is the terrain we can't offer him any races on. But he seems to like uphills quite a lot as well - and we definitely have some of those on our calendar!
Alexys Brunel to a PT team. We received countless calls from teams wanting to take them on, but finally got an unbeatable offer from Team Puma - SAP, offering us half a million for the duo. So that's where they'll be riding - we'll try to follow them as closely as possible!
Gergely Szarka was absolutely no necessity, but we finally opted for it to make room for another (maxed out) sprinter. Gergely will be riding for Duolingo, after having spent the 2021 season out on loan as well (with BWT).
