Bolonga to San Luca and up the iconic Sanctuary De San Luca to finish the PCT season along the castle walls we are pretty sure who the PCT champions will be in Elco. But there's a huge relegation battle today with at least Everesting, Manada Coyote, Jewa Tirol and Tafjord involved. And the close promotion race between UBS, Benetton and Indosat where 2 of the 3 will promote today.
Lets recap the preview by Ivan
Questions will be answered
Disclaimer - these results are provisional and aren't official
As mentioned, we will dissect the battles that are going on here and how this final PCT race will shape the future of the teams.
The battle for the top
1
ELCO - ABEA
4049
2
ISA - Hexacta
3799
Currently, only 50 points separate ELCO - ABEA and ISA - Hexacta. This means that the battle for the crown will be tense and will not be known until the final rider crosses the finishing line. ELCO have secured themselves a return to the PT division, but shockingly that's not the case for ISA - due to many inactivity infractions the team has been denied a license for next season. Which leaves a PT spot open for the teams beyond 5th place.
The fight for PT
5
Team UBS
3088
6
Benetton Bimex Cycling
3073
7
Indosat Ooredoo
3064
24 points separate three teams, fighting for two promotion spots (again, I'd like to remind that what you see is only provisional, so take this with a grain of salt) and almost certainly one team will miss out. Team UBS so far gets the upper hand according to the panel with Buchmann and Müller. Indosat isn't that far behind with Bagioli, but will Yudha prove to be close enough to the promotion rivals? And of the three teams, sadly Benetton has the most inferior lineup with Vliegen as the panel's top pick. Sure, they also have Rafael Reis in their ranks here, but he's more of a climbe stage racer than a hilly specialist. But then again, even the weirdest of results can occur.
Will we have a survivor?
19
Manada Coyote
1813
20
JEWA TIROL
1780
JEWA TIROL must be ecstatic from their GC win in Tour of Britain and are just 33 points behind Manada Coyote. The outcome of this race will have major rammifications not only for these two teams, but for 4 teams in the CT division. As we already mentioned, ISA - Hexacta will be administratively denied license next season due to multiple inactivity infractions. Similar fate also has the resident Eastern European team Team Popo4Ever p/b Morshynska. And while they're not on the 'hit list' Manada Coyote have been radio silent recently, which caused some concern from the MGUCI board regarding their continuation (which is why we've said that Jay McCarthy is in an unusual position). This also affects the 8th place team in the CT division - Spark Team NZ. The New Zealand outfit will have to rely on Manada to fend off JEWA TIROL's assault to have a theoretical chance of promotion, should the MGUCI denies the team from Central America a license. However, if JEWA leapfrogs them in the standings, this means that whoever is in 8th after Zuri Metgete, it's Game Over.
It is worth pointing out that Team Würth MODYF is one of the four teams involved in the promotion battle in CT. They're sitting in 7th and for them any point will be a plus. Genii Hyundai N Cycling my be still 6th, but their gap to the German outfit is just two points and with Tour of Britain didn't went as planned the Luxembourg-registered squad are at disadvantage. But so are Duvel-Tsingtao and Spark Team NZ in this case.
9 in the final PCT break of the season Verstrynge Osborne Wenzel Aquilani Kulindwa Piccolo Van Vliet Morris Berroa Tiberi
. and take control in the pelton the gap is 6"30 but over 100km remain.
After the first half of the race and the final steep climb before the finishing circuit the break is still together
And so is the peloton the gap is now 7"00 with 70km to go as the peloton is certainly playing fast and loose with this break.
The road to San Luca then started to cause all sorts of problem for the bunch with a 20kph wind from the left hand side starting to break the pack up.
And here's the break seeing the castle walls of San Luca the first time a climb with gradients of 16% we will go up 5 times
Hocevar and Schelling lead us up the climb the gap is holding steady at 6"30 with around 65km to go
Once again the winds have played havoc on the rounds around San Luca and gaps are appearing at the back Kuss and the entire McCormick support for Navarez are dropped leaving him isolated in the front group
4 laps to go 4"00 to the break away but a lot more pace on this climb really put in a hard pace at the bottom of the climb intent on making this as hard as possible for Buchmann
This has put many riders under pressure Narvaez and Ackermann for Tafjord are notably struggling to go the pace, though luckily they would get back on the flat roads around San Luca
Finally on the 3rd last lap of the race the breakaway comes into sight for the peloton though the gap is still above 1"30
Paret-Peintre takes this as a sign to jump across and launches a big attack by himself with 40km to go
Unfortunately for Paret-Peintre as soon as he joins the break everyone sits up and for the first time 35km to go the race is back together.
So here we are two laps of the San Luca climb to go and as you can see the Peloton is dismantled relegation wise Jewa clearly have a numbers advantage over Manada with 4 in the lead group but McCarthy is sitting towards the front.
In the promotion race UBS still have 5! in the group Indosat with 4 riders and Benetton with just 1 rider Reis.
500m later it's bad news for Benetton Reis is dropped from the leading group there only hope of holding 6th now is Indosat not scoring.
Over the top Borges stretches the group Kinoshita and Stannard are aware to the danger but nothing comes of this move.
And it's stalemate on the flat of San Luca as we get ready for a 30 rider sprint up to the Sanctuary.
Onto the climb Kinoshita, Stannard and Hirschi lead us into the base.
Hirschi immediately opens the sprint this is going to be a lung bursting effort with over 2km to go. Buchmann, Benoot, Stannard and McCarthy are all well positioned for this early kick.
Kelderman is the only other rider that can go with this early acceleration and a gap is forming behind.
Passing some lapped riders Stannard now goes with Benoot, Hirschi still goes his own pace on the inside.
Stannard can see the top but its a long way to climb Buchmann, Van Niekerk and Paret-Peintre make ground along with Arndt having another strong race for Jewa, McCarthy has heavily cracked in an important moment at the bottom of the division.
Benoot and Hirschi are together
Benoot takes the win his fine run of form to end the season continues, Hirschi is 2nd the same applies to him with Stannard saving Everesting in 3rd place what a last two months of the season for him.
De Plus is 4th from Buchmann which should mean that both of those teams will promote to end the season.
Paret-Peintre is 6th Van Niekerk is 7th as ISA say goodbye to the peloton then Kinoshita, Kelderman and most importantly Arndt in 10th that wouldn't be enough to keep JEWA safe..... but who is that behind him
First it's Vakoc but then Grossschartner! with a super strong final climb adding his 18pts to Arndt 26pts and suddenly 44pts they were 33pts behind to start the day and we still don't know where McCarthy is.
Bagioli is 14thhe's put every ounce of effort into the climb and looks broken as he crosses the line will it be enough 12pts for Indosat who are now 3pt ahead of Benetton and the anxious wait to see if he has done enough for his team Tesfatsion is 15th, Turgis is 16th, Eriksson confirms Tafjord relegation in 17th, Azman, Padun and Budyak round out the top 20.
McCarthy has cracked all the way to 21st place and 5pts and as thing are provisionally calculated that's 6pts behind Jewa! they would need two more riders in the top 30 to hang on.
Lagane Calmejane Edmondson
are 22nd to 24th
then an important Yudha 5 more points to Indosat in 25th he punches the air as he crosses the line he thinks he's done enough who are the 5 riders after him!
Dyrnes Covi Schlegel Badilatti Carcueva
round out the top 30.
Which provisionally has Indosat achieving promotion by 8pts and Jewa staying up ahead of Manada by 6pts big drama in the finale.
There's tears in the JEWA riders eyes as they rally around Arndt who has saved their entire season in the last two races fairytale stuff from the German vet. Indosat are popping champagne on the side of the road there living the high life in the PT next year.
Commiserations to all managers at Benetton, Tafjord and Manada, Manada especially must be wondering what happened to end the season going from looking very safe to a year at CT
ELCO - ABEA the PCT Champions! they cruise over the line in the top 40, well deserved manager SotD has a karoke machine outside the team bus and is singing "we are the champions" the riders are joining in the Greek Cypriots are back in the big time!
Benoot is our winner in a crazy and tense finale to the PCT season!
