Another season is in the books! The final racing day of the year had another hilly classic for most teams - none for some, and two for two teams.
Let's cover Züri Metzgete first, as that one is quickly done. Colombini, Zalgiris and Tryg made the Trip to Switzerland - three teams more or less close to the relegation zone - none of them came back with any points in the bag. Vliegen was the best PCT rider in 48th place, a race to forget for all of them.
So we're left with the HC-rated Giro dell'Emilia as the final opportunity to score. And the verdict was even clearer than in PT's final race in Lombardia, with the division's "monster" taking the win. The good news both for Xero and the rest of the division is that Areruya won't be riding in PCT next year anymore (with the bad news for Xero potentially following during renewals).
The Rwandan added another 140 points to his mighty impressive tally, with Kipkemboi adding the final 5 points of the year for Xero. 145 points in total for the Kiwis, rounding off an incredibly strong campaign in the second half of the year.
2nd place went to Buchmann, who scored 98 points for UBS - a great end to what otherwise was a mediocre season for the Swiss team. And the final podium spot was taken by Benoot, who personally had a pretty rough season and seemed to find his best legs only in the last couple of weeks. 87 points for Sony, who also got 5 points from Kozhatayev finishing on the last scoring position.
Now, we won't repeat all the details from the other October races; if you don't remember them, check them out in the pre-final update. Instead, let's get to the full October overview.
With the final race of the year, Xero also secured a final monthly win! They could even afford a pretty weak GP Cyclistes result - Japan Cup and Emilia easily made up for that, and a pretty anonymous yet (GC-wise) successful Euskal Bizikleta helped them as well. The Kiwis scored 465 points in 16 RDs - "only" 3rd best PpRD average, but easily the highest score.
Easily, as Sony are already 90 points down! Like Xero, they didn't have much success in Canada, but both Japan races plus a good Emilia brought their score up to 375 points in 12 days of racing - with 31.3, they got the highest PpRD value in October. Too late to push for promotion - or just in time?
The latter question could also be asked for Fastned - but the answer became rather clear in the pre-final rankings already. They were 4th ahead of the final race, and even though Emilia wasn't fantastic for them, it wasn't a bad race, either. 361 points in total, and the 2nd best PpRD of the month behind Sony.
Probably the PCT's biggest surprise team is next, with Jura doing well in Tour of Japan, OK in Euskal, and not so well in Canada. But despite not racing on the last day of the year, their total of 296 points still is enough for 4th place - and their 24.7 PpRD is Top 5 once again.
Top 5 - the final team in that group in the October update is the other Swiss one, Team UBS. After Buchmann got them a podium in the final year of the race, they only miss out on their compatriots' score by 3 points, scoring 293.
And it was actually a very close fight from 4th all the way down to 8th, with Lampre totalling 284 points, Glanbia 279, and Popo4Ever 272. Especially the fight between Lampre, UBS and P4E for the final overall Top 10 spot is interesting there, with the three teams separated by just 32 points pre-October - we'll soon see the final outcome.
In 9th position we have Colombini, scoring 231 points. They did lose some points to Glanbia, but definitely not 300 - the decisive question however will be how many more they could score than Zwift... Will it be enough to stay up? Their manager says so, let's see what the rankings say...
The final Top 10 team of the month - and therefore unusually low - are Los Pollos. But they only did 8 RDs, and especially the 6 days spent in Japan were well spent. 225 points scored still corresponds to a 28.1 PpRD average - #4. Not dominant for once, but still easily enough.
Tryg also were pretty close to the relegation zone pre-October, but despite Démare not delivering as expected in Euskal, they still managed to score 220 points overall. Enough? We'll see.
Lierse, on the other hand, may have had some secret hopes of entering the promotion battle at the last possible moment - or at least move as high up as possible, to be ready for potential disband promotions. They did a decent job by scoring 209 points - but decent enough?
Trans had a pretty good month before they'll leave the division by the lower end for at least one year. Especially the two PTHC classics were pretty successful for them - whereas Euskal wasn't at all. And they couldn't quite repeat last year's Emilia magic - so it's 13th place with 202 points.
We then have a 60 points gap. And in 14th place, we have the next promotion contenders - Assa Abloy. Projections said that a Top 5 result in Emilia would be enough to overtake Indosat and get the final Top 5 spot - which is what Gesbert did. But was it also enough to keep e.g. Sony at bay? 145 points for Assa, over 200 behind the Indians...
It's even worse for Bralirwa, though, who scored 20 points less. Their Tour of Japan wasn't the big Meintjes show they might have needed, and given the pre-final update it's hard to believe that Izagirre did enough to let them finish in the Top 5.
DuckDuckGo and Kraftwerk are the final teams above 100 points - especially the latter not being too far above the relegation line... But still scoring better than Zalgiris, who only got 85 points this month, ending up in 18th place in October.
For Indosat, one single stage might be decisive in their fight for promotion - the final stage in Japan, with Yates missing out on a flat-stage split... Their 84 points scored in October could hurt them a lot, we'll soon find out if that's indeed the case.
Sauber and McCormick didn't really have to worry about relegation anymore, even though it's obviously never great to end the last month in the Bottom 5. But it shouldn't have dramatic consequences for them.
Which could be all different for Zwift, scoring a measly amount of 46 points. Just like Indosat, they took some really bad tactical (positioning) decisions in Japan, which could have been a great scoring race for them, but wasn't in the end...
Spark and Genii are two teams we're sadly used to see at the bottom of the table - both of them will try to regroup in CT next year, to come back stronger in 2025!
And here's the overview - you're right, Zürich is missing, but a "pointless" race doesn't help with readability, so I just left it out:
Team
ToJ
Sun
GPC
Eus
Jcup
Emi
Total
RD
PpRD
1
Xero Racing
116
0
32
72
100
145
465
16
29.06
2
Sony - Force India
192
0
16
0
80
87
375
12
31.25
3
Fastned
231
0
70
0
22
38
361
12
30.08
4
Jura GIANTS
211
0
5
80
0
0
296
12
24.67
5
Team UBS - Tissot
111
0
14
4
66
98
293
16
18.31
6
Lampre - Pinarello
60
0
60
135
5
24
284
16
17.75
7
Glanbia
223
51
0
0
0
5
279
15
18.60
8
Team Popo4Ever p/b Morshynska
102
0
0
32
61
77
272
14
19.43
9
Colombini Cycling
19
0
28
61
70
53
231
18
12.83
10
Los Pollos Hermanos
189
0
0
0
0
36
225
8
28.13
11
Tryg - Gobyk
74
0
0
119
0
27
220
14
15.71
12
Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam
112
0
0
0
42
55
209
10
20.90
13
Trans Looney Tunes
18
0
75
5
70
34
202
16
12.63
14
Assa Abloy
0
0
0
79
0
66
145
6
24.17
15
Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes
111
0
9
0
0
5
125
10
12.50
16
DuckDuckGo - Everesting
57
0
0
59
0
0
116
10
11.60
17
Kraftwerk Man Machine
63
0
10
0
19
14
106
12
8.83
18
DK Žalgiris
24
0
0
35
0
26
85
14
6.07
19
Indosat Ooredoo
76
0
0
0
8
0
84
8
10.50
20
Sauber Petronas Racing
26
0
0
39
4
10
79
14
5.64
21
McCormick Pro Cycling
9
0
8
34
0
0
51
12
4.25
22
Zwift Pro Cycling
46
0
0
0
0
0
46
8
5.75
23
Spark-BNZ Racing
0
21
0
0
0
12
33
7
4.71
24
Genii Hyundai N Cycling
23
0
0
6
0
0
29
10
2.90
Full Ranking
We could actually skip the Top 2 and directly go to the fight for the remaining promotion spots - but we won't. Because the Top 2 teams still did something special that we would like to point out.
Even though the PCT Archives thread unfortunately doesn't fully load currently, it's safe to say that Los Pollos' winning score of 4,475 points is a fantastic outcome, that wasn't matched in the last couple of years! The 2020 winners, Farfetch, scored 4,447 points - but with more race days available. And I unfortunately don't know how the division and race days situation looked like back in the early 2010's, and in particular in 2014, when Quickstep set the still standing PCT record of 5,210 points.
But however their performance compares to these historic numbers, Los Pollos had an awesome year, landing miles above the rest in the end. We'll also see in the individual standings that it wasn't just a one-man show, but they were competitive on pretty much every terrain! Congratulations for the PCT 2023 win, and for bouncing back right up in PT!
The biggest surprise of the year probably comes in 2nd place, with Jura GIANTS being the 3rd team in a row achieving back-to-back promotions! Los Pollos did the same in 2021 (although even better, given that it was their 2nd promotion in 2 years of existence), ZARA last season. Just like ZARA, Jura ended up 2nd - and actually got the highest score of these three back-to-back promoters! They scored 3,938 points - just 17 points less than last year's division winning score...
Not having a superstar - their best rider only just made the Top 20 - they relied on strong depth especially in HC/C1 races and went all-in on TTTs - a gamble that definitely paid off! After one year of absence, the Swiss flag will again be represented in PT next year - but for the first time, the (currently) best Swiss team is Jura!
Unlike for the Swiss, PT is not something new for Xero Racing! Whereas it didn't look great for them after the first half of the year, one man stepped in to save their entire campaign: Areruya. Dauphiné and Balkans were masterpieces, while delivering the expected dominant results in HC/C1 races. He scored almost half of his team's points! Pidcock's Benelux show was also decisive, and indeed ends up being the year's highest PCT score in one race apart from ToA.
With 3,391 points, they got about the same score as ZARA last year (Xero scored one point more), which is enough for 3rd place - and promotion without even shaking in the end. Congrats!
Fastned were among the Top 2 title favourites pre-season - but the lack of a top TTer (or at least some good TT core) isn't great in PCT. Xero - or rather, Areruya - could make up for this, but Fastned struggled a bit more. In the end, Olivier's consistency especially in hilly races might have been key - with Groenewegen ending up being a good contributor as well, despite all his shaky results.
Just like Los Pollos, they were able to limit their stay in PCT to one year, and they're back to the division they belonged to for so long - although they're back with a new name.
So, the Top 4 were pretty much expected by looking at the pre-final rankings. But who was able to snatch the final automatic promotion spot?
Well, you probably all did the maths right - it's Assa Abloy! They were looking safe for quite some time, then dropped out of the Top 5 - only to get back there at the last possible moment, with the minimum required result!
And whereas Dainese and Paillot were their top scorers, the decisive factor probably was Gesbert, who finally lived up to expectations just in time, in the final month! His 5th place in Emilia was exactly what was needed to promote, bringing their points tally to 3,233...
Which is a measly 8 points margin over Indosat. Oh, how bitter is this end of the year for the Indonesians! The duo Dunbar/Yates looked so strong for most of the season - only for Yates to fall apart in his final race day of the year. He didn't lose 8 points there, he lost many more - and it turns out, his failure cost Indosat the automatic promotion.
Let's be honest - chances are still pretty good they'll be riding in PT next year - but if they aren't, that's definitely one of the most unlucky misses. Although it has to be said - as stated by Assa's manager - that they also lost some points by "randomness" - it won't be a consolation for Indosat...
And it's also a very unsatisfying season end for Bralirwa. The Rwandans were in the Top 5 for the vast majority of the season - but not in the end, when it really matters. One more cobbled race for Stallaert, and they might have made it - in the end, they miss out on 5th place by 63 points, 3,170 vs. 3,233.
On the bright side, it was their best year to date, and an African rider was one of their main scorers - if they don't end up in PT via disband promotion this year, they should definitely be on a great track to get there soon - despite Stallaert declining!
On the other hand, Sony had a very strong final month of the year, and they came pretty close to Bralriwa - missing out by just 36 points! That's 8th place for the Indian outfit, who will definitely wonder where Benoot was for most of the year - the October Benoot would likely have been enough to promote, as they miss out by just 99 points...
Lierse couldn't quite challenge the Top 5 in the end, especially after Oomen's season was done. But they weren't far away, either, scoring 3,067 points, or just 166 less than Assa Abloy. Gamper defending his Arenberg title would've brought them very close, but it wasn't to be once again.
But it also has to be said that some teams just weren't lucky to score their points in 2023; in 2022, Lierse's points would have been enough for 6th place, and as we all know, Binance in 6th ended up getting a disband promotion... Which also proves that all of these teams from 6th to 9th are on the right way and could definitely make it next year!
Do you think that 8 points is a tiny margin? Well, let me tell you that we had just 3 points deciding on who took the final Top 10 spot... In the Emilia discussion threads, people weren't quite sure yet, so here's the final verdict:
With 2,870 points, 10th place goes to... Team UBS! The Swiss were trailing Lampre by 71 points before Emilia, and scored 98 points thanks to Buchmann's brilliant 2nd place. Lampre would have needed to score 27 points to hold onto 10th place - they only got 24, dropping behind UBS by just 3 points!
For Team UBS, this must be a somewhat reconciliatory end to a pretty mediocre year. After last year's relegation, they had the ambitions of getting back up - but never even came close to this goal. So getting a Top 10 in the end should be good for the morale going into the offseason.
For Lampre, on the other hand, it must be a big blow. They wanted to challenge for promotion - and ended up outside the Top 10. Meurisse and Turgis did what they had to do, Monsalve was sometimes great and sometimes bad - but the one rider who was almost always bad was Maxime Daniel, scoring clearly less points than expected.
Even some more good Daniel performances might not have been enough to promote, given the level at the top - but it would definitely have been enough for a Top 10. Well, another year, another attempt?
This slogan must hold even more for Popo4Ever. They were often close to the automatic promotion spots in recent years, and sometimes missed out on disband promotion by a single spot - not this year. It's only 12th place, and just like Lampre they have one main reason for this. For the Ukrainians, that must be Padun. Only 26th place in the individual standings, for the shared best climber of the division (and #5 in terms of OVL) - that's an awful outcome.
We'll see how they plan to go ahead, but this year it looks like something went pretty wrong.
Lots of things went pretty right for McCormick, on the other hand. At least in the first half of the season, and in Tour of America. Although, these 2" to lose out on the GC win... But even by doing slightly better, the Americans wouldn't have ended up higher, given an almost 500 points gap to the upper half of the table. They scored 2,330 points - easily enough to stay safe, though.
But McNulty has been very promising already, and will only get stronger. And he can surely be planned to score more efficiently, now that the "First American winning ToA" goal is gone anyway. Their puncheurs also had a strong first half of the year - we'll see where McCormick's journey goes, but it will most likely go upwards.
DuckDuckGo also relegated last year, but it became clear already after transfers that they were in a transition period. So their main goal surely was to stay up - which they did in the end. It wasn't looking great at all times, but in particular their San Sebastian win and a good Tour of Britain were not only enough to keep them afloat, but even to net them a Top 15 finish, with 2,265 points.
Tryg were in a pretty different situation, being a newly promoted team. Survival obviously was their main goal as well, but the situation was different going into transfers. Post-transfers, though, it was looking pretty well for them, after the surprising Démare deal. But while the Frenchman did a decent job in some races, he ended up far below expectations overall.
Given a rather low outcome by their superstar - 13th place instead of fighting for the individual title - Tryg still can be happy with 15th place, as things weren't always looking great for them, either. 2,257 points for the Danes - just 8 points behind DuckDuckGo.
With the Top 15 all being named, it's clear that Sauber miss out on the Top 15 once again - and once again it's the final month that pushes them down to 16th. Only 44 points were missing, but it's 16th place again for the Sammarinese. Always hovering around 15th place recently, they might need to find a new team building approach to eventually move up the standings; even more so given that about 1/3 of their team is already declining or will start doing so...
You were missing a name you expected far higher up? Well, that must probably be Kraftwerk. Indeed, the Germans lost 10 places compared to 2022, finishing less than 150 points clear of the relegation zone. And it wasn't just a rather meh ToA that pushed them so far down; they were often lacking the great depth results they often had in the past - but also the top-level results. Ranaweera still isn't an equivalent replacement for Nerz, and they're lacking top-level quality in other domains as well. Transfers should be interesting for them as well...
For Zalgiris, the main goal was survival as well, waiting for their Lithuanian stars to finish their development and to be trained. They did indeed stay safe - but not by much, just by 96 points. Even trained, Moscon couldn't repeat his 2021 performance, and Halvorsen couldn't fully replicate his 2022 score, either. It will be interesting to see which direction the team takes...
And now, we only have 6 teams left. One of which is safe, the other five will have to compete in CT next year. And just like for the final promotion spot, the Tour of Japan splits also turned out to be decisive in the fight for safety.
Which means that Colombini will indeed compete in PCT again next year! The Sammarinese had a good final month, especially in the hills, with Kelderman showing up just in time for them - and Afewerki getting them a very valuable stage 1 win in Euskal. Reis also did his job - all in all, it was just sufficient to stay up.
On the other hand, Zwift didn't have the luckiest season in history. Even though all of Powless, Jorgenson and Ackermann got some nice results (all scoring above 300 points), it wasn't quite enough. Exceptional results, like Powless' ToA performance, alternated with really bad outcomes - Tour of Japan being the last one - and in the end they came 74 points short of safety. A big margin compared to the 8 points deciding on promotion or not - but still, a bit more luck in one or two races would've been enough.
Now, it's back-to-back relegations, which surely puts this really talented team in an awful situation. Others have already mentioned that they look a lot like ZARA three years ago - it will be a difficult puzzle to get right, but their manager should have enough experience to take the right decisions for not only bouncing back, but flying pretty high in the future.
No, they didn't quite make it. Eastman did what he could to save Glanbia, but it turns out that he didn't have enough support in the end. He scored more than half of his team's points, 936 out of 1,804 - but he'd have needed some Areruya-like scoring to singlehandedly keep them up.
So it's CT again after getting some first PCT experience - and while they'll be relieved that they can finally use their full TT prowess again in C2 races, they'd surely have preferred a different outcome. Compared to predictions, they got remarkably close to safety - but 250 points in the end is too big of a margin to just call it bad luck.
Trans were expected to go down by many predictors last year, but rather easily stayed up - this time, however, they clearly missed out on safety. It's a more than 450 points gap already, clearly showing them that there's some work to do. The traditional puncheurs getting more and more useless clearly didn't help them, and they'll have to find new ways of scoring. But they surely will, having some hopeful riders as well, in particular with Min potentially dominating C2 mountains next year.
The final two teams only promoted last season, making it 3/6 (alongside Glanbia) to not survive in PCT. Genii did have some better results in September, but other than triple-P didn't really have a solid scorer. The lack both of depth and top-level PCT leadership was too big of a handicap to get even close to safety, with more than 700 points missing.
Things went even worse for Spark, who missed out on 19th place by almost 1,000 points - scoring just above half the points it would have taken to stay up. Madrazo wasn't great last year already, and didn't get any better after a 2nd decline. More importantly, though, was that Bobridge completely fell off a cliff and suffered greatly from his lack of climbing skills. Spark put their eggs in the "declining former superstars" basket - all they got was scrambled eggs. And some time to regroup in CT, waiting for Rodriguez to grow into a great team leader.
So, that's all I've got to say about the teams. Find all the details below:
We expected a Démare vs. Areruya clash for the individual title - in the end, Areruya ended up having no rivals at all. The Rwandan racked up the insane amount of 1,511 points, in just 32 days of racing - an average of 47.2 points per race day! This total would have been enough for 8th place in PT - and we can probably expect him even higher up when actually doing all these high-scoring races.
Yeah, it's true, he didn't have any serious competition in PCT, given his skillset. But it's not like tons of similarly skilled riders were awaiting him in PT - in fact, there are only two members in the 80/80 club: Herklotz and Areruya himself. If climbing turns out to still matter more than pure puncheur skills, he could be in for a pretty crazy PT season - I'm pretty sure it's absolutely justified that he's among the world's Top 10 riders in terms of OVL calculation...
Congrats to Joseph Areruya on a great PCT individual standings win - let's find out next year what is true scoring potential is! And it's not like he had already reached the limit of his skills, being still only 27... Monster!
The fight for the remaining podium spots was fierce - and we only have 26 points between 2nd and 4th. In 2nd place, we have Eddie Dunbar, totalling 1,076 points (or about 450 less than JA) - which is an insane outcome for a rider who's only 22nd according to OVL! Big Eddie once again proved that having great TT skills is a fantastic foundation to score very well in PCT - but given that Indosat just missed out on the Top 5, he may not actually care that much about this 2nd place...
In 3rd place, we have the first sprinter - Matti Manninen! The Flying Finn had some more truly outstanding results, in particular in races where he wasn't among the top favourites, who often tended to not do well. Manninen won the Circulo de Juarez, Los Pollos' home race, probably his 2023 highlight. He has 1,052 points to his name.
The division's highest OVL sprinter, Alberto Dainese, is right next - ending up just two points behind Manninen. Like the Finn, he had the best chances of succeeding when there were faster sprinters present, like e.g. in Ras Tailteann - which was one of the decisive performances for Assa to end up promoting!
In 5th place, we already find the next Pollo, with Marlen Zmorka absolutely crushing the PCT TTs. Arab Tour, Tropicale, Denmark - and even PTHC race Arenberg, there were almost no limits for the Ukranian! 948 points - but we've seen it before, this is "only" good enough to be the 2nd best TTer, with Dunbar being clearly better rounded and having more scoring opportunities. Still, two in the Top 5 is another reason why Los Pollos are so far above the rest!
By winning all of his stage races - California, ToA, Japan - Ryan Eastman scored a great amount of points as well, and actually is the highest scoring "classic" stage racer, taking 6th place and 936 points. His overall scoring might have been further optimized by leaving out ToA, but being the first American to win his home GT probably counts far more than a couple more points. Well done!
Joeri Stallaert also scored big, 918 points to be precise, and it definitely wasn't his fault that Bralirwa once again missed out on the Top 5. Once again, he's PCT's King of the Cobbles - a title he might defend next year again despite a first decline.
Fastned's best rider is "only" in 8th place, which might be one of the reasons why they weren't sure to promote until the very end. But Daan Olivier did a great job in the end, ending up with 908 points. Which is even 6 more than Sam Oomen, who could keep Lierse's promotion hopes up for quite some time, but ran out of RDs rather early.
The final rider in the Top 10 is Adam Yates, totalling 879 points. He had an awesome season in general, including e.g. the Tour d'Andorra GC win and a strong East Java - but on his very last race day not only threw away a better individual standings rank, but, more importantly, Indosat's automatic promotion. Still, he was a big signing for them, and if they don't get up by disband promotion right away, he'll bring them at least close to the Top 5 again next year.
With Eastman and Olivier, two riders made the jump inside the Top 10 in October, kicking out McNulty and Groenewegen. Eastman also was the best improver in the Top 20, gaining 9 spots; Choi also did well by moving up from 19th to 11th. Further down, we have Benoot (37 -> 24) and Buchmann (39 -> 25) gaining 13 and 14 spots respectively.
In the Top 50, Gesbert with 21 and Kelderman with even 32 places gained were the top improvers; Beltran also gained 20 spots, with Schelling moving up by 14 places.
Los Pollos do not "just" have two riders in the Top 5 - with Higuita, they also have another Top 20 finisher, and Aular got a Top 50 as well (which Sütterlin and Zepuntke missed out on by 2 and 5 places respectively). It's hard to call that a top-heavy team - it's just an amazing team overall.
In comparison, Indosat also have two Top 10 finishers - but only one other rider in the Top 100, with Abdul Halil ending up 37th. A little more depth, and they easily get their promotion next time!
One might also wonder how Jura could end up so high in the standings - in fact, Theuns as their best scorer only finished 20th. And with Masnada and Stüssi, they only had two more Top 50 finishers. But they do have 7 riders between 58th and 88th - making it 10 riders in the Top 90, all of them scoring more than 200 points!
You can surely find some more interesting facts & figures - don't hesitate to share them with us! Here are the full 2023 PCT individual standings:
Also congrats to all teams that reached their goals. The chicken's had an hell of a season. Also Jura had again a great season.
Congrats also to Xero being carried by Areruya to PT Hopefully he will keep doing what he does there too.
And the ones joing our team next year again in CT. I think you all have a good foundation to rebuild a good team for another push towards the top.
Congrats to all the automatic promoting teams and to anyone else that comes up via disbands.
I'm looking forward to you guys kicking our butts next season
Pretty shocking year. Oh well. Time to regroup and bring it back next season. I think we have the base with Scott and Yates to lead us. Just need to get a strong depth and perhaps leaders to cover all areas. We can definitely come back next season.
Plus with Rodriguez coming up and growing in talent we have to really focus on our youth that will lead us in the future.
Congrats to the promoted teams and game on the the relegated
Congratulations to Nemo and good riddance from the PCT :lol:
Jura a step behind 1st but still a full step ahead of the rest. Congrats Fab on a great season and truly well deserved promotion. I'm happy to hand over the Swiss torch on loan for the time being :P
Congrats to the rest of the promoters and thanks to all who made the season possible! For us, it was a lackluster season finishing middle of the pack. I thought Lampre pipped us for the final top ten spot, my bad on calling it otherwise in the other thread WJ. See you all in the offseason.
Been quite the division to follow this year! A huge congrats to Nemo on a truly amazing season. Always been a big fan and although last year was a bit of a hiccup, you built quite the outfit to move back into the PT with.
Strength in depth for Fab's Jura squad, will be interesting to see how you shift around things in the PT.
Other great managers also in the promotion pool so congrats to you all.
Always a pity to see active managers get the wrong end of the stick when it comes to relegation but, having been through PCT relegation twice, sometimes it's a necessary evil to achieve the long term goals! Going to be like a hawk watching the shuffling around to fit wage caps and talents in the CT but looking forward to seeing how you all make it work.
Thanks for the update, Fabianski! Nice to get the confirmation that we secured the 5th place
All-in-all, the season went pretty much as expected. My feeling after transfers was that we had a team that could fight for promotion, but not so strong that it was a certainty by any means. We had the margins on our side this time, luckily for us. Commiserations to Indosat and Bralirwa, who came so close and certainly would have been worthy of a top 5 with their performances this year.
Rider-by-rider, I feel like Paillot is the stand-out for us compared to pre-season expectations. The calendar fit him well, but he certainly showed some climbing skills this season that he only have showed in glimpses of in the past. 15th in the individual rankings is extraordinary. Dainese also had a good season of course, highlighted by Ras Tailteann, but there were a few "shocking" moments as well. Bodes well for next season that those were mainly in C1/HC, though.
Faglum Karlsson is right around where he is every season, which is more than good enough. Gesbert had a slow start, but was important in the latter part of the season, and proved that he can continue to be counted on, which I wasn't always certain on. 400 points is not great for a rider of his OVL, but he also had a difficult calendar with not that many 'pure' hill races. Gonzales Salas scored a bit less than last season, in part due to the split in Arab Tour, but still had a few good performances.
Big congrats to the other promotees, and especially LPH who was outstanding all year! Commiserations to the bottom 5 and hope to see you all rebound quickly!
And of course, a big thanks for the reporters for your outstanding work throughout the year. It is much appreciated and also applies to everyone else who has helped out behind the scenes. Thanks also a lot Fabianski for the quality ranking updates. Your work has not gone unnoticed and it's been a joy to read each time
Not much else to say currently. I understand the sentiment of if it were the other way around ie Arab Tour - but that's honestly more of a planning gamble on Assa's part than anything as it is know the game usually can't handle dual leadership at all regardless of terrain as evidenced on many occasions by lots of different teams this season, and Paillot did also finish 2nd there anyway which I think is a little different to a top-5 rider deciding to go on vacation a day early in Japan the way Yates did. Obviously absolutely no hard feelings whatsoever, I'm glad that is it Sykkel going up here though, always loved your teams and liked it when they do well. All the best for the next season in PT, I hope Dainese can cause a few upsets with the big boys and I'm sure he can keep you up there going into the following season.
Thanks x a million to all of the reporters and everybody else involved in making the MG happen and keeping it going - Ulrich, roturn, Abhi and Cunego you all do so much work in keeping the lights on and it's so massively appreciated. It's awesome to see some new reporters like kadensbunzler and Imladrik come in and smash it out of the park too - for newer reporters you both took on a lot this season and I loved reading your reports. Thanks Fab also for all of the effort you put into these updates - I shudder to think of how long they must take you to do each time. They're a great read and it's massively appreciated.
Also of course so happy for Nemo, congrats on the win mate, so well deserved.
Edited by Eden95 on 18-06-2024 14:23
Congrats to Nemo for a dominant season, to Fab for a not-so-surprising promotion (at least to most managers who aren't you ) as well as jandal, roturn and Sykkel-Freak for following them to the PT.
Also commiserations to those going down, it's good to see all of you are staying with the game to bounce back next year!
That's great to hear, though those reports included the Yates fiasco in Japan as well as Gesbert's precision landing in Emilia, so I can only second those who already stated what a shame it is for you to miss promotion in such a way. But as already stated as well you're probably going up by disband-promotion which would be great given the year especially Yates had (have reported his Andorra win as well ). The same goes for cunego, and not just because I have an idea which CT teams could benefit from that as well
Some great reports this season, sadly Kraftwerk riders didn't do much to get any write ups. New recruits were largely disappointing. Our uninspiring season affected my engagement, not sure I deserve to continue as a manager. We were lucky to stay in PCT.
Congrats to the promotors and commiserations to those going to CT.
A big thanks to all those contributing to keeping the Man Game running.
Congrats to all the promoted and commiserations to all my fallen comrades.
The description for our team's performance overall is pretty accurate - Triple P was the only consistent scorer (apart from Ukraine and Slovenia) and we've had a late surge in September, which was too little, too late. Back to the drawing board, I guess.
I have no clue what the team did this season, but seems like backreading anything with Padun won't cheer me up really.. But maybe I should backtrack Aniolkowski and Varga to see if I can find any good moments, and some joy..
I know I've been incredibly absent ever since some races into the season, turns out I'm a mental wreck, which is shit... Like I posted on Skype, I have no clue if I even have motivation to continue, even though I would really want to give it a go.. But giving it a go and then more or less disappearing again would be such a big injustice to everyone who puts in massive efforts to keep this running, something that cannot be credited enough!
For now I'm very much conflicted, and I surely hope there's time to consider, at least for now still..
Manager of Team Popo4Ever p/b Morshynska in the PCM.Daily Man-Game
Thanks to Fab for the great update, as always. Congrats to Nemo, Fab, Roturn, Sykel and Jandal on the promostions. I think Eden probably deserves a congrats as well, after all, 8 points is rounding.
McCormick's goals was not to get relegated and 13th is probably on the upper end of expectations, so mission accomplished. 3 out of 5 goals met and hopefully the 3 seconds we came up short on our win goal gets us some partial credit.
Hopefully those you of you doubting your motivation find it. As a reporter it is great to have active managers but I recognize that can't be everyone all the time.
Hopefully he will keep doing what he does there too.
) as well as jandal, roturn and Sykkel-Freak for following them to the PT.
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg){kind=small}
Like I posted on Skype, I have no clue if I even have motivation to continue, even though I would really want to give it a go.. But giving it a go and then more or less disappearing again would be such a big injustice to everyone who puts in massive efforts to keep this running, something that cannot be credited enough!
