Terrible race for us. Our depleted yet solid depth in the TT department has not paid off at all and we sit in no man's land, worse yet is that Cullaigh has missed the top 10 on every sprint to boot.
Sprint stages need a complete rework and the addition of narrow roads or something to minimise the damage done of sprinters being dropped off too early. I know Cullaigh missing the top 10 all the time isn't horrible as he is in that range based on strength but seeing Ewan and Coquard especially suck so bad is not good to see.
I understand the reasoning by putting the drag strip finishes in the past but now it's killing the game by seeing a 20 wide sprint on almost every stage allowing the ones who go first get swamped completely.
John St Ledger in Team Bunzl-Centrica and Team U25
Congratulations on the GC, tastasol! Würtz to the rescue when he’s needed the most. Guess that will put some pressure on the other teams fighting to avoid relegation. That will be very tense for the rest of the season, I guess.
For us, disappointing to see Potts loose the KoM jersey on the final day. Zhao again contended the sprint, which is all I can ask for.
Wow, that went almost as if I played the stage myself
Two in the breakaway was great to see, and finally the right ones. I was pretty surprised to see Stehli be the one to compete for KoM points, with Brunel actually the stronger puncheur - but I guess it was all about acceleration there. Looks like making some kind of hilly sprinter out of Stehli isn't the worst idea ^^ That KoM jersey win here is a fantastic result for him, and it's actually our first one of the year!
I was furthermore expecting Brunel to get some bonus seconds, moving up in GC and U25; he didn't really have the punch to go for them, though. And it didn't matter in the end, with the escapees being dropped. I was thinking that with the catch made with 13km to go, they should be able to keep up with the pack, but no. That's 13 points lost for him (7 in GC, 6 in U25), but it was definitely worth taking the risk. And he probably helped Stehli to save energy for the KoM sprints, so perfect job in the end!
Page then had his weakest sprint of the week, with 16th place being about where he actually belongs. With an 8th place plus two 3rd places, he has by far exceeded our expectations of a handful stage points - also rounded off by a fantastic shared 2nd place in points!
GC-wise, it was a disappointing race for us - especially Rekita was bad, given that a Top 15 actually was on the cards for a 79 TTer. 29th isn't good - but looking at Bjerg, it could've been far worse. On the other hand, Bissegger finally had a decent TT, being the 4th best 78 TTer this time - and most importantly, winning the white jersey! We weren't expecting that here, given that Bjerg was the outright favourite, but we'll take it!
So, I guess this was the race where a lot of the bad luck we recently had actually came back as "very good luck". Especially winning the KoM jersey with a 69 puncheur obviously is very lucky, but Page's sprint results are even more so. Bissegger taking the U25 was probably the least improbable result.
So we outscored any kind of expected value by far, basically getting the expected points for Deutschland, San Sebastian, Balkans and GP Cycliste in this one race. Feels good to get even more room for error!
Generally speaking, big congrats to Würtz and Grieg on the GC win! Personally, I'm happy that a TTer ended up winning the race, although I know there are people who would've preferred a sprinter win
Massive congrats to Los Pollos as well, who should definitely have sealed promotion here. They were expected to be the best PCT team, being the only ones to bring a potential Top 5 finisher. But now, they get two Top 5 spots, plus 13th, plus 26th, plus a stage win... Awesome race for the Mexicans - even though Manninen's 3rd place in GC still feels pretty weird. Not sure Nemo saw it coming that the Flying Finn would be their highest GC finisher here
Awesome race for Bralirwa as well, with Silvestre getting a crazy 6th place on GC. I definitely didn't expect this to be a race where they outscore us, but Silvestre just did an amazing job here. Congrats! It was a race with plenty, plenty of luck for PCT teams, that's for sure!
Congrats to all who did well - and commiserations to all those who expected great things here and were disappointed. Especially the "top sprinter" teams, obviously, and I sure hope we'll find a way to have them perform more consistently. More consistently at Top 5 level that is, not consistently outside the top spots.
I guess the last sprint was the least bad out of the bunch.
So my best GC result of the season comes from a sprinter, in a race meant for TT specialists?
Not sure what to say really, but it doesn't feel right to heap praise on my riders like I usually would in this situation. It was just a weird race and for whatever reason we profited from the weirdness more than one should. Commiserations to all those poorly affected, the race just sucked.
After the second stage this race looked like it could be a total disaster for us, but in the end it has been a superb race. Not for my health, but points-wise at least. Zmorka did well in the TT and would have finished 2nd in GC without those flat gaps, but luckily Manninen is among the best tt'ists of the sprinters and even managed to win a stage leading to third in GC, even ahead of Zmorka. Thanks for the congratulations, tastasol and Fab. Happy to see top favourite Würtz take the GC in the end.
Thank you for five solid reports as usual, Imladrik
Weird race. Im kinda glad that i had absolutely no reason to attend in the first place and that i would also very likely have missed out on the sprinter gaps if i were to be unlucky enough to ride here.
Samolenkov's 4th and 5th place during the first two flat stages, followed by a strong ITT by the whole Tinkoff - La Datcha Team. Too bad Artem couldn't beat Matti during the last stage, but winning the Sprinters Jersey is really cool
Great reports Imladrik and thanks for using the Deutschland Sponsorkit!
Very inconsistent sprinting by Kanter and Ganna in 9th isn't really doing it in this field thanks to that extremely weird gap for the sprinters, but we got a stage win (which I still can't see the pictures of even after months of trying) at home!
