A 9 day stage race in Romania. Our 3rd sponsorgoal aswell, a top 10 is required to meet it.

Prologue – No specialists from our side, Kononenko limits his losses and also Polivoda is in the position to give us a surprise.

Flat Stages (2-4) – Polivoda disappoints us with a 9th, 7th and 4th placings on the first 3 flat stages. Tanovitchii and Hoelgaard please our sponsors tho by going in the early break. Hoelgaard just missing the oppurtunity to wear the polka dots.

Flat Stages (5-7) – Tanovitchii once again tries his luck on stage 5, which proves to be too hard for Polivoda at some points. Tanovitchii’s break makes it, and he gets 3rd, which is awesome. Polivoda, despite his struggles gets 10th, and 11th the next day…

Stage 7 is the place where Tanovitchii’s 3rd attack takes place, now aiming for the KoM. He just misses it, but still has a slight chance… Polivoda gets 2nd this time.

Mountain Stage (8) - \tanovitchii has given up his KoM-quest, which is a shame… Not so strong climber Kononenko gets 11th, and moves up to a 10th place in the GC.

Flat Stage (9) – Nothing special, Polivoda gets 9th. Kononenko 10th GC, so sponsor goal met!

Sponsor goal accomplished, all what counts…

Big man Maksimov is here to take revenge for the Donetsk fail. With him being the favourite, our team has the task of leading the P. And when the break is brought back, some random Dane named Klostergaard makes his move. The sprinters barely catch him in the final km, Maksimov sprints to a 3rd place.

Podium, less then what we hoped for, but still good.

Maksimov’s home race.

No special happenings for us during the race. Our 2 sprinter both got blocked in the final sprint causing Cardoso to beat Maksimov. They finish 10th and 11th.

Expected more.

TTT – Not our speciality, but we limit our loss to 16 seconds, which is almost nothing.

Stage 2 (Hills) – Oh we love hills… Maksimov hates the mand decides to take it easy… Gomenyuk takes a nap on the tarmac and Vorganov? Vorganov does well, finishing 3rd.

Stages 3-5 (Flat) – Stage 3 has to be the shock of the season. Maksimov wins a stage, with hills in it! Stage 4 however, brings back the old Maksimov who finishes 9th. Stage 5 is a bit better, but due the windy conditions Maksimov can’t get anything better than 6th.

Stage 6 (Hills) – Vorganov lost some of his stage 2 powers, now finishing 10th. He’s 7th in the GC at the end of this stage.

Stages 7-9 (Flat) – Maksimov hits back at stage 7, taking the win and the pointsjersey. Stage 8 makes this race even better, with Maksimov taking a 3rd stage, and the pointsjersey is definately his. Stage 9 is a bit worse tho, just 7th. Which is still OK. Vorganov holds on to 7th in the GC

Maksimov winning 3 stages is so awesome! Shame Vorganov couldn’t get a top 5 in the GC.

The team shows it brilliant tactics once again. Hey, let’s work for Maksimov all day, and then at the end let Buts escape! Right… The attack didn’t work, ofcourse… Maksimov gets 7th.
Brilliant! Not. Atleast 7th isn’t too bad.

A 6 day stage race in the C1 divison, so our hopes on succes were near 0. We haven’t been succesful in C1 races so far, but with 4 of them still left on our calendar we still might get lucky… I hope…

Stage 1 – Flat, and since we didn’t bring Roman we would have to fight for the lower top 10 positions, but first things first: Hoelgaard finds himself in the break away again, Aker-MOT will surely have some fun with this rider the coming seasons. Not just because he attacks regularly, but also because he took both intermediate sprints.

But as said a sprint was inevitable and Napolitano (Evian) took it, Polivoda took 9th.

Stage 2 – Stage 2 is far more interesting, but we also have a lot less chance on succes in hilly stages… But atleast Eduard showed his national jersey by attacking on a late climb, and later at ~5km from the finishing line. Unsuccesful tho, as he finishes 16th, 22 seconds after Der (Pivovarna)

Stage 3 – A sprint, and we had no one in the early break so we just ‘skip’ that part here…

Napolitano took it again, Polivoda took 9th, again…

Stage 4 – Fonte finally shows himself after his performance in Bretagne, back in February by going in the break and securing the lead in the KoM classification. However the stage will end in a sprint, and yet again it’s the Italian from Evian who takes it. Polivoda was 6th this time, so it’s getting better.

Stage 5 – Because Fonte didn’t go in the break again it was certain he’d lose the jersey today, as the winner would get 20 points at the line. And our only hope was that Mestre could do that by hanging on and attacking late… But he just sat there, being unable to put up a fight. Ji (Meiji) took the stage, Mestre came in in 9th. (Yep 9th is our place here…)

Stage 6 – Sprint, and we were where? 23rd….. Oh well… Atleast our friends from Metinvest won this stage with Hoffman…

Ji took the GC, Nazaret and Serpa were 2nd and 3rd. Our best rider was Ricardo Mestre in 9th.

Can’t complain here, the C1 field is too strong for us to compete.

Stage 1 – Sprint battle between Maksimov and Guillen (Banco National).

The Russian managed to win this ‘battle of the banks’. This way he also took the Yellow Jersey, time to pull a Hoffman…

Stage 2 – Sprint again and the Russians….. Vorganov suddenly had a gap on the P while he was supposed to lead out Roman… Again a huge tactical fail here as Vorganov seemed a lot stronger, finishing 9th, against Maksimov 55th. Lay (Iberia) took the stage.

Stage 3 – A stage that would normally suit Vorganov. And he is at the front at the end, but just can’t manage to find himself in the top 3, finishing 4th. Ciocan (Mobil) won.

Stage 4 – Nicolae Tanovitchii was in the break taking the KoM lead. Metinvest has a nice rider with him for sure. Vorganov is strong again and is in front as soon as the roads start to rise, but he’s left without a chance in the sprint, getting 5th this time, Marzano (Kappa) took this hard stage.

Stage 5 – Sprint again… and it’s almost the same as stage 1, but 1st and 2nd became 2nd and 1st with Guillen beating Maksimov.

Stage 6 – Very weird sprint with Maksimov fading and Gomenyuk being out second choice… He did decently, getting 6th Marcato (Allianz) won today.

In the GC Vorganov got 6th, Mori (Kappa) won.

Also Tanovitchii took the KoM.

Quite a succes with a stage win, KoM jersey and 6th in the GC. However we are still waiting for a GC win…

Not much to report here, as we were invisable. Kononenko took 12th. Sanchez (Iberia) won.

Yeah… This was probably too hard for Cardoso… Shame…

A 3 day stage race, so that means a lot of strong riders will be here for easy PPRD.

We bring Vorganov with small hopes for a top 3.

Stage 1 – Not much to report in the first half of the race. In the second part Vorganov seems strong, leading the pack. Strange tactics maybe? Nah not really, as the team was working for a surprise attack from Kononenko. This plan fails tho and Kononenko finishes far behind. Vorganov gets 6th. Gazelle takes the stage with Frisian Pieter Weening.

Stage 2 – Hoelgaard in the break. Gets normal now… He takes all 4 KoM sprints, giving him het lead there. And slso most of the sprints… before going solo and taking another sprint… That guy is strong. Or is he? When moving to the back of the race he falls, and takes FCB’s leader Grau with him… In the P Lasca (Kappa) Wins, Cardoso gets 6th.

Stage 3 – Eduard is strong, and is the first to attack. Unsuccesful this time. But he continues, following Mori, and later Gingsjo. He takes an intermediate sprint, meaning he will get some bonus seconds. He finishes 9th, in the first group. J. Rod (Iberia) wins.

The GC goes to J Rod aswell, Vorganov gets 6th (Oh gosh, said 6th three times in this small race report…) Hoelgaard was just 1 point short of the KoM jersey, too bad…

Can’t complain too much as the field was strong here and Vorganov rode well. We could’ve done better on stage 2 tho.