Unlike some CT and PCT teams, the PT squads only had one race on the final day of the year - but not just some race, no, the fifth and final monument of the year!
And as knockout pointed out, MG history was written today! Although I haven't looked up all possible name changes (and don't know if there's an easy way to do it), and hence am not 100% sure if they're really the first team to do so, Moser - Sygic have definitely completed their monument collection today! So let's take a moment to honour their achievements:
Milano - San Remo - 2x
2015
Sam Bewley (Becherovka - Petrof)
2016
Sam Bewley (Becherovka - Petrof)
Ronde van Vlaanderen - 4x
2015
Sam Bewley (Becherovka - Petrof)
2016
Sam Bewley (Becherovka - Petrof)
2017
Sam Bewley (Moser - Sygic)
2019
Sam Bewley (Moser - Sygic)
Paris - Roubaix - 6x
2013
Sam Bewley (Milka - AVG)
2014
Sam Bewley (Becherovka - Kiwibank)
2015
Sam Bewley (Becherovka - Petrof)
2016
Sam Bewley (Becherovka - Petrof)
2017
Sam Bewley (Moser - Sygic)
2018
Sam Bewley (Moser - Sygic)
Liège - Bastogne - Liège - 2x
2018
Peter Sagan (Moser - Sygic)
2020
Peter Sagan (Moser - Sygic)
Il Lombardia - 1x
2022
Peter Sagan (Moser - Sygic)
That's 15 monument wins with 4 different team names (they had at least one more, but I couldn't even find out when they joined, so not even sure the win list is complete...), whereof 12 were taken by the legendary Sam Bewley - and 3 by Peter Sagan!
It was the Slovak who completed the collection in the Race of the Falling Leaves - rather surprisingly given the route, but definitely in an impressive way! However, given that his teammates contributed barely more than minimum finishing points, the 320 points by Moser were "only" good enough for number 2 today!
In fact, runner-up Gidich's King Power outscored them, having Sosa in 9th and Smith in 20th as strong depth results. 334 points for the Thai, who despite missing out on the race win are kind of winners still!
It's then a big gap down to Miguel Angel Lopez and Evonik; just like Moser, they only scored 40 points with their other riders, which results in a total score of 205 points.
The same is also true for Phinney's Isostars, whereas Zwift really just got the bare minimum on top of defending champion Yates' points for 5th place.
You'll see the full points in a moment, but let's just talk about what was most thrilling in this race (except the fight for the win): the battle against relegation!
Huski were ahead of Duolingo and Aegon pre-race.
The latter had another stinker by De Bie - if Sagan can win the race and Yates finishes 5th, well, I'd say De Bie could've been there as well on a good day. He wasn't, and although Goos gave everything he had, it was only enough for 23rd place and 19 points. Add 40 finisher points to that (De Bie at least got 10, the rest just 5), and that makes a total of 59 points. Given that they trailed Huski (and therefore safety) by 48 points, they had to hope for most of their rivals to abandon the race... Which obviously didn't happen.
Duolingo trailed by just 17 points, and they did better. In particular, Eastman did better, finishing 12th for 54 points. Goh (12) and Bobridge (10) scored more than the bare minimum, too - which all in all sums up to 101 points. Meaning that Huski should get at most 84 points if the Portuguese are to stay up.
Well, Formolo had something against making this a close race, scoring 91 points for 8th place. His teammates added 40 points on top of that (Majka finished 43rd to get 10 points, all others 5), so that's a total of 131 points.
Which means that the Lombardia scores of the three teams correspond to their pre-race order - Huski getting most points, then Duolingo, and finally Aegon.
And here are the full results:
Giro di Lombardia
1
King Power
334
2
Moser - Sygic
320
3
Evonik - ELKO
205
4
Isostar - Specialized
185
5
Zwift Pro Cycling
164
6
Grieg-Maersk
155
7
Team Puma - SAP
138
8
Huski Chocolate
131
9
ISA - Hexacta
115
10
Duolingo
101
11
cycleYorkshire
96
12
EA Vesuvio
89
13
Gazelle
86
14
Aker - MOT
84
15
MOL Cycling Team
84
16
De Stijl Cycling
71
17
Team UBS
65
18
Aegon - Peroni
59
19
ELCO - ABEA
58
20
Los Pollos Hermanos
49
21
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
45
22
Polar
45
Final Teams Ranking
So the most interesting question is already answered, but let's still look at the final standings from top to bottom.
And on top - for the 3rd time in a row - we have our favorite Men in Lime! Congratulations to Croatia's Isostar - Specialized for winning the PT once again! In the end, they have a solid 344 points cushion - they weren't quite as dominant as last year, but their win was never seriously threatened, either.
That should however by no means diminish King Power's great season, as the Thai greatly improve from the two 7th place finishes in 2020 and 2021, to end up in 2nd place! In the current era, that's pretty much the best a team can get, so big congrats to Bikex and his team as well!
Isostar's winning streak for sure is amazing - but so is Team Puma - SAP's podium streak, as 2022 is the 5th year in a row they end up in the Top 3! Congrats to cio for ending up this high again, even though (in his own words) they're going through some kind of transition. Well, a transition with Herklotz on board surely must be fun
Whereas the Germans finally stood no chance against King Power, they weren't seriously threatened by the chasing teams, either. Still, 4th place is a fantastic outcome for the PT comebackers of Aker - MOT - promoting and then ending up in the Top 5 is a very special achievement, big congrats to ember!
And again, it wasn't even a close fight for them, with Tinkoff - La Datcha Team being almost another 300 points behind. It looks like the transition from Kritskiy to Sivakov worked pretty much seamlessly - and despite their cobblers more often failing than not (at least it felt like that at times), they get their first Top 10 since 2016! And the first Top 5 ever as Team Tinkoff - I don't know if the team had a different name before. Congrats anyway!
So, who else is in the Top 10? Well, the same teams as in the last update, but only Gazelle actually are in the same spot as before this race (10th place). In fact, there's a 66 points difference from 6th to 9th!
ELCO sat in 6th last time - and yeah, I've already told you only Gazelle stayed where they were, so the Greeks obviously dropped. SotD was even hoping to stay inside the Top 10, but they weren't that bad. In fact, ELCO - ABEA and MOL Cycling Team simply swap their spots, with the latter ending up 6th and the former 7th. Which definitely is great news for a team in full transition! And it's also a strong result for MOL, going one better than last year. PT win due in 6 years then?
This means that of the former Top 10, only ISA - Hexacta and EA Vesuvio are left - which obviously means that they swapped their places as well. The Latinos end up 8th, the Luxembourgers 9th.
From 11th to 15th, we also see quite some movement. For example, Paret-Peintre led Grieg up to 11th, making Polar drop to 12th - which I honestly wouldn't have expected pre-race. The Norwegians end up just 70 points short of a Top 10 spot in the end!
Evonik looked pretty safe - and they were, 13th place for the Latvians. A Lombardia win would have been worth 12th place, their lack of depth scoring being not enough for the Top 10 anyway.
Instead, Sagan to a historic win for Moser - who make a jump up from 16th to 14th! Which is the same as last year and clearly not enough for a team getting four PT podiums in a row from 2015 - 2018 (as you'd expect given their monument win list), but they clearly struggled in the last two years.
Who takes the final Top 15 spot, then? Well, it'd have taken a big result from De Stijl to pass cycleYorkshire - which didn't happen. So the latter win the British duel for 15th.
Onto the relegation battle then. We have already mentioned how it went for the teams - and given that the order of their Lombardia scores corresponds to their rankings order in the previous update - well, their places obviously didn't change.
Which means that Huski Chocolate stay up, having a 47 points margin over Duolingo. Aegon - Peroni couldn't count on some more De Bie magic in Lombardia this time, and so it's game over (in PT) for them as well. They miss out on safety by 120 points in the end - another Top 4 result by De Bie would have done the job...
Team UBS would have needed a miracle to stay up, but instead they were the 6th lowest scoring team in the final race. So they continue their unfortunate streak of alternating promotions and relegations. So we'll have all of UBS, Sauber and Jura in the same division next year (plus Duolingo, who are "Swiss" for tax reasons).
Los Pollos Hermanos could have gained a spot with a big race (or even jumped to safety with a 1-8 or similar), but they barely got more than minimum points today. So they remain in 21st place.
Zwift Pro Cycling didn't even have any mathematical chance of surviving, and they end up dead last despite another decent performance by Yates in Lombardia.
So, everything is said about the final ranking - and here it is:
The task for Taylor Phinney was clear: A Top 50 and he'd end up ex-aequo with Silvio Herklotz, a Top 30 and he'd be the sole champion again. And he got way more than needed, finishing 4th in Lombardia, taking 145 points - hence winning the individual title for a 3rd time in a row, by 135 points! After a 72 points margin in 2020 and just 17 points last year, that's actually his clearest win so far, congratulations!
Silvio Herklotz took the lead after his Tour de France win, but in the end was unable to fend off the defending champion. It's his 3rd second place in a row, and the 4th in total - at least he won the title in 2019. However, with Phinney declining this offseason, the German is pretty much set to dominate the rankings for years to come!
Why dominate? Well, just because there's no match in sight behind this duo. Mads Pedersen should be really happy to take 3rd and "best of the rest" - but it looks unlikely that he could just score 600 points more next year.
Arnaud Demare makes it two Pumas in the Top 4, edging out Joe Dombrowski by one measly point (and coming short of the podium by just 27 points, by the way).
Caleb Ewan then holds onto his 6th place, whereas in 7th place we now have Lombardia winner Peter Sagan, jumping up from 15th! I honestly didn't see that coming, rather expecting to have MAL make the jump - but the latter didn't, finishing in 11th place.
In between, there are Lukasz Wisniowski, Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier and Bryan Coquard, who all lost a spot with Sagan flying past them.
Gidich also improved by 8 spots, joining the Top 20 and being King Power's highest ranked rider in 17th place! It's pretty impressive that they managed to beat Puma who have two in the Top 4!
And last but not least, here are the final standings:
What a madness. Thank you so much for the ranking updates all year. It's amazing to end up 1st once more, leaving a legacy for both Slovenian Cycling and Taylor Phinney as our captain.
Very happy for King Power, they really deserve their 2nd place! Puma was always going to be a big threat, happy to have them push us to our limits once more. On top I'm really impressed how Oleg and jaxika managed their teams up this high (again), for me the positive surprises of the season.
In turn it's a shame how Duolingo and Aegon relegated, both legendary MG teams and managers. For the other 3 it was to be feared, but still a bummer to loose them in PT.
A real shame that the team relegates in a season I was pretty sure we wouldn`t. After 2 years where we probably could or should have but didn`t.
There were so many no performances this year which is kind of crazy.
First of all obviously De Bie at 41st in the individual.
Basically 0 points from the full Ardennes and Lombardia alongside many other no shows is tough when being still one race away from the safe zone only.
In comparison to last year where he basically dominated those races...
Olivier as well turned out to be a no performer this year while the backups such as Carboni also struggled a lot more and didn`t use their freedom really.
Wellens and Groenewegen were the only positives this year and did as expected or sometimes even more. Good to see obviously but then again this sees the struggle now how to fit that squad to PCT budget.
Last year I didn`t spend a lot of wage cap to take care of that in case of relegation.
This year as said, this comes unexpected.
Anyway, might probably find a way to do so and hopefully taking the best decisions.
Congrats to Croatia for the PT title. Well deserved with the team you formed in the offseason!
Also thanks to all the reporters and people who took care of the MG this season and kept it running.
I personally struggled with time as much as never before but will try to improve on that as things at least calm down here and become more regular again. Still not comparable with 2-3 years ago but also nothing like last 1-2 years.
First and foremost - Thanks a lot for the continuous efforts of these writeups. They have come with great consistency and quality. Also a huge thanks for the work with reports to all reporters across the game.
Then obviously a huge congrats to Croatia on another PT title. It has been impressive to follow your progression through this game to now be on the podium as one of the all time best managers - if not the best.
Also a big congrats to Bikex for a solid 2nd place here, narrowly beating cio for the title as "best of the rest". And also to ember for making a huge bounceback to claim 4th overall...
Tinkoff in 5th surealy is a step up from the continuous relegation battle of recent years.
Speaking of which, also a great final dash from Huski to stay clear of relegation. Something that unfortunately cost for Aegon and Duolingo - but someone has to lose the "lottery". Aegon did a lot of that this season unfortunately!
For ourselves we are extremely happy taking 7th. Losing a spot in the final race doesn't bother us one bit. We were less than 50 points away from 9th! Making the top 10 is the only achieved goal of the season, and I must admit I didn't quite think I would make it at the start of the season. Coquard with a MASSIVE season was the difference between succes and failure though and 10th overall in the individual ranking is a very welcome surprise.
It will be interesting to see if people have finally gotten some interest in signing him - if not - we'll be more than happy to continue working on optimating his calender next season.
That's it for our adventure in the PT. A season started of in great style at Qatar by Manninen, who is our best rider in sixteenth, but most of the season our (other) leaders were not at the top level we needed them to be to be able to stay in the PT. Also not ideal that we didn't really have any depth yet, hope to be able to turn that around completely now that our first homegrown talents are starting to max out. Not 100% sure if promotion next season is our main goal at the moment, but nevertheless I'm looking forward to the day we're able to race in PT again.
Congratulations to Croatia on another title and King Power and Puma for finishing on the podium as well. Conmiserations to my fellow relegators, let's have some fun in PCT next season Thanks for the updates throughout the year/these final months, Fabianski!
Stoked for Bikex to take a big step up and finish second, the team looks so good on paper and great to see them deliver.
Commiserations to those relegating, especially roturn and gustav. Aegon was dealt some shit hands this season and it sucks to see a team pay the price for that.
Huge Congrats to Croatia for the 3-peat! Even with all the churn in the off season, they still comfortably claimed top spot. Congrats to Bikex as well for great team building and climbing onto the podium for the first time ever. Also to Puma for being ever-consistent and finishing on the podium again!
Sucks for those who relegate down to PCT but look forward to racing with and against you next season. Aegon going down is a huge surprise for me after they seemed to have had a good off season. Also shame that Los Pollos couldn't stay up after an incredible start. I know they will be back stronger than ever. Great that Huski could hang on though
Thanks for the work on results and the write up Fabianski. Also massive thanks to all those who reported races and worked on the behind the scenes stuff throughout the year to keep our beloved game going!
Congratulations to Croatia on the well deserved title. Also props to alexkr on winning the fight for survival
I guess we're headed back to the PCT where we belong. Can't say its a huge surprise, I think we lacked a top-tier leader this year and it really showed. It has been quite a struggle for us to remain in the PT when we promote. 3 Swiss-focused teams in the PCT is a crowd, but I'm sure we'll make it work.
Thanks for the detailed rankings throughout the season, Fabianski! Roman joined the MG in the 2010 season picking up the remains of the Kenda team which was based on the remains of the Champion teams. You can checkout their history here: https://pcmdaily....ost_368286
Huge thank you to everyone involved in running another season of the game, primarily the reporters, but everyone else involved in the behind the stage stuff as well. And the other managers as too
Congrats to Croatia for another title! Eventually it will feel for you like Real Madrid winning the UCL
Feeling sorry for those who go down but this is part of the game and I think all teams except maybe Zwift () have a good chance of bouncing right back.
As for us, it was a pretty bad season. Even though we spent 650k of our wage cap on a talent, I thought we still had enough of a team to be safe for relegation, but most of the riders were below what I expected from them based on previous seasons.
On the overperforming side, though not by much I think we can put Formolo, Van Poppel and Schelling. Grosu and Gerts did bring in good points, but I feel both should have done better. Grosu missed out completely on Qatar, while Gerts did worst in the cobbled races that he did last year despite his training.
Having only 4 riders scoring over 200 points shows how bad our depth was and why we were fighting for relegation until the very last race and could have easily gone down. Perhaps the most underpeforming rider was Oscar Rodriguez, who was a shadow of his last year self going from 400 points to 82 points. While last year was clearly an overperformance, 82 is incredibly low for his stats.
Sadly, I think next season will also be a hard one for us as I don't think disrupting the team in terms of leaders will be a good idea before Remco and Champoussin are established riders, but we'll see how renewals go first.
Again, thanks everybody for another great MG season and see you all next year!
Thanks a lot for this great write-up and especially for such a special mention, Fabianski!
It really feels rewarding after all those years with this great game with such a special community of people which you could hardly find nowadays. Thanks a lot to you all who are still keeping this running year after year as well as to all the managers.
Congratulations to Croatia, again! At this point it has to be pretty annoying to take yet another pretty dominant overall win, just give us your know-how at this point, please!
Also, a pleasure to see Bikex and Cio so high up in the standings, which only confirms their quality as managers, only just followed by some absolute legends like Ember, SotD and SN or great guys like Beagle, Scorchio or Knockout. I was once again deservedly beaten by all of you.
It seems like my team ended up pretty much where deserved. Expected somehow more from both Kudus and Hirt, but you cannot be lucky all the time - and I had a lot of it all over the years. The relegation would be harsh, but it looks like the signing of Ponzi may have been the key as he was the rider who gave my team at least some much-needed depth and possibly also helped Sagan a lot as I used him a lot as a premium domestique. It was definitely a nice touch to own the rider who I probably loved the most at times when Ponzi was racing as a star against my hero Sagan.
I am glad to see Alex's team staying up and also thank him for mentioning the context of how weirdly I joined this game. On the other way I am sorry to see these teams having to go down, especially it is sad to see Roturn's and Gusta's teams once again being between them. Hopefully, you will get back up as quickly as possible, guys! May be easier to even win the PCT with tsmoha finally having his team back in the top division where he surely deserves to have his team after such a dominant promotion.
Lately, after some time, I would like to publicly thank Roturn, for having me and doing little extra things at a time when my personal life was a mess. Staying in this game at that time played a part in getting my life back on track. However crazy that may sound, it is true.
To somehow follow on that - and it is not easy for me to write this part - I have to say that I am considering ending my journey in this game. I have been thinking about this for a while now and I think it might be exactly the right time to end on a bit of an imaginary high like this. We all get older and life's priorities change, and while I still love the game, I also feel like many other managers deserve to have a team in PT more than me, as they give a lot more time and effort to the game. I will think about it some more, but that's how I feel at the moment.
In any case, I don't want to end it all without saying goodbye. At this point, I just want to say one final thank you to everyone who I met here during these fourteen years. Good luck to you guys!
Thank you for the extensive write-up and the systematic updates during the season, Fabianski!
Also, first and foremost a big, big thank you to all of you helping this game. You're absolutely vital to the game, be it the reporters, the preview writers, those who help with different stuff setting up the racing season, the special races, and also those helping out with stuff during the transfer season and pre transfer season. Thank you!
Congratulations on another title, Croatia! It's super impressive. Fair enough, you've got Phinney as an absolute world beater, but there's still a lot of work to be done to be champions, and you've done it again. Well done!
Gutted to see Aegon and Duolingo relegate. Great guys, nice teams, but someone has got to go down, and unfortunately it's your time now. Well done to Huski and especially Formolo, putting up a saving performance when it mattered the most in Lombardia.
For us, it has obviously been a great season. Having a safe top 10, and even getting inside the top 5 was much more than hoped for in our comeback season. The obvious key has to be Dainese, with his amazing Tour de France, giving us really big points where we didn't expect them. Another key was Foss, Kragh, Anderberg, Preidler and Lammertink all scoring between 330 points and 375 points, giving us some very solid depth points. Of them, I hoped for even more from Preidler and also from Kragh, but I suspect I kind of took away a couple of Kragh's chances having Konychev in the same races, as they both could play the same role in such races.
Thank you all managers who are contributing to the game in the more broader way as well. It's very nice to follow races, comments and discussions. Keep it up, and next season will be great too
Sad to hear you're considering leaving the game, Roman!
Maybe changing team focus would help with motivation, something like SotD did. But I also get the appealing to quitting now while you're "on top" after this historical feast!
alexkr00 wrote:
Thanks for the detailed rankings throughout the season, Fabianski! Roman joined the MG in the 2010 season picking up the remains of the Kenda team which was based on the remains of the Champion teams. You can checkout their history here: https://pcmdaily....ost_368286
Thanks, completely forgot that there was the teams archive
Would be fantastic if some people found (a lot of) time to bring that thread up to date (current state is 2017 iirc), but I guess with 60+ teams per season to handle that won't happen
Roman wrote:
To somehow follow on that - and it is not easy for me to write this part - I have to say that I am considering ending my journey in this game. I have been thinking about this for a while now and I think it might be exactly the right time to end on a bit of an imaginary high like this. We all get older and life's priorities change, and while I still love the game, I also feel like many other managers deserve to have a team in PT more than me, as they give a lot more time and effort to the game. I will think about it some more, but that's how I feel at the moment.
In any case, I don't want to end it all without saying goodbye. At this point, I just want to say one final thank you to everyone who I met here during these fourteen years. Good luck to you guys!
I've had this conversation with a few managers last off-season who were contemplating quitting the game for similar reasons (long stretches of inactivity, not as much time anymore) and specifically the feeling of not deserving a place anymore. I'll say to you what I said then:
First, while generally I can only speak for myself, I think this community is well aware that consistent activity can be challenging for a variety of legitimate reasons, especially as managers grow older, and is understanding even when it comes to longer absences. And with managers like you in particular, who have been such a big part of this game for so long, I don't think anyone would call into question whether you deserve to still be a part of this.
Second, thinking just about the health of the game, I think it is more valuable to have a well-built, well-planned team remaining in the competition, even if the manager doesn't comment as much, than losing a participant. We've been lucky to have a good number of new entries last season, but we can't take that for granted or expect it to continue every year.
Lastly, having said all that, you obviously have to do what's best for you. Priorities shift, as you said, and if the game becomes a burden, then the difficult decision might have to be made. But if you're still enjoying the game and just feel like you don't deserve it, I would really encourage you to reconsider. I don't think anyone would be happy to see you go.
---------
I also want to add my congrats to Croatia, just super impressive to do perform like this while transforming the core of the team from year to year. Similarly, I'm very impressed with ELCO for finishing in the Top 10 after shipping off a Top 3 rider in the game. I'm curious how things will continue as you perhaps part ways with Coquard/Chiarello/Koretzky, but this slow-ish transition seems to be working very well so far.
Great to see Tinkoff doing well, as SotD mentioned, but all of the top teams really deserve praise. Comiserations to all relegating teams, although for one of them I guess this was all part of the plan, or at least a necessary step in that plan.
And also, thank you Fabianski for these updates, and for the good call to highlight Moser's historic feat.
A fitting way to leave the MG with such an achievement, but echoing others it would be sad to see a team as legendary and long standing as Moser fold. There’s a decent amount of time between now and the chaos of the pre-season, plenty of time to think things through
Roman wrote:
To somehow follow on that - and it is not easy for me to write this part - I have to say that I am considering ending my journey in this game. I have been thinking about this for a while now and I think it might be exactly the right time to end on a bit of an imaginary high like this. We all get older and life's priorities change, and while I still love the game, I also feel like many other managers deserve to have a team in PT more than me, as they give a lot more time and effort to the game. I will think about it some more, but that's how I feel at the moment.
In any case, I don't want to end it all without saying goodbye. At this point, I just want to say one final thank you to everyone who I met here during these fourteen years. Good luck to you guys!
I've had this conversation with a few managers last off-season who were contemplating quitting the game for similar reasons (long stretches of inactivity, not as much time anymore) and specifically the feeling of not deserving a place anymore. I'll say to you what I said then:
First, while generally I can only speak for myself, I think this community is well aware that consistent activity can be challenging for a variety of legitimate reasons, especially as managers grow older, and is understanding even when it comes to longer absences. And with managers like you in particular, who have been such a big part of this game for so long, I don't think anyone would call into question whether you deserve to still be a part of this.
Second, thinking just about the health of the game, I think it is more valuable to have a well-built, well-planned team remaining in the competition, even if the manager doesn't comment as much, than losing a participant. We've been lucky to have a good number of new entries last season, but we can't take that for granted or expect it to continue every year.
Lastly, having said all that, you obviously have to do what's best for you. Priorities shift, as you said, and if the game becomes a burden, then the difficult decision might have to be made. But if you're still enjoying the game and just feel like you don't deserve it, I would really encourage you to reconsider. I don't think anyone would be happy to see you go.
I want to echo this entirely. Certainly it's selfish of me to want you to stay, and you have to do what's best for you, but do not in any way feel like you are a drain on the game or too inactive to continue. The game needs managers like you.
And if it truly is a matter of not wanting to hog up PT spots, I'd at least think about whether you might want to go the Sotd route and try something new with your team, or even end Moser but start a new CT team. That might give you less activity pressure with the smaller calendar, and you wouldn't be blocking anyone as we're actively trying to fill more CT spots each year for game and DB health.
Just something to consider, but in any case, you have to do what's right for you.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Roman wrote:
To somehow follow on that - and it is not easy for me to write this part - I have to say that I am considering ending my journey in this game. I have been thinking about this for a while now and I think it might be exactly the right time to end on a bit of an imaginary high like this. We all get older and life's priorities change, and while I still love the game, I also feel like many other managers deserve to have a team in PT more than me, as they give a lot more time and effort to the game. I will think about it some more, but that's how I feel at the moment.
In any case, I don't want to end it all without saying goodbye. At this point, I just want to say one final thank you to everyone who I met here during these fourteen years. Good luck to you guys!
At this point I start to think that too many disbands in a single season (espectially at PT level) is not a good thing. The last major manager exodus was not a long time ago (2 seasons ago IIRC) with prominent managers and teams leaving. Sure, we all have other more important priorities in life as we grow older, but that doesn't mean that anyone should stop just because your activity is minimal. I for example wasn't making regular updates (until the end of the season) and my HQ still has "reserved" posts that were left unfilled.
As bbl and cunego have mentioned - why not wipe the slate clean and start a new challenge? It worked for SoTD by transforming his team into a Greek-Cypriot dominated season (I feel ashamed that I've foiled his monopoly on Greek riders). Also, starting a new continuity and going back to CT would also give you new array of challenges without feeling the burden of PCT or PT.
But in the end, it is up to you to decide and we will all respect your decision regardless.
Edited by ivaneurope on 10-06-2023 18:18
Definitely worrying to see another manager considering to quit the game. Since I was at a similar point last year (where a long period of inactivity made me feel like it's time to go), I may give my experience on this. There's some interesting arguments in the last posts! When a couple of guys wrote me last year, whether I would continue or not, they convinced me to stay eventually - and I'm sure the way down to PCT (which I had to go, since I relegated) definitely helped finding the motivation to keep going. So yeah, maybe a change of things/divisions is a good thing when you feel like everything's "done" or you don't deserve a PT spot (which I don't think, by the way).
And like others said, too: no one expects "old" managers to be as active as they used to be! I"ve gone through every kind of "activity" in the past years e.g.: from carrying most of the reports (at some point) to being absent for a few months. When I decided to stay, I was actually expecting me to do the off-season and maybe to try following most parts of the races. Eventually I ended up being active in race discussions in a solid way (I believe), but that's not completely necessary imo.
Anyway.. ofc everything comes to an end. Just saying, that if the main reason to leave is a feeling like you don't deserve a spot: that's not the case and maybe try a new challenge indeed
Sam Bewley (Becherovka - Petrof)
Peter Sagan (Moser - Sygic)
Thanks for the updates throughout the year/these final months, Fabianski!
