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GP Liechtenstein - Discussion
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| SotD |
Posted on 19-01-2022 07:29
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World Champion
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 GP Liechtenstein
Welcome to the 10th anniversary of the Liechtensteinian classic the GP Liechteinstein.
The race clashes with the Giro d'Italia, and thus makes for some interesting initial guessing as to who will ride the Giro and who will not! The guessing is over - But let's start out by honoring the race and the history of it!
GP Liechtenstein have always been well representated by the biggest climbing stars of the sport. 240 km of up and down the same climb all day, before entering the final stretch to see who have suffered the least during the day. There is no hiding in this race, and while it can happen that a top rider is forced to spend extra energy from missing a split, or not paying attention on a downhill this is as close to mano y mano as one can get! Domestiques have only once in a while played a significant role, otherwise it's all about staying in the front group and being ready for that final climb.
The race have only been won by Grand Tour winners and started with:
 Angel Madrazo in 2012. The spaniard have won a total of 3 Grand Tours (2x Tour de France and 1x Vuelta a España).
In 2013 the race was won by one of the most dominant riders in history:
 Damiano Cunego, who have an impressive 7 Grand Tour wins (6x Giro d'Italia and 1x Tour de France).
The race was dominated by luxembourgian superstar:
 Andy Schleck from 2014-2016. Andy Schleck was also the first ever rider to win all three Grand Tours (2x Vuelta a España, 2x Giro d'Italia and 2x Tour de France).
The race was won twice by estonian GC rider:
 Rein Taaramäe in both 2017 and 2019. Similar to Andy Schleck, Taaramäe have also won the tripple Grand Tour, when he succeded in winning the Giro d'Italia last year (1x Tour de France, 1x Vuelta a España and 1x Giro d'Italia).
In between the wins is the best ever slovenian rider:
 Simon Spilak who took the race in 2018. Spilak is the rider with the largest spread between his two Tour de France wins, with the first all the way back in 2011 and the last in 2017 (2x Tour de France, 1x Giro d'Italia).
Last years winner is the most likely to take the crown from the pool of former winners. Mainly because a number of those before him isn't present:
 Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier is also the least succesful - but he did win his first Grand Tour last season when he took home the Vuelta a España. Unlike the rest, he is likely to win more in the future though.
Let's have a look at the favorites for this race, and maybe in the trickle of our minds, also pay a certain amount of attention as to who isn't!
| Name | MO | HI | STA | RES | ACC |  Lecuisinier | 85 | 75 | 78 | 80 | 74 |  Phinney | 85 | 77 | 77 | 74 | 75 |  Madrazo | 84 | 75 | 80 | 79 | 71 |  Tenorio | 84 | 76 | 78 | 76 | 67 |  Taaramäe | 83 | 76 | 76 | 77 | 73 |  Pluchkin | 83 | 73 | 75 | 75 | 71 |
Six riders easily stands out from the pool of participants.
Last seasons winner Lecuisinier is yet again the no #1 favorite due to his statcombination. He might not be the only top climber here, but the combination of MO, HI, STA, RES and ACC favors the french Vuelta a España winner. The team around him, however isn't particularly interesting with Spanopoulos and Miltiadis as his strongest assets. Knowing the bad tempered french superstar this isn't to his liking and it will be interesting to see whether or not this force him to make an early move or if everything is kept relatively tight due to the assistance of the remaining teams.
In pure climbing assets only Phinney can keep up with Lecuisinier, and the american climber also have a very solid set up skills punching towards the line. It is yet to be seen if the slightly lower stamina and notably lower resistance plays out of his hands in a long and endurant race like this, like it has done in the past. Unlike Lecuisinier Phinney does however have two very solid lieutenaints in Bardet and Mannion who are both tailormade for their functions here. This atleast should lower the physical gaps towards the more endurant competitors.
Madrazo comes here as one of the former winners of the race. It will be interesting to see if he can make his second win almost a 10 years after his first. He surely is one of the notable big-hitters. It's difficult to really see why Madrazo should be a worse bet than Lecuisinier and Phinney except for the obvious that he's a small bit behind in pure mountain strength. Other than that he has the full package for a race of this suit. Madrazo comes with a superior domestique setup compared to the former mentioned. In particular Sosnitskiy and Powless should stay in the race for a very long time, and if it all comes down to controlling the race Madrazo is in a very good state.
Tenorio is almost always among the podium contenders when he enters a race, but rarely the top favorite, despite having won big races in the past. He lacks a little bit resistance and more notably the acceleration of this diesel engine isn't particularly strong. In a race like this, you don't necessarily have to win from a select group, but can diesel your way to victory, and if Tenorio is the best on the day, he will win. Be he has to be the best to win, otherwise the likes of Madrazo, Phinney and Lecuisinier will outrun him in the final. Tenorio have a bunch of friends and is one of very few teams that can match the strength of Gazelle. In many teams Aular* would have been the captain and Stancu would have been the second hand guy - but here they are both a level lower. Whether or not that can play out to the advantage of Tenorio might be interesting.
Estonian superman Taaramäe is the only multiple winner in this years edition, and having won in 2017 and 2019, there would be some reason in expecting him to win again. The issue here is that Taaramäe isn't quite the rider he used to be - and in fact 2019 was the last season in which he performed at his highest. In more recent time the estonian favors GC races where he can benefit from his timetrial upperhand, but this isn't the place for that. Instead he has the best depth of all teams in this race. So even if his right hand man Vosekalns or his 3rd tier Blums should struggle on the day, he have another 5 riders strong enough to play a vital role. On a good day, Taaramäe could definately still win this race.
The final realistic winner of this race, as it thins out in top quality is wildcard Pluchkin and his Popo4Ever teammates lead by Padun*. Both can top 5 this race, but only Pluchkin can realistically win. The team around them are very solid too with also Topchanyuk worth mentioning. The other riders are fairly strong too, but definately in domestiques roles for the two stars. This wildcard team will infuriate a lot of PT team managers for stealing top points, but whether or not they can steal the win is yet to be seen.
| Name | MO | HI | STA | RES | ACC |  Quintana | 82 | 74 | 77 | 76 | 66 |  Kritskiy | 82 | 73 | 75 | 73 | 64 |  Cattaneo | 82 | 70 | 76 | 80 | 70 |  Godoy | 81 | 76 | 75 | 76 | 75 |  Hirt | 81 | 74 | 77 | 79 | 76 | | Padun* | 81 | 77 | 72 | 74 | 75 |  Yates | 80 | 76 | 79 | 80 | 76 |  Pinot | 80 | 74 | 76 | 79 | 69 |  Roglic | 80 | 76 | 75 | 76 | 74 | | Aular* | 79 | 71 | 75 | 74 | 69 |
The outsider list is significantly longer, but it would take some serious luck or bad days from the favorites to make these riders win. A top 5 is definately in play and with a well timed attack, who knows what can happen?
Both Aular and Padun have been mentioned before, and are probably here in roles of super-domestiques rather than actual leaders though and thus it's difficult to account for their actual level of competitiveness.
Enjoy the rollercoaster as we go up and down all day in this marvellous GP Liechtenstein!
Edited by Nemolito on 19-01-2022 08:01
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Posted on 22-11-2024 03:52
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| Laurens147 |
Posted on 19-01-2022 07:33
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Thanks SotD for the nice preview! 
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| tastasol |
Posted on 19-01-2022 08:03
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Classics Specialist
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Just hope we can finish with as many riders as possible ...
Should be a good fight for the win.
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| knockout |
Posted on 19-01-2022 08:33
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Grand Tour Champion
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First mountain day of the season for Taaramae and im really curious to see how he will do. I hate this profile / race so reading that i have the best team depth for this race feels so strange eventhough thats been the plan throughout the offseason once Taaramae turned into my focus.
83-78-77-76-76-75-74-74 lets bring it
A Big Thank You To All MG Reporters! |
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| DubbelDekker |
Posted on 19-01-2022 09:17
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Small Tour Specialist
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I'm just hoping for a podium
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| jandal7 |
Posted on 19-01-2022 09:34
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I'm just hoping for a Top 150 - can't recall but I think 70MO duo of second-year pro Salim Kipkemboi and neo-pro and home hero Herbert Tesfaye Hilti are our leaders here 
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant."
[ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT]  Xero Racing
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| Croatia14 |
Posted on 19-01-2022 09:35
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Directeur Sportif
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This could be a very good race. Last year the race was a little random. Thus year I almost took it out of the calendar for Phinney, with it being the race where he can use his allround skillet the least. I hope he can prove me wrong with a win here, but I take a podium in a linear race all day long.
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| Bikex |
Posted on 19-01-2022 10:35
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Team Leader
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Thanks for the nice preview! Looking forward to see what Roglic can do in this race |
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| cio93 |
Posted on 20-01-2022 00:59
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With the A team being at the Giro, the best we can do here is a breakaway appearance. Maybe Yikui Niu can reproduce some of his earlier exploits?
I'll watch the fight for the win intently though, it should be an exciting one!
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| roturn |
Posted on 20-01-2022 08:39
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Team Manager
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One of the few races where Schlegel or Denz could have shown themselves...unfortunately they didn`t and in fact both were pretty poor as well, to be fair, on too hard terrain for them.
Van Hooydonck in the break resulted in the expected almost last finisher of course. 
Without any of my top climbers, this race was always a filler for finishing points, so can`t complain.
Congrats to SotD for the big win!
And Phinney for the first time showing weakness here. Surprise surprise. |
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| Croatia14 |
Posted on 20-01-2022 08:40
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Directeur Sportif
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Great Report. Terrible Race by Phinney though as I feared, probably should be left this out then indeed.
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| Bikex |
Posted on 20-01-2022 09:17
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Team Leader
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The result is not what I hoped from Roglic & Smith. Still thanks for the nice report, Nemolito and congrats SotD! |
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| SotD |
Posted on 20-01-2022 11:05
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World Champion
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First of all, thanks for those commenting on the preview. That's always nice
And secondly, another thanks for the congratulations on the win. This was a key race as it's the first goal achieved of the season. We have messed up two so far - with Colombia being the biggest dissapointment of the season.
And a very solid win here for Lecuisinier to cover a bit from the horrible Giro we are having with I think 20 points in total scored so far. Spanopoulos fought well to secure an additional 5 points here too which is nice.
I got a bit worried with the gaps looking at the pictures, but I guess some of the riders were lapped.
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| knockout |
Posted on 20-01-2022 11:47
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Grand Tour Champion
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Love how my team performed here. Great use of our depth: it seemed like we were at the front of the peleton for the entirety of the race until the leaders took over. Taaramae 4th is exactly what i hoped for and the team added great depth scoring with two more top 20 and two top 35 results. Very happy with the race.
Thanks for the good report!
Spoiler This race totally reminds me why i dislike circuits. At times it was confusing which riders in between groups were lapped so i relied almost entirely on the text report which was very understandable though.
A Big Thank You To All MG Reporters! |
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| Fabianski |
Posted on 20-01-2022 12:14
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First of all: amazing team work! 6 in the Top 40 is a huge result for a PCT team I'd say.
But: Nairo in 19th is just... ridiculous, to say the least. In all honesty, I would just like to understand what it is that makes PCM20 hate him so much. In all his races so far (Hallstatt, Colombia, Liechtenstein), he only had one good result. And here he again gets beaten by Blums or Cort Nielsen, who are clearly worse climbers and have even less RES. He also gets beaten by Kritskiy, who's got worse energy stats and even worse Acc. He gets beaten by Padun, who's not a stronger climber, has slightly worse energy stats and worse Flat stat. So for me there's absolutely no clear pattern, which would allow me to adapt his planning or so. Even worse, with our team result he clearly had the support he needed - so how and why can he finish so low? Really just looking for answers why this version of the game hates especially him so badly. I know he's not the best balanced rider, but his performances this year are just too bad to accept (except for one stage, as I said).
Congrats to PHL btw. That podium feels definitely right, although Phinney surely had an off-day as well.
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| Roman |
Posted on 20-01-2022 14:04
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Nice and aggressive racing from Hirt - really happy with 5th place in this competition. Looks like it was not that bad decision to go with him here and send Kudus to Giro.
Thanks for the report, but agree with knockout's point on circuits. Could make some sense to replace this race next year with somehow more attractive and non-repeatable profile. 
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| tastasol |
Posted on 20-01-2022 16:12
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Classics Specialist
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One top 50 (some attacking as well) and five finishers. I call that relatively good.
Convincing by PHL, disappointing by Phinney.
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| alexkr00 |
Posted on 20-01-2022 18:40
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Not a lot for us here, with the best climbing squad in Giro.
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| cio93 |
Posted on 20-01-2022 19:17
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World Champion
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30 points above minimum from our youngsters, what a great race!
It particularly fills me with joy to see our young Germans Zimmermann and especially Schinnagel be our first finishers, inside the Top 30 even on what is likely the hardest day in the entire PT season.
Madouas adds another points paying position to make this an amazing complement to the Giro scoring.
Up front, congrats SotD!
That was an intense finale starting very early on.
I think everyone behind up to Phinney will be satisfied with the result, and it was weird to see the latter struggle in the chasing group. Maybe the low RES mattered after all?
Thank you for an exhaustive report Nemolito and the similarly exhaustive preview SotD, that was a wild one to commentate on.
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| DubbelDekker |
Posted on 21-01-2022 09:01
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Small Tour Specialist
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Very strong ride by Madrazo! Love to see it
Congrats SotD and nice report Nemo
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