With 5 races in June being PT or PTHC, there were 7 left for CT teams - thereof another big highlight for the stage racers. We'll come to that one in an instant.
But first things first - and first came Hanko classic, a C1 sprinter race in Finland. And who says sprinter race says Kamberaj - but this time, some other CT sprinter was quicker: Liepins! The Latvian got a great 4th place and 41 points for Crabbe! Who continue their duel for the division win against Stela-Vita even in non-C2 races; the Albanians indeed were the 2nd highest scoring team with Kabmeraj finishing 6th for 32 points. Hilcona were #3 thanks to Krieger's 12th place being worth 11 points.
And then came the month's highlight, the C2 Tour of Vancouver. With Berhane not present, and the rest of the competitors not enough consistent, there once again was no stopping the Chiarello-Show! The Brazilian won stage 1 and led the race until stage 4 - where he surprisingly lost the lead after finishing "only" 2nd. He fixed that on day 6 by taking another 2nd place - this time behind a breakaway rider - and the team easily brought the GC win home in the closing TTT. Chiarello also won the points and KoM jerseys, to rack up 180 points! Teammate Altanzul finished 5th on stage 2 and 7th on stage 3 to add 3 more points - that's all! Crabbe ending up 2nd-to-last in team standings confirms that this basically was a one-man-show - a show worth 183 points, though!
Crabbe's dominance is shown by the fact that the 2nd highest scoring team only got half of their points. And #2, despite a truly disappointing end of the race, were Gjensidige! Lunke had a great start, finishing 2nd in the opening MTT, and then beating Chiarello by half a minute on day 4 to take over the race lead. An inexplicable awful day on stage 6 - 23rd place losing almost 1'30" to Chiarello - ended his hopes of a GC win. And Gjensidige's completely unbalanced TTT setup taking 2nd-to-last on the final stage even made him drop to 10th! Still, his great early stages were worth 2nd in points and 4th in KoM, so he still collected 81 points. Lunder added 10 more, thanks to two 3rd place finishes on days 2 and 3, plus 5th in points. 91 points for the Norwegians.
In fact, the fight for 2nd was fierce, with 2nd and 5th separated by just 9 points. 3rd, with 87 points, are Podium Ambition. Obviously, most of these - 59 to be precise - were scored by GC runner-up O'Connor! The Australian moved up from 6th to 2nd on the final day, thanks to his team finishing 2nd in the TTT - but he also showed strong performances in the mountain stages, notably finishing 9th on day 1 and 5th on stage 4. Canty got 12 points after a strong 14th place in GC, and Hennis scored 11 points, mostly thanks to his 2nd place on stage 3.
The Pro Hallstatt Classic then only had home team JEWA participating. However, with Pernsteiner as their highest finisher ending up 65th, they clearly missed out on the points. With no points going to CT, the race isn't even included in the overview below.
The C1 stage race Tropicale Amissa Bongo was one for TTers and sprinters, with 9 CT teams making the trip to Gabon. The most successful team by far were Tafjord, who got a strong 6th place GC finish by Belevics, who even finished 5th on the final day. Vangstad added an 18th GC place to that, with Ludvigsson and Asgreen getting some KoM points. All in all, it's 59 points for the Norwegians, thereof 47 scored by Belevics.
Crabbe scored 18 points, most of them thanks to Rathe who was 2nd in the KoM standings from stage 2 on, and held onto that spot until the end. Van den Bossche and Zana also added one KoM standings point each, with Price-Pejtersen adding the final one from the U25 classification.
Hilcona had a great stage result from Krieger on day 4, as the German sprinter finished 3rd. Their top GC result came from Keizer, taking 22nd place, with Richardson adding a couple of points from the KoM standings. It's 14 points in total for the Liechtensteiners.
10 teams then headed to Germany, for this month's second C1 sprinter classic, Frankfurt Eschborn. And while Kamberaj once again wasn't the fastest CT sprinter, Stela-Vita still got the best score with 23 points. Kamberaj in 13th plus Villella and Yzeiraj in 16th and 17th were their contributors. Lienhard surprisingly was the fastest CT man in Germany, taking 20 points for JEWA. Liepins finished 10th, scoring 16 points for Crabbe, who had to settle for 3rd best CT team in Frankfurt.
There were three free spots for the HC Tour of California - only two teams decided to make the trip to the U.S., though. For the Coyotes, it wasn't a long trip - but definitely a worthwile one! Jensen already showed his puncheur skills on day 3, taking 3rd place at the end of a hilly stage. But the real highlight came on the final day, when Jensen joined the BotD - and ended up winning the KoM jersey! 36th in GC isn't a shabby result for a pretty bad climber, either - and it was rounded off by Lemus Davila's 29th place, plus Chumil's 7th place in U25. 51 points for Manada!
Stela-Vita were looking good for some nice points by Goos after stage 6, where he was 16th. But the rollercoaster routes on the final day were too tough for him, so he dropped down to 37th, scoring just 5 points for the Albanians.
The final race of the month was one that two CT teams were probably looking forward to the whole year long: Monterrey TTT! Why just two? Well, because two of them actually do have really strong and well-balanced TTT outfits. And without much surprise, these two also took the first two spots. The main surprise probably was that Podium Ambition were a whopping 45 seconds faster than the SEE Turtles, but it definitely was a deserved win and 75 points for the Caribbeans. The Turtles got a 50 points reward for their 2nd place. Würth were the 3rd best CT team, taking 4th place and 35 points.
Time to take a look at the full numbers for June, then! And guess who's first - for the 4th time in 6 months - yeah, obviously the Crabpack! Their 273 points are a clear best this month; just their Vancouver score would have been enough to win the month, but they also scored in Hanko, Amissa Bongo, Frankfurt and Monterrey. Skipping just the two HC races.
However, they aren't top of the month in terms of PpRD. Racing only in Vancouver and Monterrey, Podium Ambition total 162 points in just 9 days - that's an 18 points average per race day, and definitely a great value! Had they been rocking like this in the first three months already, promoting or not promoting wouldn't even be a question right now...
3rd place then goes to the Coyotes, mainly thanks to a solid Vancouver performance plus their KoM win in California. North America seems to suit them pretty well... 145 points for the Costa Ricans, with the 5th best PpRD of the month.
The Top 5 are then rounded off by the final two teams scoring more than 100 points - Hilcona, for whom Top 5 must be a first and mainly came thanks to Grmay's surprising podium in Vancouver - and Würth, another team that isn't used (yet) to be that high up. These teams scored 108 and 105 points respectively to take 4th and 5th.
Missing out on the 100 points threshold by between 8 and 15 points are Gjensidige, Simba and the Turtles. Gjensidige still got the 3rd best PpRD with 8.36, despite their zero-pointer in Monterrey. Far behind Podium Ambition and Crabbe, but still good to know that decent points are coming in even when you fail.
The Top 10 are rounded off by Strava and Tafjord, scoring 65 and 64 points respectively. The latter used up 3 RDs less than the former to get there, being 6th in terms of PpRD this month. Stela-Vita and Bordeaux with 60 and 58 points respectively are close behind.
It's then a bigger jump - more than 20 points - down to Caja in 13th. JEWA and Babymetal round off the Top 15 - especially the Austrians won't like to see some of their promotion competitors to outscore them by quite a lot this month...
Ekoi and Adidas are next with 22 and 19 points, before we go down to single digits with Saeco and Air New Zealand at the very bottom of the list. Besides the usual Mercatone mention, of course.
Here are the full June numbers, before we head over to the full ranking:
Team
Han
Van
Tro
F-E
Cal
Mon
Total
RD
PpRD
1
Crabbe-CC Chevigny
41
183
18
16
0
15
273
18
15.17
2
Podium Ambition
0
87
0
0
0
75
162
9
18.00
3
Manada Coyote
3
86
0
0
51
5
145
18
8.06
4
Hilcona Racing Team
11
71
14
2
0
10
108
18
6.00
5
Team Würth MODYF
0
70
0
0
0
35
105
13
8.08
6
Gjensidige Pro Cycling Team
1
91
0
0
0
0
92
11
8.36
7
Simba Cement - Tanga Fresh
4
82
0
0
0
0
86
14
6.14
8
SEE Turtles
0
31
4
0
0
50
85
14
6.07
9
Strava
0
59
6
0
0
0
65
12
5.42
10
Tafjord Kraft
0
0
59
5
0
0
64
9
7.11
11
Stela-Vita
32
0
0
23
5
0
60
11
5.45
12
Bordeaux Métropole - Euskotren
0
28
0
0
0
30
58
9
6.44
13
Caja Rural Cycling Team
0
36
0
0
0
0
36
9
4.00
14
JEWA TIROL Cycling Team
10
0
0
20
0
0
30
6
5.00
15
Babymetal Cycling
0
22
6
0
0
0
28
12
2.33
16
Ekoi - Le Creuset
0
12
0
0
0
10
22
11
2.00
17
Adidas-Eurocash
0
19
0
0
0
0
19
9
2.11
18
Saeco
0
3
0
1
0
0
4
18
0.22
19
Air New Zealand-Alfa Romeo
0
2
0
0
0
0
2
12
0.17
20
Mercatone Uno - Weba
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
0.00
Full Ranking
Crabbe took back the division lead by three measly points; they were 213 points better than Stela-Vita in June, so they now lead the division by 216 points! Their current total of 1,255 points would have been enough for 6th place last year - with almost one third of the season still ahead of them, promotion is really looking like a formality now!
This likely also holds for Stela-Vita, the only other team above 1,000 points by now. However, they clearly lost a lot of momentum in the last two months, so they better get up to speed again soon! It's not like their chasers would be really close yet, but there are still a lot of races to be done and a lot of points to be scored...
The thing about losing momentum also holds for JEWA this month, with only 7 teams having a lower PpRD average in June. They're currently at 937 points - which is more than 100 points behind Stela-Vita, but not much ahead of 4th...
And 4th place still belongs to Tafjord. At 898 points, they're less than 40 points behind the podium - but they have been racing a bit more so far. And are actually projected to finish 5th... Only just ahead of Podium Ambition, who have indeed moved up to a promotion spot! With 878 points, they're 20 points behind Tafjord - and are projected to finish 1 point behind them in 6th place! Looks like a pretty close race for these promotion spots!
Gjensidige have dropped out of the Top 5 - but they have quite a lot of additional race days left compared to the teams right ahead. They're even projected to finish 3rd, narrowly ahead of JEWA - we'll find out. With 856 points, they're just 22 points behind 5th and 42 behind 4th - definitely not an insurmountable gap!
These 6 teams are looking to be the most likely to promote - but let's not rule out Manada yet! With their 3rd place in June, they have gotten closer to Gjensidige and Tafjord, trailing the promotion spots by 85 points right now. That's not nothing, but with more than 40 RDs still to be done, there's definitely some potential to close that gap!
It's then almost 200 points down to Bordeaux in 9th with their 612 points, and it looks like the latter would need some kind of miracle to still enter the promotion fight this year. In terms of PpRD, Strava and the Turtles - rounding off the Top 10 with 584 and 573 points - could actually overtake the Franco-Basque outfit. The Turtles actually are only just above the halfway point in terms of total race days, having used up 73/140. But sadly for them, there's no more Olympia's Tour on the menu in the remaining months...
Team Würth in 11th are just 17 points behind the Turtles - but they're rather towards the other extreme of used-up race days. It's 101 for them - or 28 more than the Turtles. Making up a lot of ground is looking challenging, although a Top 10 shouldn't be completely ruled out yet.
Simba in 12th are another 100 points down, narrowly ahead of Hilcona and Ekoi. These three teams are within just 20 points from each other, between 464 and 444. Ekoi have the most race days left to spend, but like for Würth it'll be challenging for all of them to attack the Top 10 now.
Saeco - the division's lead in terms of race days spent (108) - round off the Top 15 with 388 points. They're also projected to finish 15th. But in that region of the rankings, a lot can happen with just one great race...
Caja, narrowly missing out on promotion last year, are still waiting for these great races whereof they had plenty in 2022. For now, it's only 16th place, 100 points behind the Top 15 spots. Adidas follow 45 points back, with Air New Zealand another 20 points down. Babymetal's 150 points still only beat the long-time defunct Mercatone.
No doubt - William Chiarello is definitely enjoying his last maxed year down in CT! It's not like he had less competition than last year's top stage racers - he simply is more consistent. Despite having absolutely zero support. Which is somewhat scary...
What we can already say for sure, though, is that he won't break Saber's 2022 mark of 690 points. No, he won't. He has already done it! 700 points for the Brazilian! And he still has 6 RDs left... What an amazing season he's having, hats off!
Xhuliano Kamberaj's season is going great as well, but by now he's already 251 points behind Chiarello... 449 points for the Albanian, who is well on track for 2nd place. Because Lunke in 3rd - yeah, he has moved up from 6th despite his Vancouver blunder - only has 314 points.
Natnael Berhane seems to be saving some race days for later - or has just decided to avoid Chiarello wherever he can. In any case, he didn't score in June and still totals 278 points. Which now means 4th instead of 3rd. Lucas Manuel Gaday also dropped one spot after not racing as well, still sitting 4 points behind Berhane.
Same story of losing a spot for Gabriel Marin; 3 points in Hanko weren't enough to keep his Top 5 place. Instead, Mikel Iturria - moving up from 9th to 7th - got a bit closer. He's now 6 points ahead of John Degenkolb, who also dropped one spot. Same story for Yves Lampaert, the final rider with 200+ points - the cobblers are looking for cobbles...
Rounding off the Top 10 is still Aurélien Paret-Peintre, despite taking a break as well. But Jensen got close to the Top 10 and is just 13 points down... But there are no new names in the Top 10 this months.
Among the most notable improvers, we have Elosegui (25 -> 13), Liepins (33 -> 16) and Lemus Davila (35 -> 19). O'Connor (51 -> 24) and Belevics (44 -> 27) are close to the Top 20 now. And then we have Grmay, who gained 65 spots, moving up from 105th to 40th.
With no C2 stage race in July, the sprinters should do well with two C2 classics plus 2 in C1. And maybe some stage racers can challenge the PCT climbers in Eritrea or Andorra?
Pretty happy to still be 3rd after pretty much not racing at all in June. We now have 7 races we compete in in July, so here's hoping that we can gain some distance to 4th and do well!
Thanks Fabianski for the great writeup, always a pleasure to read!
This should be our best months so far. Toug we again failed at One Day Races which arent a TTT but Vancouver was good and we can be satisfied with Monterey too.
Looking individually Elosegui lwoly climbing and we can say we are already satisfied with most of his perfomances this year. In generall we are happy with almost everyone who targets or helps at Stage races. But when it comes to sprints and classics this season so far is just a huge fail and the main reason we are where we are now. I try to do better next season then in this regard!
Thanks Fab for the detailed ranking update, much appreciated!
Like you say, Chiarello is almost out of RD's. Just Eritrea in July and Trentino in August on the schedule. What a great honor to see this legend score for us every time
Liepins has been scoring a lot better than expected in flat C1 classics. I'm curious if he can continue that form in C2's Uppsala and Betonexpressz.
Great to see PA and Coyotes also joining the promotion mix. Gjensidige had some bad luck along the way, but I'm sure they will move up soon. Will be a nice battle to follow!
MG - Lotto - Caloi
[MG] New Manager of the Year - PCM.daily Awards 2022
Thank you very much for the update and the write-up Fab! A nice read!
Not too bad a month for us, with only two races, though Vancouver was a disappointment. We closed a bit of the gap in termes of PPRD with Strava and the turtles, though they're still projected 100 points ahead of us. And we're not than far off Würth also.
And then comes the problem of the coming month. Though we still have many RD, there are not many opportunities for Itturia or Lafay to shine, and the lack of a good sprinter will hurt us.
Stage and KoM hunting in C1 and HC races will be crucial I think, and we'll need another Emellia over performance.
I'm glad to watch the promotion battle from afar, as we'd not have been ready to promote anyway, but we have to fight for our 8th place.
“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably."
A. Roy
Oh for those wasted first two months of the season... The ToA still scares me, but there is still plenty to be hopeful for. I'm also far more ok with missing out (as i expect) given our success on Goals will make for a super fun CT season next year.
Akil Campbell is still our best scoring rider, wow! O'Connor moving up and he's got a couple more useful events. Hasani Hennis also inside the Top50 at the moment. There's good depth as well. We just need to unearth that top level Caribbean talent
First of all, thanks to Fabi for your ongoing effort and great write-ups! It seems like the first 6 teams are those fighting for the direct promotion spots with Manada as an outsider.
Meanwhile we're further slipping down the rankings and probably will further in July with only Eritrea and Paris-Tours to come. At least we should have used the fewest RDs by then, so 11th place is still realistic - and maybe even a shot at the Top 10 if APP and Teuns finally go from solid results to really good ones. On the other hand the ToA won't help regarding PpRDs as long as Gall (and maybe some others too) don't do wonders there ...
Well, congrats to Crabbe on another great month! Really stunning how Chiarello is dominating the stage races this year! I mean, it was clear that he would do well, and probably should be the top stage racer of the division. It's kind of the domination I expected from Stüssi last year - I suppose the daily form limitation greatly helped Chiarello to be so amazingly consistent, so that could be a big difference.
On the other hand, I'm still a bit surprised - or even disappointed? - that a rider can easily dominate stage races without any kind of support. Similar feelings for Herklotz winning the Vuelta two steps higher, by the way (although he did have some support). Could this be the end of strong mountain trains? Or even of any mountain depth at all, given that support doesn't seem to matter and depth result are just a matter of luck anyway... I don't really like this evolution, but I guess it's just how the game works now.
Crabbe going up is looking certain now, and Stela-Vita should (surprisingly?) follow them if they don't fully collapse in the final couple of months. JEWA should have some Berhane RDs left - and might need one or two really big performances - and they're looking pretty good as well. But by far not as safe as the Top 2.
Gjensidige are a promotion lock for me, too, despite some shaky results. They just have so good depth on all terrains that it's hard to see them completely mess everything up. So it might come down to Tafjord vs. Podium Ambition for the final Top 5 spot - in my opinion, Tafjord has a slight advantage, having leaders with better main stats - but maybe also some more shaky ones. Will be a good fight!
And no, I don't want to ignore Manada, but they'd need some overperformances to close the gap imho.
The biggest disappointment for me is Ekoi so far. I expected more especially from APP, but likely he wasn't ideally planned, and just had some tough luck in certain races. Teuns seems to be far weaker than last year, and Gall had too many off-days so far. Maybe just missing 1 Mo point, though ^^
And yeah, I definitely expected Caja far higher up, too. They almost promoted last year, and are far off this time - with mostly the same riders. I guess there might be some subpar planning - TTT-heavy races definitely aren't for them - and less luck than last year (in particular Ablenado).
Looking forward to the promotion race, good luck to all who are still involved! And to all others as well, hopefully you all still have some targets you can achieve
Not really where I hoped to be, but to be expected with the team we have now. Some extra effort for next season to get a more complete team is will be necessary.
The promotion fight is fun to follow along though! Wish the teams the best of luck out there in these last few months!
I've had some crazy days these past 6 months, but things are starting to settle so perhaps I'll manage to catch up on some other things, MG game included.
A good month for us. I'm not sure how much we can push for promotion, but I like how the future looks for the team. Our young riders are managing to add victories to their careers and we seem very active throughout the races. I am hoping we can start ripping rewards from the building of our region. Jensen proved to be a valuable asset and he still has some race days ahead of him so I am hoping for some more points from him. Tour of America will be a challenge, but again, maybe my young riders will pleasantly surprise me once more.
Thank you for the update and the your tremendous work, Fabianski!
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
