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Tour of Qatar - Discussion
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| Nemolito |
Posted on 20-10-2025 14:01
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Classics Specialist

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Halvorsen tried, but was unable to get a good sprint this edition. Not very promising for the rest of the season, hopefully he can bounce back. Quintana's adventure in white was nice to follow. Will be hard to keep the jersey in the epilogue I fear.
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| SotD |
Posted on 20-10-2025 17:26
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World Champion

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Awesome! Farantakis took a rather confident GC win here which is great. It’s much needed too as a lot of eggs have been put into his basket.
Moutsios did what we dreamt of by taking 2nd in the U25. Making room for him paid off! Other than that our depth was a bit worse than expected unfortunately, but winning is massive. And clears the one realistic goal of the season aswell.
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| knockout |
Posted on 20-10-2025 17:47
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Grand Tour Champion

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Congrats SotD, the ideal winner for this race after Kemboi wasnt trusted with sprint leadership here 
Terrible race for me. Luckily expectations were fairly low but we played limbo with it.
A Big Thank You To All MG Reporters!
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| ember |
Posted on 20-10-2025 18:30
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Team Leader

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You just can't decide to not love Kragh 
Amazing final stage for him and us, claiming both the stage and even 10th in the GC. And then Groenewegen also with a very, very good performance. Climbing all the way to third in the GC after three very bad sprints, two good and a good epilogue, says a lot about how very few sprinters managed to be consistent. A brilliant result for us, though, especially compared to Groenewegen's Qatar last season. The start of the season has been a lot better for him this year 
Congratulations on a huge win, SotD! And thank you, UU, for all the reports, and also to Imladrik for posting them. |
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| whitejersey |
Posted on 20-10-2025 18:44
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Classics Specialist

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Søren Kragh doing Søren Kragh things!
Congrats to SotD on a nice GC win for Farantakis!
Thanks for the reports imladrik!
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| alexkr00 |
Posted on 20-10-2025 19:09
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World Champion

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Holly shit that was bad. I was expecting worst case scenario Aniolkowski drops out of the top 10, but that was something else. At least he gets the points jersey.
Thanks for the reports and congrats SotD for the first big win after the comevack to PT.
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| Ollfardh |
Posted on 20-10-2025 19:42
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Tour de France Champion

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A bit of redemption I guess.
Congrats ELCO, who will surely win the division now, and thanks for the reports!
Changed my sig, this was getting absurd.
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| DubbelDekker |
Posted on 20-10-2025 20:09
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Classics Specialist

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Congrats SotD! Good to have you back.
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| ryant |
Posted on 20-10-2025 20:16
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Small Tour Specialist

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8th?!! Not a lot I can say about that but that was surely the worst possible result we could have managed there... What a joke
John St Ledger in Team Bunzl-Centrica and Team U25
Red Bull Driver in RFactor
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 05-12-2025 11:08
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| baseballlover312 |
Posted on 21-10-2025 01:34
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Tour de France Champion

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Well, 2nd place is Qatar with a 79 sprinter is pretty incredible. Already felt I got lucky here in the past with AKA finishing top 5, and he was stronger in both sprint and prologue than Rodenberg. Truly a special race for him capped off by a really great performance against the clock. I thought he could jump a couple of spots on a good day, but never imagine 2nd place was possible being down in 8th.
Tremendous race for us in terms of exceeding expectations. The kind of race that helps you survive with a subpar roster later in the year. Hope that plays out.
Congrats to Sotd and thanks for the reports!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
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| AbhishekLFC |
Posted on 21-10-2025 06:44
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Directeur Sportif

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Kuli couldn't do anything on stages 4 and 5. Villanueva with a a poor TT when I was thinking the bonus seconds on Stage 1 might mean something. Better from TVD and Rossi to get 3rd and 4th from the U25s. That and the 9th from Kuli is all we get from this race!
Congrats to ELCO and thanks for the reports
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| roturn |
Posted on 21-10-2025 07:25
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Team Manager

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Salas did decently well here with a top10 on the stage, GC wise though too much of a gap for him to climb very much.
Vesely on the other hand really sucks in TTs and showed so.
Not a big point haul for me in January obviously but at least he showed his skills on highest level to sprint for one podium and couple of ~10s.
Definitely not the most important race for me this season.
Thanks for the reports and congrats to all winners. |
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| Nemolito |
Posted on 21-10-2025 09:02
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Classics Specialist

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Going from fifth in 2024 to 61st in 2025, not the best start of the season by Halvorsen 
Quintana lost the white jersey by a bigger margin than expected, but Aguilar Mendez more than makes up for that by being the best U25 rider here. Superb win for him, first Mexican win in the history of the team! (Yes it counts!!!!!)
Congratulations to Aker on the stage and ELCO on the GC! 
Thanks for great reports as always to Ulrich, and thank you for puosting them all, Imladrik!
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| redordead |
Posted on 21-10-2025 11:35
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Team Leader

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Being last in a three way tie for runner up is not nice. But I would've more than taken 4th in GC and a stage win pre-race 
Rodenberg 2nd is kinda whack when compared to someone like Halvorsen or others. Gaviria and Cullaigh also somewhat failed with where they ended up, but Farantakis is a worthy winner imo given the parcour. Congrats SotD 
Thanks for the reports
"I am a cyclist, I may not be the best, but that is what I strive to be. I may never get there, but I will never quit trying." - Tadej Pogačar
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| Bikex |
Posted on 21-10-2025 14:26
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Team Leader

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I have very different feelings about him than you apparently 
However, 2nd, 3rd and 4th in the epilogue and resulting GC results just outside the top 10, as well as winning the teams classification can still be considered a decent race. Only maybe I shouldve thrown Hsu into the sprint lottery. Not really sure why I didnt.
Congrats SotD on the GC victory! Very cool to have a Greek PT stage race winner. |
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| Eden95 |
Posted on 22-10-2025 00:08
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Grand Tour Specialist

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Congrats SotD, good to see Farantakis do as he should here.
About the worst we could expect from Gaviria. Best stage result was a single 3rd place. It looked like our train worked fine, they all seemed to work well together and Gaviria was never really ever inconvenienced due to his lead out. It seems like it’s definitely a positive to open the sprint earlier which Gaviria never did, and those that did usually went on to win. Not sur did that’s a question of daily form, he could have just been really unlucky all race in that regard and others way more lucky.
Would be ok to cop the GC result if he had shown up properly to more than 1/5 sprint stages. Definitely not going to be a well scored race for us and with his limited RD’s we are in trouble now.
Happy to see Rodenberg still favoured by the new version, he’s a cool rider and a very underrated pickup for bbl. Commiserations to Rabobank too, that’s a crazy drop from Aniolowski who had a great race.
Thanks for the reports Ulrich
Indosat - ANZ HQ
"This Schleck sandwich is going to cause serious indigestion for Evans" - Phil Liggett
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| OlegTinkov |
Posted on 27-11-2025 07:27
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Classics Specialist

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With 7 sprinters better than Samolenkov on the startlist we didn't expect much from the 5 flat stages. Still Samolenkov was able to finish 15th, 2nd, 5th, 6th and 14th so that was alright actually. No time gaps during the flat stages meant our time-trialists were able to gather a lot of points which is always nice.
Thanks for the reports Ulrich Ulriksen, the detailed sprint reporting is much appreciated!
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