After spotlighting one of the many narrative one-rider stories on the forum last week, we have decided to go back to the roots of story making by profiling a classic team story. Bianchi Factory Team by the_hoyle showcases the traditional style of detailed reports through the manager's eyes as he follows his team making their way through the ranks.

Having made it past the milestone first season, the custom Pro Continental cycling team continues to push in the right direction while moving through season two. The breakout star of the inaugural season for Rapha-Bianchi Racing Team had to be youngster Caleb Ewan. He won the Coppa Citta di Stresa and 4 other stages, 3 of which coming at the heavily anticipated Tour of Britain.

After losing their main sponsor, Rapha, due to a “turbulent” first season the team’s nationality has swifted from British to Italian. New faces have been brought in with the hope that they can carry this team to the next level: Sam Bewley, Marco Canola, and Eros Capecchi just to name a few. To view the complete synopsis click Read More.

We have a new patch for Pro Cycling Manager 2014. It seems we can finally start playing career mode with some essential fixes there. Click Read More for a full list of fixes and changes. The sprint bug has not been adressed, but it can be fixed in 3D by assigning your sprinter as a team mate, instead of a sprinter.

Download the patch here!

Velogames Tour de France starts!

The Tour de France is approaching, and as always, the people from velogames.com have made a competition for cycling fans. The idea is to select 9 riders that you think will do well in the upcoming TdF. Mind you, you have a limited budget of 100 coins. After that, you can just lay back and see how they do.
Of course, PCMdaily has got its own subleague again. Make sure to join, and don't forget to leave a Didi Senft picture in the thread when you're in :P

Jacky Durand's Sponsorkits Released

Jacky Durand's Sponsorkits is a big file, that makes your PCM 14 experience a lot better. These files add the sponsor files for a lot of big races. Beside that, they also add generic sponsor files for countries, meaning you have a nice sponsorkit in every race, instead of the default Focus studios ads. But not just that, the files also adds all sort of different things, like new newspapers, racelogos and cars. Definitely a must-have for people that find the graphical part of the game important. The download is available in the download section now.

EPIC season part 2 is over

EPIC reached a new milestone this week. They managed to finish season part 2, which is the second out of three parts. The national championships are now over as well, and they resulted in some extraordinary champions. EPIC, led by Ollfardh, is the longest-running story game at the moment. Make sure to have a look soon!

Thread of the Week

This week, the thread of the week is the Tour de France pre-race thread.
This thread is really booming lately, now that most teams have published their startlists. With Kreuziger out as well now, there's definitely a lot to discuss about.

An honourable mention obviously goes to the Fifa World Cup thread. We reached the knockout phase now, and a lot of big football countries are already eliminated.

ManGame: Big cobbled classic

The ManGame is still moving relatively slow, but that doesn't mean that there are no races going on.

The ProTour could enjoy the East Midlands Cicle Classic , a ''light'' cobbled race, favouring the fast finishers above the pure cobblers.  It indeed got to a sprint, and Sam Bewley managed to win with a small gap to the nr 2, Tom Boonen.

The Continental teams didn't sit still either though. The Himmerland Rundt was next on the calendar, a very important sprinters classic.
Mattias Westling takes an important win for Team Live Nation, winning this race was a season goal for the team.

Today is Friday and this is going to be the Cycling Interviews day. So you might have a look at the News section on Friday over the next few weeks.

After we contacted riders and collected general and specific questions etc. we can release today the first interview.

We begin with Ryan Eastman, who currently rides for the Bissell Development Team.

If you want to know more about him, click "read more" as the Interview is in the extended section of this news.

With the new Pro Cycling Manager finally here we are starting to see the transition period of PCM13 stories ending and PCM14 stories springing to life. For this week’s spotlight Ian and I have decided to recognize one of the stories that sadly came to a screeching halt this week and left us with an open-ended conclusion: Karl Hammarling by fellow admin TheManxMissile.

While TMM wasn't able to capture that elusive Story of the Month title (for the record: 6 straight nominations) the journey he led us on deserves it’s own unique award. The twists and turns of Karl Hammarling’s life always seemed to leave the readers guessing and asking the same question: What’s going to happen next?

It’s only fitting that the story ends this way as well. They say the best part of life is the journey and not so much the final destination. While Karl might never get his proper ending, the story at least deserves a final spotlight send off before putting it to sleep. To read the complete synopsis click Read More.