I posted this in another section, but figured to start a thread for updates:
2019 season will be an interesting one for Omega-Tax and me. I have been learning as I go in career mode. Made a lot of mistakes, suffered growing pains, but still had a blast.
Did not win a TDF until 2017 with T. Martin, and also won my first PR in 2017 with Andrew Funn. Martin left as FA (FA= Free agent= Transfer), as did Heir apparent P. Rolland! M. Kittel came in on one year contract though!
So far in 2018 - Funn repeated with 2nd win at PR (caught Cancellara/ Carbonara in the Velodrome) with the help of young gun K Reiher (6 POT GER COB), and R. Taaramae squeaked out the win in the TDF by 13 seconds. Kittel took 4 stages in TDF (lost 2 to P Sagan where there was a rolling hill leading up to sprint) and has 12 wins as of Aug 1.
Now both sponsors are leaving, as are Kittel and Taaramae, despite the results and generous contract offers. I got caught flat footed (I thought "mulling over" meant I was still in the running, and not "Screw you, I am leaving!" ) and scrambled to sign a couple of mid tier guys mid-July, in hopes that they can "help" a young guy that will step up as GC contender. (One of the signees is not a GC contender but has 81 in MO, so I hope he can protect my GC contender in climbs and help haul him up. MY new sprinter is maxed out at 81 SPR and 78 ACC, so my train better be good for him.
Hopes for a 3rd straight TDF are pretty dim.
I have been grooming a 7 POT stage racer (A. Eager) and signed another young gun in FA last season (Barone) but they are both 75 AVG in August 2018. Hopefully they grow some more over the next 11 months.
Anyway, thinking of instituting a new rule: I can manually extend one riders contract every 3 seasons (for 15% above his asking price), and cannot do the same guy more than once.
I like a challenge, but it seems pretty unrealistic that I can never keep my top guys while the CPU rattles off 5 straight TDF wins with A. Stark on the same team. Thoughts?
Anyway, pretty interested in seeing how things turn out with sponsors leaving and both top guys leaving.
Edited by Morgan63 on 17-07-2014 20:52
Update 4/2/2019
Team Omega-Tax
So the sponsors are leaving (finally!), thank goodness I have a new sponsor already signed up for 2020. As soon as the season started BMB (BMW) and InBrew made me offers. I did not want to play around and end up with nothing, so I made counter offers on both and Inbrew took their deal. I will be taking a 800,000 Euro budget cut from 4.8 mil to 4 mil), and I wish I had tried harder to make it work with BMB because I think I could have gotten more money in their deal, but it was nice to at least resolve that issue quickly and get onto planning my cobble racing season.
Cobble races (primarily P-R) and the tours have been my focus exclusively since taking over the team in 2012. So this update will be on the early season cobble program.
As I stated in first post: I did not win a P-R until 2017 and then followed it up with another win in 2018, both by Andrew Funn who is the last remaining rider that I inherited from the previous team manager. His contract expires after this season so I made re-signing him my #1 priority. Well, he is asking for 80,000 Euros, which I could make work, but I would have to sacrifice many other riders in the future, so I did not put in an offer. I have pretty much accepted that he will not be with us next season.
The 3 tops riders in my cobble program are:
Andrew Funn GBR 78, Kevin Reiher GER 77 (signed as young rider 4-5 seasons ago. I mistakenly thought he was a 7 POT, but I just checked he is a 6.), and C. Juul-Jensen 76 (signed as a transfer 2 seasons ago.)
Juul Jenson will also be leaving after this season as his contract demands are also too high for my budget. He is asking for 5 times his current salary. That is what happens when you develop guys.
I should mention that Demestre is my Cobble coach, and he is to thank for developing guys and keeping me competitive even as guys continue to leave for other teams.
The rest of the cobble program guys are either journeymen or young up and comers with ratings between 68- 73 AVG. The most notable of the young guys is Jon Seth – a Cobble rider from Sweden with 7 POT who I snatched up last season as soon as my scout found him (I never imagined I would get a report on a “future Great” cobble rider in Sweden!) He has a lot of developing to do though. For now he just "rides".
Also on a trip last season my scout found a future great tour rider named Dean New in Australia. I was already at the roster limit with new signings since it was september, but somehow the went unsigned. He is only 22 but he is now in the transfer pool, but I cannot offer until July. Got to have a guy with a name that cool!
I suspect these 2 guys (Seth and New) will be the future heart of this team.
Here is the team sorted by COB attribute: (click on photo to enlarge)
Anyway, our boys started our 2019 defense of the Paris Roubaix (P-R) title with the following CWT results: IF I don’t mention the race none of my riders finished in the top 10. Also I only actually raced G-W and Ronde-Vlaanderen, simmed the others.
Paris Nice –
1. A. Roux – COM
2. D. Le Boulch – Peug
3. M. Bouro – Vac
4. K. Silvanus – FRA Omega (Silvanus is in my cobble program, but he is a bit of a jack of all trades.
E3 Harelbeke –
1. A. Rosa - NEXP
2. K Reiher - Omega,
3. A. Funn - Omega
Gent-Wevelgen
1. P. Segan - EKIA
2. M. Goss – NEXP
3. K. Reiher – Omega
Reiher just got outsprinted at the line. I was surprised at first as they went by, until I saw who the 2 riders were.
Ronde Vlaanderen
1. A. Funn – Omega
2. G. Van Avorton – VAC
3. S. Vandemark – COM
My team was very active in this one. A lot of attacking and gapping out in cobble sections. Ended up as a small elite group, and the others just wanted to sit on my wheels which allowed another small group to catch up while I was indecisive. I sent Funn to the front for relay and then had him attack into a cobble section and had my other 3 riders just ride as passengers in the chase group. 2 of my guys (Juul- Jensen and Van Geersom) got burned off just riding in that group, the group was chasing Funn down that hard, which left only Reiher in the chase group. Funn got caught and then gapped by a blazing Van Avorton and Vendemark. Reiher was able to pull Funn along just enough to recover (very briefly), and then Funn went solo and caught the leaders with 2 km to go. They were running on fumes when he caught them, so he went right by them in his sprint from 1km for the win. It was close enough though that they all 3 got the same finishing time.
A very fun race!
One week until Paris-Roubaix! Funn seems primed for a 3-peat in his farewell season with Omega. But you never take the Hell of the North for granted because she can humble even the greatest of riders.
Edited by Morgan63 on 17-07-2014 21:56
Unlike last year where a mud splattered Andrew Funn claimed his 2nd victory, the 2019 edition of the cobble stoned race through the north of France, sometimes called the “Hell of the North” but officially titled Paris Roubaix, began under clear skies, without a rain drop in sight. Perhaps a bad omen for a rider who thinks of himself as a “mudder”.
Team Omega rode aggressively throughout the race, in a fashion befitting a team defending its title. Sometime even sending 7 men, including both of their top 2 riders Funn and Kevin Reiher to lead the peloton and chase the breakaway. They got caught out by an attack with about 25 km to go, and for a bit it looked like it would be no problem reeling it in with plenty of time to go to the finish, there was a fumble of sorts as Reiher swung off the front and for some reason quickly decelerated to an almost standstill in the last cobble section and Funn stopped with him instead of simply going around. All the momentum of the chase was gone, and it cost them precious energy and time to resume.
They caught 2014 and 2015 PR winner Mattie Breschel a short time later and tried to tuck in behind him, but Breschel immediately slowed for water bottles, once again slowing the OPQ duo up. By the time they got 2016 PR winner and race leader Gregory Van Avorton in their sights, he was entering the Velodrome well ahead of them. Reiher began his leadout with about 3km to go, much earlier than usual, in a last ditch attempt to close the remaining distance on Van Avorton, but his legs began giving out and several riders closed in from behind. With 1.6 km to go Funn had to furtively give his kick. He surged and re-passed Breschel for a final time and was closing ground on Van Avorton who was raising his arms in celebration as he crossed the finishing line.
G. Van Avorton is the Winner of the 2019 Paris Roubaix.
There was to be no three-peat.
The manager of team OPQ would like to congratulate team VCD for their well-deserved victory, and will spend the next several days seriously pondering if they should go ahead and pay the price to bring Funn back to try to win 2020 or be more fiscally sound for the future and begin building around Reiher.
Photo caption: No mud this year as Van Avorton sports a clean jersey as the winner, and Funn keeps his UK Championship jersey spotless. (click on image to enlarge)
Top 5
1 G. Van Avoroton VCD
2 A. Funn OPQ
3 M. Breschel COM
4 Y. Offredo GEC
5 K. Reiher OPQ
Edited by Morgan63 on 19-07-2014 07:05
sutty68 wrote:
Why don't you download the Daily DB with the correct names in it
It wouldn't make a difference this far into a career. I will make sure to do it when I start my PCM14 career though.
Thanks.
It might not change the names/stats, but at least the wrong logos/jerseys will be fixed (plus you'll get sponsorkits in races, variants which will appear from the next year onwards, etc)
sutty68 wrote:
Why don't you download the Daily DB with the correct names in it
It wouldn't make a difference this far into a career. I will make sure to do it when I start my PCM14 career though.
Thanks.
It might not change the names/stats, but at least the wrong logos/jerseys will be fixed (plus you'll get sponsorkits in races, variants which will appear from the next year onwards, etc)
Hmmm, sounds good. You sure that it will not mess up my current career in any way? If not I will install it this weekend!
First off, I installed the PCM Daily all in one DB and the graphics pack, so thanks for the tips to do so! Big thanks to all who helped create the DB and provide it here!
The Cobble program has shut down for the season. Funn will most likely transfer out, and I did place an offer to Juul Jensen but he is going to wait until Juy.
As we head into the tour program, I wanted to touch base briefly on how I have done things. I do not edit ratings. Development was set at 0 until I found out and moved it to 0.3 at the beginning of this season (2019), so I had 6 seasons of slow development.
I started in 2012 and went all in with youth. I signed a lot of guys that first season: Every rider the scouts found promising was signed. What I got was a lot of guys who would not be very useful besides limited roles, and who were VERY under-developed. I then bought a lot of them out and tried again. In the process the team went financially insolvent in 2013, and as a result I could not sign anyone but the 2,000 euro young guys. At this point I began only signing “future greats” and allowed myself to look at the POT (and ONLY the POT) for 10 guys selected from the U23 rankings, with the rule that I could only sign 2 and I only looked at POT, and I had to decide immediately whether to sign the guy or move to next guy – so no comparing etc. If I passed, I could not go back and sign him.
This past season I have allowed myself to look at more than just POT for the guys. I think scouting is unrealistic and you should get a better feel for the strengths and weaknesses of a rider. Besides it makes things more interesting as I won’t grab the best guy, but the ones who exhibit interesting combinations – The sprinter who isn’t the fastest but also has 70 max for MO, or the COB guy who can also sprint but isn’t the best at either. Etc.
There are plenty of 6-7 POT guys in the DB that it isn’t like the CPU teams won’t get their share. It is just now I have more of an idea of what I am getting to fit my team, and not just the POT of a guy.
My first signing this season is a RUS COB guy named Rozhin who wasn’t the best at COB, but was in top 5 (3rd or 4th), but also has a 73 max for TT and 69 max for MO. I will find him more interesting to play with than a guy who can dominate a tour, which I passed up on a guy like that to sign him.
So with that said:
Giro update Stages 1-8
I have won this race only once – with Cutaldo in 2016. Pinot won in 2014, and with the exception of those 2 winners, Nibali has dominated this race since 2013. He is going for win #5 in 2019.
My GC man will be Italian Richard Barone, a rider who spent 3 seasons on a continental team before I transferred him to OPQ last season. He is the best all around guy in the selected group, but he is not the strongest in the mountains. Chaves is the pure climber, Lutkov and McBain the future GC guys, Gavrilenkov and Perkins are 5 POT GC guys who can help support the teams GC efforts, and Reiher, Blate and Gimpel comprise the sprint team. Gimpel was signed as a “future Great” from my scouts and though I am not thrilled with his name, I do like his 7 POT.
Here is the team selection (click on picture to enlarge)
Stage 1 – Barone finished 4th in the TT 8 seconds down and 11 seconds ahead of Nibali. Team celebrates over dinner that night with a glass of Red wine shipped in from Barone’s home town.
Stage 2 – Sprint finish. Team does zero work in peleton and move sprinter group forward when the breakaway is caught. Reiher sees a nice hole and moves up to get on Orica sprinter Brdaric’s wheel and Orica 4 man team pulls Omega team to front of train.
Reiher sits in 4th with Blate and Gimpel following. With 3.5 km to go Reiher sprints and pulls up beside Brdaric, with 2.2 to go Blate sprints and keeps alongside Brdaric who begins sprinting shortly thereafter. With .9 to go Gimpel kicks and passes Brdaric and VAC- DCM sprinter Guardini for his first ever tour stage win.
Photo (click to enlarge) Gimpel and Reiher (in background) celebrate the stage win!
I feel uneasy. This is the kind of win I got last season with Marcel Kittel and a train of 4-5 in TDF, but with Gimpel and only 2 guys? Have I gotten so good that the sprints will not be competitive and fun anymore, or did I just get lucky with positioning? This question would be answered soundly with the next 2 sprints.
minor note: A team manager mistake leaves Chaves and Lutkov gapped out during run up to sprint (I forgot to turn effort up for them). I set them to working to try to close gap, but no one helps and they end up nearly 5 minutes out.
Stage 3 – Hill stage that I sim. Moreno Moser wins and wears pink. Nibali finishes 16 seconds back on stage. Barone finishes 17th – and loses another 8 seconds to Nibali.
Stage 4 – Another sprint stage. Rehier has us positioned nicely with 5 km to go at front of peleton. Everything goes well until Blate kicks in with 2.4 to go and Gimpel does not follow (I forgot to turn his effort up from 80) and he gets swarmed by sprinters closing the gap. Gimpel kicks, but it is too late. He is boxed in. M. Goss wins the stage and Gimpel finishes 11th.
Stage 5 – Another Hill stage = another sim. Bad day for the team as the Sim has Barone drop 4:48 to stage winner and 3:36 to Moser, and 1:09 to Nibali, with a lot of other GC contenders finishing ahead of him as well. The Giro may already be lost for him.
Stage 6 – First mountain day: A Fairly easy day until a big climb at the end. Time to get aggressive and shake things up.
Omega rides toward the front all day. Teammates are protecting OMEGA riders Barone, Chaves and Lutkov.
As the final climb starts Omega sends Mcbain on the attack. We need the other teams to work, and with this sudden attack they do. They ride hard and catch Mcbain maybe ½ way up the climb. The group is now maybe 30 riders, with 6 from Omega still there. Chaves moves to protect Barone, and Barone attacks and quickly gaps out the others.
For a bit it looks like the gambit might work and Barone will win the stage and gain time on all the other GC riders. Then suddenly 2 riders can be seen climbing and approaching rapidly from behind with around 5km to go. Chaves has burned out and now it is just Barone climbing at the lead of the race, and tiring rapidly. He needs to slow up a bit to keep from bonking. The chasing 2 riders catch him and go right on past. It is Nibali and Rasmus Guldhammer.
The next group coming up has around 12 riders. Big names like Pinot and Krueziger are there, and fortunately so is Omega teammate Lutkov, because without him being there to be able to protect the fading Barone, he would have simply gone right through and out the back of this group for complete disaster. One rider not in this group: Pink Jersey Moser.
Nibali is the real threat though.
Nibali wins the stage and Barone’s group finishes 31 seconds down. Moser loses the pink jersey, and the familiar site of Nibali wearing it on the podium makes the front page of morning newspapers across Italy.
Stage 7 is another sprinter stage – and another failure to launch properly. Blate finishes in 10th, Gimpel dejectedly crosses in 14th.
Stage 8 is a TT - and Nibali begins to dominate. He easily wins the 47.6 km stage. Lutkov tops Omega by finishing in 4th (the future is bright) 19 seconds down, and Barone loses another 1:11 by finishing 15th.
In the GC standings Barone sits in 8th, 3:11 down.
Despite the stage 2 mistake where he lost 5 minutes, Lutkov's great stage 6 & 8 performances puts him into the white jersey!
The team will fight on, but they know the tour win is now out of their grasp.
Edited by Morgan63 on 20-07-2014 02:37
Well I had some marathon sessions of PCM12 the past week.
My personal schedule is quite clear and my days have pretty much consistently consisted of me getting up at 5am to get out cycling Mt Lemmon for 1 ½ - 2 hours, back home for PCM and maybe an afternoon nap, then watch TDF, then more PCM and maybe some evening yoga for the old, aching back.
So let me catch anyone interested in this career up to date with some overview posts.(not really sure if there is interest, but it looks like it at least gets some views.)
The Giro continued on as before: Omega team rode very aggressive. On Mountain stages I sent guys away on attacks, forcing Nibali’s Com team to chase them down. Barone just wasn’t strong enough yet to take advantage on a guy as strong as Nibali, and would just be content to hold on to the leaders wheel and not lose time on the final climb.
Stage 15 though may be one of the most climactic stages I have seen in the overview of a career. IT was a deposition of a champion, and possibly the mark of the decline of a great career.
Nibali was still wearing Pink and my team sent early attacks with some good climbers. I wish I knew how important this stage would be so I could have saved the replay, but at the time it just seemed a continuation of the pattern.
My team’s attacks blew up Nibali’s Com team as they chased, leaving NIbali completely isolated. I was just focused on keeping Barone on his wheel on the last climb, and with Chaves and Lutkov taking turns protecting him, he did manage to stay with the Italian shark. I saw some guys go up ahead, but I figured they would get reeled back in…
Here is our little group reaching the top of the final climb: (click on photo to enlarge)
Right as we crested the top, for some stupid reason I sent Chaves for water, leaving a small gap, which Nibali mercilessly exploited and attacked, putting in almost a minute on my riders on the downhill to the finish!!!! But the real shocker was that this stage and my attacks cost Nibali his chance for a 5th Giro! Was this his last chance at his age, or did his team just fail him? Several riders put in some serious time on him as well, and he finished 7th on the stage, and lost around 2:30 on the eventual race winner Rasmus Guldhammer.
Nibali no longer looked invincible, and he continued to lose more time in the following stages, eventually finishing the 2019 Giro in 2nd place, 3:18 down. I truly believe his death grip on the Giro has been released, and next season will se some big changes. I believe my Inbrew team will be poised to take advantage of the void in power.
For Omega: 2019 Giro final results - Barone finished over 9 minutes back in a disappointing 9th, and Lutkov finished 13th, over 18 minutes back, and also won the white jersey. There is no doubt that Lutkov will be the future of the team.
The only stage win for Omega was the Gimpel sprint in stage 2. Gimpel finished top 5 3 more times, but never higher than 3rd.
Team management was not entirely surprised with the results. Barone and Gimpel are young and being developed for the future, although later events will cast doubts on their being with the team beyond their current contract.
I will try to do the TDF and the transfer season overview write-ups in a day or 2.
I will give a little teaser: Omega does win one of the major tours for 2019, with a rider who was not the GC leader for the team at the start of the race. A rider who was already signed for 2020 by another team and will not return to Omega!
Edited by Morgan63 on 26-07-2014 05:10
Well, it has been a while and my career in charge of OPQ rolls onward. This game continues to be a blast.
Rather than post all the race to race minutiae, I think there might be more value in the sweeping macro view of the team.
In 2019, following the giro (above post) Young OPQ USA rider A. Eager finished 2nd in GC in the TDF, but was dominated by winner Pinot. Pinot was clearly the best rider at that point and got a well deserved victory for France. But the loss clarified my (OPQ) need for a few more riders who can support to the end in the ultimate climbing stages. The team had too many 74-77 MO riders, when it really needed a couple of 79-81 to support the GC rider. SO I began re-hauling my team and got rid of 10 riders at the seasons end, including some guys I had been grooming for their entire pro careers and fan favorites.
Quintana won the Vuelta a Espana, but was also shown the door due to too many incidents where he refused to support or flat out abandoned the teams designated GC rider at critical moments. His departure was viewed unanimously as addition by subtraction, and he has failed to win another tour since his sacking.
I also began building a hill program, so I suppose the title of this thread is no longer accurate.
Also all 3 veteran sprinters were let go when Gimpel refused to re-sign, and the team began re-stocking with young riders who would need a few seasons to groom and develop.
With all of those changes, and Funn leaving the team, Reiher prepared to take over the mantle of the much beloved (the team is Belgium!) and vaunted cobble program... while flying their new InBrew colors.
In the run up to the race
E3 Harelbeke: 1. Reiher (OPQ) 2. Van Avorton 3.Offredo
Gent Wevelgem: 1. Sagan 2. Kubis 3. Reiher (OPQ)
Ronde Vlaanderen: 1. Vandenmark 2. Reiher (OPQ) 3. Offredo
The 2020 Paris Roubaix race was one of the most entertaining races I have run with this game.
Reiher was OPQ's man, with Smukalis as his Lt. ant Kovacevic as the number 3 guy.
The weather called for rain, just the kind of day that former team leader and PR champ Andrew Funn loves, and he had to be considered as the favorite when the riders lined up in the cold drizzle on the start just outside of Paris.
The elite group was whittled down to 14 with just over 50km to go when inexplicably Smukalis was allowed to drift off the front during a regular pull. As team manager I considered telling him to let up and wait, as his role was to support Rehier, but Smukalis is a strong rider in his own right, and telling him to pull up would have been unrecoverable from a morale point of view.
The moment he got free: (click to enlarge.)
The group made it pretty clear that they viewed him as a threat and reeled him back in with short notice (took 10km). I was actually happy because now he could protect Reiher who I just set to solo at 45 to test the group a bit.
The best plans always go astray however: (click to enlarge.)
Not what I wanted to see at the crucial moment of the race, but I was already committed to sending Reiher off. The race always continues.
Reiher opens the gap: (click to enlarge.)
That is Funn bent forward, in what I like to think of as complete agony but probably getting some water, at the bottom of photo. Fortunately the elite group completely splintered chasing, as the main rivals pursued individually instead of collectively.
Which allowed this!: (click to enlarge.)
The beer was flowing that night as Kevin Reiher celebrated his first of hopefully many PR wins.
Edited by Morgan63 on 28-08-2014 01:15
I am afraid I must file a correction on my 2019 TDF recap. I think I buried the lead for the 2020 TDF (Pinot... cough...cough....) The old memory is not what it used to be and it serves me right for writing from memory instead of going into the game for confirmation. TJ Van Gorderon (sic) was well on his way to winning the 2019 TDF when he crashed out on a mountain descent and had to withdrawal from the race. Thomas De Gendt won the race and OPQ's Aggrey Eager moved into 2nd.
Here is Van Gorderon in yellow and finishing 2nd in stage 17 the day before the crash:
I will catch you up on the overview of the 2021 in a following post. IT was a pretty exciting and successful season, and we won 3 of the cobble classics (Reiher won 2 of them) and we won all 3 tours! I actually felt bad about beating up Pinot in the TDF when he was the defending champion, with 4 dominant climbers that just took turns attacking him while he was isolated, that I instituted some changes to make things more challenging for me in 2022. The big on was giving my 4th best tour rider M. McBain 78 to another team, despite him only being 26 and having more development ahead of him. He still has a year on his 8,500 a month contract and is a top 10 tour rider, so the receiving team got a great deal! I also limited my scouting abilities for the future.
As I said though, I will cover that in the near future.
For now I wanted to cover the early spring classics season of 2022, because I wanted to write it up while it was still fresh and exciting. (I just finished racing Gent Wevelgem this morning.)
For starters OPQ signed Superstar Peter Sagan to a 2 year contract, with the understanding that if he is not used properly by the team he can opt out after one-season. I am not bringing him in to work exclusively for my riders like Reiher. I want this to be realistic and I am was not sure how well it would work out.
In other changes, besides McBain, some other vets tranfered out, including another of the uber climbing stars that knocked poor Pinot around in the TDF – Belgian climber – Elijsson (sponsor not happy about that, since he was most well-known Belgian), and tour support climber Stuy, and 2nd tier GC riders Schroeder and Keese, and the #2 cobble rider Smukulis.
Other than Sagan, the other new additions were all young prospects and free riders, and a Belgian flat/fighter rider named M. Peelman 74.
J. Peeters 69– BEL and Chupak 77 (transfer) are strong additions for the future in our Hills program, which is now up and running strongly. Spaniard free-rider (why won't the cpu teams sign these young studs!) J. Lopez- Arrietta 74 and D. Corradi 70– ITL (found by scout while looking for an Italian to ultimately replace Barone for Giro.) are new future GC riders.
We start the season with Hill specialist H. Killen – AUS placing 14th in the Tour down under.
The next UCI WT even is Paris – Nice, a race we have never placed in the top 5 in (remember I used to sim all hill races and having hill riders was not a priority).
Well Killen gives us not only our first top 5 placing, but he wins the event, with the help of strong support from our #2 hills rider A. Porteman – BEL. Both of these riders are under 25 and it is strongly believed that Porteman will be the one who will stay when their deals run up, since he is Belgian, which is the focus of our team.
Killen gets a decisive stage 4 victory: (click to enlarge)
Killen, finshing in 2nd and keeping yellow, stage 8:
Next up is Tirreno Adriatico, a race that Porteman finished 3rd in last year, which was the first top 5 ever for OPQ in this race. Since Porteman is racing Paris Nice, it is Up to Giro winner Barone and new talented hill rider Chupak to try to get the sponsor the top 3 result that they want. Peter Sagan is also here to fly his new colors and begin preparing for his run at his attempt to 3-pete at Gent Wevelgem.
Sagan wins the mass spring to finish 4th, 20 seconds behind 3 breakaway riders in stage 1.
Sagan then finishes 3rd in the stage 2 mass sprint finish.
Sagan finishes 8th in the stage 3 sprint.
The first real, decisive separation comes in stage 4. In this hilly stage Barone gets a decisive victory and puts 34 seconds on the next 8 elite riders to cross the line. I cannot help but feel I wasted this guy’s talent by focusing him on Giro’s and then TDF support roles his entire career with me.
Barone stealing the show in stage 4:
Stage 5 is a 53 man group hill finish, with no big surprises as to who is in the group.
Stage 6 We position M Peelman in the brekway and he helps lead the group to the finish, finishing 3rd behind M Goss and G Fuchs. Barone loses around 20 seconds to Hill superstar Andrin from Belgium, but not enough to shake up the standings.
Stage 7 Rein Taaramae does a heroic breakaway and wins the stage, but it does not change the race results. Richard Barone wins the race, and serves notice he will be a force to reckon with in the hilly classics to come and the Giro!
Milan – San Remo sees all of our big names come out. The sponsor wants the WIN, even though we have never placed in the top 5 here before, and it looks like it might be possible.
(aside note) this is a tough race for me to run on my computer. Something about it really is hard for my computer to handle. Screen rate jumps and jerks and it is very difficult. Makes it not very fun to race, really.
We raced tough all afternoon. Kept our big boys up front, chasing breakaways riders, including some big hitters etc. Kept everything together for my big boys and had Barone, Sagan, Portemen and Killen all in position to win. I guess my inexperience here cost me, as I waited too long to sprint and then found out that because it was downhill, everyone was topped out and Sagan could not pass even his lead-out rider (Barone).
Barone finishes 4th to get us our first top 5 here, but still stings with disappointment because the win was within our reach.
UP next: E3 Harelbeke and Gent Wevelgem. Reiher, Sagan and OPQ come out to play and do some epic battles with former team leader A. Funn! (The best part! Some interesting races, and not at all what I would have predicted.)
Edited by Morgan63 on 30-08-2014 00:38
