Wow!!! Just brilliant riding from Areruya and a huge huge race for us - accomplishing a win goal, bringing home a PTHC GC win (our first), the points, and two stages, and plenty of points in our late-season push for promotion which seemed impossible to be even discussing a couple of months ago. Didn't think he had it in him and I still think if you run it again MAL should still be stronger, but the key stages fell in our favour and I think he made his own luck.
Speaking of Lopez though, I definitely take no pleasure in denying Evonik a win they really needed, gives a lot of mixed emotion to this. Really gutted for him. Benoot also a disappointment isn't fun to see.
Pidcock is decent enough to grab 50 or so points from his GC and U25 work alongside lieutenant work that I don't think Areruya wins any of it without. Not something we really have a lot with riders like Fouche, Habtemichael, Kipkemboi and Stannard rarely behaving as they should in that role, but Pidcock played it perfectly.
Thanks for the always quality reporting Ulrich, and congrats to ember for a huge race for his PT run-in - I know I've long since planted my flag as an Evonik supporter in the PT, but I've always loved Aker and Amezawa is a rider I've always shown my support for, and a truly heroic performance from him here, and one that could live long in your team's memory if it helps bring you the title.
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." [PT] Xero Racing
A good final stage for us. After some anonymous first 5 stages, the team and Formolo finally showed themselves to the cameras.
It's not a GC podium for Davide but I'm happy with the result. Not sure if it's 4th or 4th and a half as I don't know if we split points in the GC too the way we do with points and KoM in case of a tie. But in any case some good points that will help us in the relegation fight.
What a monumental result and finish on the race for Amezawa!!! That is one we will remember forever, I'd say, no matter how the run-in goes and if we win or don't win the title. And of course, as jandal wrote, if we win the title, this performance through all stages will be seen as the key and kind of momentum swing after a difficult final part of the season, before we got to East Midlands and Balkans.
I'm just amazed Amezawa pulled off such a great stage result, especially seeing his and Preidler's positioning with about 4 kilometers left. Clearly he had energy, and when he tried to follow MAL's attack, his position was suddenly perfect.
Very happy to see Preidler land 13th in GC. Van Poucke lost a lot of places, but to still have him, Roman and Johannessen between 30th and 40th adds to a great race for us.
knockout wrote:
This wasn't the dominant stage race for us that many expected and that we frankly probably needed to put pressure on the other teams. We didnt get a single stage win and instead I'm not even sure if we outscored Aker who had a phenomenal race once again and EA also finishes inside the top 5 GC with Valter.
This speaks for my surprise as well, both regarding the lack of domination from MAL, but especially our brilliant results all race through. Highly surprising, but brilliant to see it happen
We were in the breakaway on all five hilly stages, finished 2nd in the KoM classification and Ndayisenga had probably his best individual performance of the year in 27th overall. There were some close calls that could've given us a handful more points (Eyob missing Top 50 by 5 seconds, Van Eetvelt and Mugisha 9th and 10th in the KoM by a couple of points), but outside of the unlikely top stage result from a breakaway, we couldn't have expected much more - solid race to be sure.
From a Rwandan perspective, seeing Areruya like this is of course terrific. From the perspective of competing against Xero for promotion ... less so Still, congrats jandal, and thank you again for the great reports Ulrich!
Well, first of all congrats to fellow PCT team Xero on winning a PTHC stage race! Huge performance by Areruya - although I have to admit that I'm not happy that a +3 advantage on the hills isn't worth anything anymore. Still, it was a good fight to follow, and I guess if the course doesn't change Areruya should win this one many more times in the future.
Personally, not quite happy with Page's performance on stage 5. He took example on Bol with really poor positioning, and despite a rather fast finish missed out on points. Well, he almost reached his target score in Germany already, so that's not a big deal.
On the other hand, Masnada once again did a brilliant job in a hybrid race! His positioning wasn't top-notch once again, but I guess he just lacks 1/2 Mo points for this; finishing in the Top 10 on the final day was definitely great, though - and 11th place in the GC definitely is on the higher end of expectations!
Mixed feelings about Schmid; I was clearly hoping for him to be aggressive throughout the race, but he only tried once, and was completely anonymous in the other stages. In hindsight, he shouldn't have tried at all, as he lost 3 minutes on that stage... He did a great job of finishing 18th on the final day, resulting in 25th on GC and 3rd in U25. Definitely a good job, although I feel he could've beaten Pidcock for 2nd
Only 2 scorers here, but they racked up far more points than expected, so it was another good race for us!
Thanks for the reports to UU, and congrats to all who reached their goals in this race!
