Nat.	Team	Age	Nationalities	AVG	MO	CB	TT	SP	HL
	Astana	28,8	11	75,92	77,2	75	75,8	74,8	76,8

Captains : Vincenzo Nibali, John Degenkolb and Nicholas Roche
Team Manager : The Schleck Fan
Expected Finish : 4th

Astana has gone beyond their normal Kazakh / Italian setup and has expanded their cobble section with several big names. It has cost their identity and even though the team haven't been weakened sincerely, we would still like to see team's sticking to a simple theme.

Vincenzo Nibali will go for a Giro win with Nibali and even though Roche has been given a chance to lead on his own, Nibali will most likely be leading both the Giro and Tour de France. Degenkolb will most likely give a handful wins in the sprints and on the same time give some good competition to Boonen and Cancellara in the Classics.

Roche has been switched for Fuglsang and both riders are very much a like in level and a Top 10 in the GC is most likely the best we can see from Roche. In the sprints Astana also have Bozic and Gavazzi, which will be some strong contenders for sprint wins in the smaller races.



In my opinion Astana hasn't become a stronger team, but Degenkolb has come to the team and that should give me an idea of them being stronger, but Degenkolb will require some dire support and Astana is both missing a strong leadout for the sprinters and he will be very slippery without any real support than Turgot in the cobbles.

Nat.	Team	Age	Nationalities	AVG	MO	CB	TT	SP	HL
	Belkin	26,8	11	76,84	76,6	76,4	76,4	77,8	77

Captains : Sep Vanmarcke , Luis Leon Sánchez and Wilco Kelderman
Team Manager : Ollfardh
Expected Finish : 5th

They were the surprise last season and thus gave them the highest budget after the renewals, this has given them a lot of money to upgrade with. The end result was in signing big names as Marcel Kittel, Warren Barguil and Guillaume van Keirsbulck.

Now with that in mind you can only think : "Is that it?" and the I can reply that Belkin's Transfer Season has been on the lower side. The manager hasn't made proper usage of his money and with big names mentioned, they've still managed only to be attractive to those riders, which we should've predicted going into the team.

Now the team is still balanced pretty well and even though we can't expect the big results, like an GC win in one of the bigger Grand Tours. Kittel will surely give just under 10 stage wins this season. but will depend on their riders good days in the Mountains in order to score there.

My Opinion

I've pretty much covered it all, but Belkin can't be satisfied with their Transfer Season and they pretty much depend on luck in order to finish as high as this year. Vanmarcke will get a few wins in the Classics and is a strong contender to taking over for both Cancellara and Boonen if things goes sideways.

To sum up giving their ending result and their Transfer Budget we can't give them many good words in that area, but Marcel Kittel will definitely count for a bigger contribution to calling this team as Decent, but not strong enough.

Nat.	Team	Age	Nationalities	AVG	MO	CB	TT	SP	HL
	BMC	27,3	10	76,6	77,6	75,8	76,2	75,8	77,6

Captains : Phillipe Gilbert, Greg van Avermaet and Tejay van Garderen
Team Manager : brewers90
Expected Finish : 3rd

Imagine a team with one of the worlds best Ardennes Classic Rider, which btw also has one of the strongest riders in the Mountains and a decent sprinter team. You can already imagine how proud it would be have such a team and now BMC comes with a team, which doesn't necesarily have the strongest GC riders, but the skills to do better.

BMC has been praised for making the best deals and let's look at those firstly. Leopold König will most likely get his own GT to lead, Albasini will help Gilbert getting the outer edge, while being a strong rider himself. Dario Cataldo is a beast in pulling the favorite groups in the hard mountains and his skills in a break might give him an stage win, consider him the Italian answer to Hoogerland.

Adrien Hanzen will take over 5 stage wins at least and his sheer godlike confidence is what it takes to win stages in the GT's and smaller races. So all in all they need a rider that can secure a GC podium in a Grand Tour, but other than that BMC is a favorite to the Top 3



BMC has a strong all-round team, that's still missing the last piece. BMC is also gonna be very strong in the Mountains, but it's still there they're missing this final piece and it's gonna take a while for them to find the correct match.

I foresee a team that will dominate in the early stages and luckily for them, the big GT's like Tour de France and the Vuelta is in the later part of the season and by that time their squad will have grown stronger.

Nat.	Team	Age	Nationalities	AVG	MO	CB	TT	SP	HL
	Cannondale	26,4	10	73,96	73,8	70,8	73,4	75,2	76,6

Captains : Peter Sagan, Moreno Moser and Damiano Caruso
Team Manager : mvhoodgalem
Expected Finish : 9th

Time for Cannondale or should I call it Team Sagan ?? Yes I might aswell do it, but Cannondale is still the name of the sponsor and the team is still Italian. Cannondale are known for there straight-forward attempts in the moutains and with rider like de Marchi, you can only begin to understand why they do it.

It's still unknown whether if Peter Sagan is going to ride 2 GT's, but it only seem as their real leader in these races and I do hope that we will see some action from other guys than Sagan. So don't be surprised if Sagan wins a stage or for that sake to cheer on him, as you should do so when another rider gets a stage win.

Moser is a really strong rider too and he will also get a few stage wins, but Sagan is going to do 90 % of the teams points and so while it's an one man army, they still have 29 other riders that can spice things up.

My Opinion

The team of the domnestiques or just Tean Sagan is an interesting project still and with no real weak riders the team has still managed to keep on the good site of my opinion.

You can hate the team or you can love it, but the thing is that you should congratulate the whole professional cycling to see a team being different. With that in mind it's time for me to love this team, as you can only do so, even if Peter Sagan is the sole man to be aware of.


Thanks for joining us for The Tracker Preview Peter Griffin

Thank you for asking me. It's a pleasure to get involved with these things, especially at this time.

Before we get started on 2014, despite your criticisms of your riders in 2013 you managed 4th in the team rankings. How do you rate BMC's season?

Well, if you take out the fantastic performance of our classics riders, we had a dreadful season. That's where the criticisms came from. Fortunately, Van Avermaet and Gilbert were magnificent and picked up loads of points which lifted us above a few teams.

The main problem we had was a complete lack of depth. Riders that were supposed to be contributing to the team were doing next to nothing, the likes of Frank, Morabito, Santaromita stand out here. Sure, they tried, but that's not enough at this level, and they didn't score the points their talent demanded. Two stage wins out of 63 GT stages tells the story, especially when one of those was a TT.

Then there's Cadel. I thought Oman was just a blip but no, that was his highlight. Tejay got stronger as the season went on but Evans was hopeless, so much so, that when he crashed out of the Tour de Suisse, it was a relief. Though we still finished 11th with Nerz, so stability was ensured.

An interesting transfer window for you, would you like to talk us through how some of the signings came about?

Well, our biggest signing was Konig from NetApp, which was a tough deal to push through. As you can expect, there were multiple teams interested and at one point I believe Orica were close to getting him. But I feel like I have a great relationship with their manager and he'd stated his interest in Nerz, who we really rated highly and didn't want to lose, but in this case it just made sense for both teams and both riders to push the deal through. We were definitely worried about losing him though. Sleepless nights were had.

Albasini was a necessary deal. With Orica wanting Evans (there must be a reason?) and us really wanting the Swiss champion, it was just a case of being persistent. The rest were a lot more simple. Most of the managers I dealt with were great, some unfortunately were not, but that's the way it goes. Especially the couple of managers that lied to me won't be getting any of my riders in the future.

Pirazzi was a rider we'd not really looked at. Indeed we were on the verge of signing Battaglin but pulled out to get a climber because we already had so many puncheurs. So, Cannondale can thank us that Battaglin was still available. Yates was extremely surprising but he was offered and that was that.

All in all, a very successful transfer season for us and we didn't even use all of our money.

Who do you think is going to be be the outstanding performer at BMC this coming season?

I hope there will be a few great performers. Gilbert always has the ability to pull off something special though and I'd expect at least one big win from him again this year. Van Garderen and Konig have strong riders to help them this year and should hopefully pick up some results. Maybe Hanzen will be the one this year though. After signing several riders to help him and picking some good races for him, I feel he could do extremely well this year. And Van Avermaet could surprise again.

Who do you think will be the suprise rider and team of 2014?

If I knew, then it wouldn't be a surprise would it?

We hope Owniak will be a big surprise this year. He has a lot of ability but people don't consider him a star yet. Hopefully they will by the end of the season. Adam Yates could be straight up there in his first season, while we hope Simon will be too. And you just watch Evans win something...

Garmin could surprise this year with a really good group of leaders in every terrain, though they do look a bit like BMC from last year with no depth and no sprinters. None of them are called Ballan or Evans though so I'm sure they'll be fine.

Apart from that, I don't really see any surprises. I think the top 5 will be broadly similar to last year and the relegated French teams are favourites to come straight back up in my opinion.

Thanks Peter, we also hope to see the BMC awards continue for 2014!

Cycleman123 wrote:
See mvh, I wasn't far off

TheManxMissile wrote:
So you purposfully included something you yourselves describe as unreliable/inaccurate... Awesome stuff

mvhoogdalem wrote:
Oh well... at least I'm not randomly signing riders. I prefer a good team philosophy over a good team any day.

Cycleman123 wrote:


Truer words have never been spoken in this section of the forum. Congratulations.

Dippofix wrote:

Says the guy who bought some very random Belgians.

OZrocker wrote:
I didn't, but you bought some Aussies away from me

Either way, looking forward to the rest of the preview.

Dippofix wrote:

Says the guy who bought some very random Belgians.