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Tour of South Africa Discussions
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| Croatia14 |
Posted on 08-12-2023 12:12
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Directeur Sportif
Posts: 9083
Joined: 13-03-2013
PCM$: 2100.00
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There we go 
very cool to see the Izagirre plan working out as well!
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| whitejersey |
Posted on 08-12-2023 14:17
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Classics Specialist
Posts: 2855
Joined: 07-08-2011
PCM$: 300.00
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Thank god this disasterclass of a race is over for us. Thanks for the reports and congrats to everyone who got something out of this.
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| ivaneurope |
Posted on 08-12-2023 14:59
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Classics Specialist
Posts: 2927
Joined: 09-05-2011
PCM$: 300.00
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Well, at least we've ended the race on a more positive note with a stage podium. Thanks for the reports
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| Nemolito |
Posted on 08-12-2023 15:06
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Classics Specialist
Posts: 3280
Joined: 20-04-2020
PCM$: 425.00
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Damn, Higuita really on fire these last two days. Superb way to finish this race and in the end the points haul is still well over 20 pprd, so definitely nice enough and keeps us in the promotion and perhaps title race. Second in points is also a nice bonus for the young Colombian, who loves the support he is getting from his former manager as well  Nice to see Osorio and Lopez Nolasco adding some points to their tally as well.
Congratulations to cunego on this great GC win! And also congratulations to others doing well such as McCormick. Conmiserations to those who have been unlucky (again), really hope the tide will turn for you as well soon.
Last of all, thanks for bringing us six great reports in the last week, Imladrik, was a pleasure to read them. Except that TTT, obviously 
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| cunego59 |
Posted on 08-12-2023 15:07
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Team Manager
Posts: 6494
Joined: 14-09-2008
PCM$: 1090.00
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Amazing! This is only our second stage race win ever (after Silvestre in Juarez two years ago), and what a surprising one at that. Like I said before, a lot of luck involved with favorable time gaps and some other capable riders losing time where you maybe wouldn't expect them to. At the same time, I am happy that the strategy of building a decent TTT squad and pivoting towards these types of races worked out very well so far.
Good to see Demare do so well with three stage wins, and Higuita, too. And thank you for the very nice reports, Imladrik!
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| KaiserAdler |
Posted on 08-12-2023 20:31
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Domestique
Posts: 567
Joined: 13-07-2022
PCM$: 5800.00
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Sad.
Congrats to Nemo bbi
thanks for the reports
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| Fabianski |
Posted on 08-12-2023 20:59
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Grand Tour Specialist
Posts: 4548
Joined: 29-09-2018
PCM$: 185.00
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Congrats to Nemo again, good to see that Higuita somewhat salvages the race for you
And congrats to cunego for the GC win - I honestly never expected Izagirre to be capable of doing this, but yeah, it's well-known by now that I do value energy stats but PCM doesn't at all
Definitely not happy with the outcome here. It is a huge missed chance for my team, maybe the only realistic shot at winning a stage race this year. Without Masnada's time loss on stage 2, he'd have won the race, so that really hurts. The new TTT "feature" of dropping leaders was unknown pre-season, so really disappointing to lose Errazkin there. At least he still got a Top 10, with Masnada narrowly missing out on it - but in the end it's a miss.
Not necessarily because of the overall scoring - we should still be around 20 PpRD. We obviously expected to be quite a bit higher, but it's still within the OK range. But what hurts is that it's a sponsor goal really thrown out of the window. I was hoping for the win, or at least a podium - and thought a Top 5 would be safe. And I'm pretty sure it would have been with one of the previous two game versions (where Errazkin wouldn't have been dropped). But it wasn't to be, and that's a big bummer. We'll very likely have a 0/5 this year now, which obviously hurts.
Well, maybe we'll be lucky in one of our other goal races, but given that we've performed below expectations in all hilly stage races so far - Hong Kong, Ukraine, South Africa (not counting Pais Vasco as "hilly" tbh), I doubt we'll be.
To end on a positive note - we had three TTTs this month, and we won all of them - guess we didn't do everything wrong then ^^
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| jandal7 |
Posted on 08-12-2023 22:05
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World Champion
Posts: 11356
Joined: 17-12-2014
PCM$: 1020.00
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Awful race. Love to see Higuita on fire though!
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
5x  x5
2x  x2
2x  x2 |
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| Ulrich Ulriksen |
Posted on 08-12-2023 22:21
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Directeur Sportif
Posts: 3174
Joined: 02-11-2010
PCM$: 300.00
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Phew, I was a little nervous there with all the gaps in the closing kilometers but in the end it all came back together and we didn't pay for how far back a few guys were. Definitely rode our luck in this race but the outcome is at the high end of expectations.
And Boswell got the job done even if that meant doing some super-domestique stuff rather than being our leader. One of the questions of this season for us is whether Narvaez merits training - this would be an argument for yes.
Higuita was no surprise on Stage 5, but the double was pretty impressive, would have thought one of the other guys was better suited to that finish. Congrats to Nemo and Cunego on the overall.
Thanks to Imladrik for another set of great reports.
Man Game: McCormick Pro Cycling |
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| Jakstar22 |
Posted on 08-12-2023 22:38
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Team Leader
Posts: 7257
Joined: 11-04-2012
PCM$: 200.00
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Love how it goes from incredible to absolutely terribly terrible. Not happy and really need to work on closing races like this…
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 29-09-2024 00:28
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Bot Agent
Posts: Countless
Joined: 23.11.09
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| AbhishekLFC |
Posted on 09-12-2023 10:49
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Directeur Sportif
Posts: 11583
Joined: 27-07-2015
PCM$: 1861.50
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Seeing how Higuita went, it's clear that it wasn't a bad decision to send Benoot here, but as usual, we very rarely seem to have the luck with these things. To add to that, despite our best rider being just 18th in the GC, we don't get any breakaway riders even with some strong riders in the team. Doesn't change across seasons, no idea why.
Congrats to Nemo on the stage and cunego for the GC! Thanks for the reports Imladrik
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