It is perhaps no coincidence that the Top 3 teams in the Africa Tour standings are also the Top 3 teams overall - albeit in a different order. Many teams ignored the African calendar when putting their schedule together - allowing those who did come here to reap the rewards. The half-African Rapha Condor - Qhubeka squad in particular!
Jayco RB and Bianchi also had success here while in 4th is another team set to promote: Aker. And as you can see, some teams didnt race in Africa at all.
Jonathan Bellis made South Africa his home with victories in Tour de Boland and the Tour of South Africa, plus points scored in all other South African races. Teammate Alex Dowsett supported him in many of those races, while also taking 2nd in the Nedbank classic, and therefore claims 2nd on the individual standings. And 3rd was Tomas Vaitkus for Cyclevox - purely thanks to the Tour du Faso.
Rapha's performances also see a Kenyan and Eritrean represented in the Top 35 of the individual standings - but John-Lee Augustyn is the leading African in 8th.
I sense a sudden 'scramble for Africa' next season. Of course the Qhubeka mob will be in waiting.
Quite pleased to see we are in second place despite not featuring at Faso. It was on the shortlist Faso, I ummed with abandoning my full cobbled project a bit after transfer season. Not sure whether Giaux would have challenged Viatkus, Croket and Blythe but may have spiced things up.
Well done Pivovarna Laško beating several CT teams here.
*pats himself on the back*
Interesting to see the domination of Rapha here though. Maybe a lesson for next season would be to take more seriously the Africa Tour so you're not giving a particular team a 1000 points (!) headstart?
I don't see there is a reason to get all-in at a special continent as the only important thing is to go to races where not a lot people might show up and you have the rider for this race.
I mean comparing Rapha and Jayco, both have a special focus on races. Rapha for Africa and Jayco for Asia. Both are leading the respective standings there by a country mile. But what is that really worth for the standings?
I mean they have strong/deep squads and would have managed to promote even if they wouldn't really try. My team hadn't a focus and couldn't get any 1st place in these continent rankings but 1st overall so the most important thing is to get into the races where not a lot might partipiciate and so grabbing a lot of points.
So I don't see any Africa or Asia Tour scrambles.
Also I remember there was only a small money bonus for the 1st in a continent tour standing? So being 4th wouldn't be that great unless your season goal was Top 5 in Africa Tour.
Team Bianchi - 2012 Man-Game ProContinental Tour Champions
But like you say Rin, its all about finding races with the least competition. And this season, that meant going to Asia and Africa. Races like Algarve, Deutschland Tour and Tour of the Czech Republic all had strong fields - but the race design was very similar to Herald Sun Tour, which had a weaker field. And if the Boland route had been identical but been in a European country, you can bet that the field would have been much stronger.
It will be interesting to see which races turn out to be the best ones for points next year. Who knows, could end up being some European ones
Edited by SportingNonsense on 06-10-2012 15:01
Some managers might be doing a light role-playing here, when it comes to races and their location. Team WWE is an American team, so I chose to focus on the American tour, but they also have a decent footing in countries in Europe, and therefore I also decided to do some races there. In Africa and Asia, I feel like I barely participated, if we take away Japan, since the company I use as sponsors aren't that active on these continents (rising in the middle east now. Yay! Money!)
This is my theory for why people would put stronger fields in certain races even if there is a very similar race on other continents.
