For CT, January is always an early highlight - at least for the teams having a stage racing focus. The year's longest C2 stage race is scheduled very early on, and can definitely give us a good idea of who's ready for the season.
But there are 7 other races - thereof three more C2 ones (all of them classics), so there's quite a lot to write about:
Period Ranking: January
As for PCT, day 1 has two clashing classics - with three teams applying for a wildcard in the Down Under Classic. For one of them, it turned out to be a really great race: close to his home, Kiwi Kennett sprinted to a great 5th place, brining home 61 points for Glanbia! 61 - that's even more than a C2 classic win's worth!
The SEE Turtles were a bit less successful, but Muhindo still got them 5 points by finishing 22nd. Hilcona on the other hand left the race empty-handed, with Krieger's 40th not being worth any points.
And then, the big one: Tachira. 10 days, thereof four for the sprinters and as many for the climbers (including a MTT). A hilly stage and a flat TT round off the route.
The race took several weird twists and turns, with one of the top favourites in Carapaz losing tons of time early on, another top favourite having a (not fully unexpected) stinker in the MTT - and a rider simply gaining three minutes in the final 10 kilometers of stage 8 (most of them downhill) to take the GC win...
But it's not the GC winner's team that came out on top. Nor the GC winner taking most points. Instead, it's Arensman in his first maxed stage race who scored the most points. Back-to-back stage wins, 2nd in GC, Points jersey, 2nd in KoM, White jersey - all in all, that's 144 points for the Dutchman! Teammates Van Moer and Knotten took 1st and 3rd on the closing ITT. Barbier also got a stage podium - in total, that's 180 points for Gjensidige, a pretty great score for a non-GC winning team!
Simba Cement obviously scored well, too, mostly thanks to that huge move on day 8 by Kozhatayev. Stage win, GC win, 2nd in points - an awesome race for the Kazakh, scoring 118 points. But there was also Page with a podium on S1, Carpenter with a surprise sprint win on day two and Manfredi with an additional point - 154 in total.
Two more teams ended up with 100+ points - the teams of the strongest climbers in the race. Both Bennett and Carapaz didn't have the expectedly high scoring race, though (the latter at least winning the KoM shirt and taking 7th in GC), but Bennett had a superb teammate, with Lemus Davila ending up on a sensational 3rd place overall. Bennett still won a stage and was in yellow for two days, just making the GC Top 10 in the end. Both Bennett and Lemus Davila ended up with 48 points, which is 96 points already. Scott finished 2nd in two stages and got some green jersey points - the other 20 points for Spark. Which makes it 116 in total for the Kiwis, with Carapaz' Zain-Omantel totalling exactly 100 points.
Still two more races to go - the next one being another C1 stage race. 4 days in Guadeloupe, 4 days and the GC for the pure sprinters! Only 6 CT teams got a spot on the crowded startlist - and we can definitely say that they struggled. At least, all of them scored.
The highest scoring team was Euskotren. Hofstetter made good use of the uphill finishes on the last two stages, finishing 7th and 5th - and taking 13th place in the GC. 19 points for the Frenchman, complemented by 2 U25 points by Agirrebeitia - 21 points in total for the Franco-Basque outfit.
One point separated 2nd and 3rd, with Genii having the upper hand in the end. They scored 17 points thanks to Zhupa, ending up 2nd in KoM and 23rd in GC.
3rd place goes to Air New Zealand with 16 points, scored by Insausti and Phelan. The former had a Top 20 GC finish and some GC points; the latter was 3rd in KoM.
A lot has happened in these 8 races; now let's take a look at the total numbers.
And we actually have something I've rarely ever seen (if at all): there are two leaders! I took the PpRD as a tie-breaker, and with this one we get Simba Cement on top of the rankings! Kozhatayev's Tachira win obviously helped them big time, but also TDU was really good. All in all, 247 points for the Kenyans.
It's the exact same amount for Glanbia, making it a strong return to CT for the time being. Their PpRD of 9.5 isn't quite Top 5 material, though, but still pretty close.
Next are Gjensidige, almost exclusively thanks to Arensman's great Tachira run. The Norwegians have the best PpRD so far, let's see where they'll end up. Spark, on the other hand, despite being just 7 points behind, are projected to just finish 10th, so a lot of work to do!
With Duvel in 6th and Zain in 9th, we have two more new teams in the Top 10, with Ethiopian Airlines currently being the only newbies to miss out. Top favourites Newton Foundation also had a rough start and will hope for Jorgenson to really rock the C2 stage races, after Elosegui had a so-so Tachira!
Here's the full January overview, followed by the ranking details:
Thymen Arensman got the highest individual score of the month in Tachira, and he also leads the individual standings with 144 points.
However, puncheurs Kristian Haugaard Jensen and Ian Boswell, as well as Tachira winner Bakhtiyar Kozhatayev got pretty close, all totalling more than 100 points as well.
Otherwise, it's a really varied field, with Dylan Kennett, Gianni Moscon, Mikel Iturria, Richard Antonio Carapaz, Cristian Raileanu and Luis Enrique Lemus Davila. There are particularly many secondary stage racers.
There aren't any cobblers yet - but just wait for the end of February to probably find some of them close to the top...
Even though we are projected to finish 10th it’s only January so plenty of time to improve the PpRD. With lots of racing left and races more suited to the team I think it will improve and the top 5 is absolutely in our grasp still!
Great read Fabianski as usual and thanks for keeping us updated on this!
Thanks Fab, guess this shows what the early predictions indicated: this is a very even CT this year, and one result can push a squad over the edge.
From our side, we'll take the start we've had with solid scoring from a PPRD basis, and we'll hope for consistent scoring across terrains. But with the cobbles beginning in February, this is hopefully a big month for Duvel-Tsingtao.
No surprise to see us at the bottom of the rankings after January, but at least we're not fully in last. PPRD does give us lots more hope though although relying on Revelo to do that heavy work for us is less of a plan. Still, points already banked are always better than those yet to be earned.
Great first month for Simba Cement and Glanbia - neither frankly expected in my opinion. Congrats to all with good luck this month!
We were going so well PPRD wise until Tachira where we've essentially tanked our score with a 1.4 PPRD. It's encouraging we are all ready ahead of quite a few teams who have used less racedays on PPRD as always points on the board is better then not having them but can't really afford to waste another 10 RD's like we did their.
The good news is that KHJ is in Top 5 individually
The bad news is that he's our only rider in Top 40 which over the course of the season won't cut it.
Still, it's way too early in the season and hopefully we can maintain an upper midfield position
Not a bad month for us except for an abysmal Tachira. Hopefully that was a one-off and we can keep up our decent pprd from the other races. Given that we won't enter many more mountainous races without Pierre Paolo Penasa as GC leader I'm somewhat confident, but having a split GC/sprint team seemed to be a real issue and could become a problem for the rest of the season.
I am suprirsed we got so much poimts out of this in the end. Sure had some nice results with Bremanis and others. And Carapaz & Borisavljevic did well in the and at Tachira. Good recovering from especially Carapaz after the big drawback at the first half. So we are happy with this month and hopefully we can soon even get our first Win ^^
Great start to the season for us! We'll probably be overtaken in February, as we won't do a lot of racing (and no cobbles).
Kozhatayev obviously overperformed in January, but we were also lucky in TDU with Smit and Mundle being very active and scoring.
On the other hand, Zariff didn't perform in Nakhon and Nikiema might also improve soon. Plus, Schomber hasn't had any prologues to score in yet. Therefore, I think we should be able to stay in promotion contention for quite some time with this first month in the bag.
Lovely write-up. Looking forward to the next one, to see how a very even field develops.
Edited by Caspi on 29-10-2024 09:36
Of course more points would have been great but for a months like this were we didnt have our primary focus in is this a good result. Now just our plans need to work out so we can really fight for promotion.
Seeing Newton behind is here is most surprising but I am sure they will strike back.
