Well, it took a while, but better late than never, as (some) people say :-)

We have been teasing enough, and by now you probably know about all the features that PCM.daily's Expansion Pack comes with. If not, let me summarize: More of everything - and plenty of other great improvements.

Seriously, though - we are confident you will like this. Career mode will be more varied by ever before with the extensive list of new teams and races, not to mention the many, many (!) variants. We have also added lots of new real-name sponsors that you can try to lure into paying for your team. In addition to this, 3D mode will be pretty - we promise. Lots of equipment and thousands of new shirts will do the trick.

... but as said, you know this by now. So let's go - it's download time.

Update 17/10, 9:44: We are definitely releasing today.

Just a short note to say that we're still working on the PCM.daily DB, mainly fixing a few things that we discovered to be somewhat broken while testing - for example, a few stages that crashed, a helmet that didn't look as well as it should and other minor stuff like that.

It is lluuiiggii that has to give the final go for the release, but I'm hopeful it will be this evening. I guess we will just have to wait and see, though.

Daily DB features released

As, I'm guessing, most of you are already aware of - lluuiiggii posted the long list of new features in the long awaited new Daily DB. For those of you who haven't read through the list yet, I strongly recommend looking at the article below this one!

Stagemakers collaborate with 2014 Giro stages

Any stagemaker (or cycling fan, really) would tell you, that the time when the new route for a Grand Tour is released is one of the most exciting moments of the year. That is at least the case for me, and it is impossible to keep your hands away from at least one of the new stages.

With next year's Giro route just released, we are currently in the middle of such a period. To make the process of creating the entire race as efficient as possible, a thread has been organised with the possibility for any stagemaker to claim one of the stages and then create it. 6/21 are already finished, so go check it out!

Sorry, rugby fans - no manager game for you (for now)

Two weeks ago, we reported in the news that Cyanide were using Kickstarter to fund the creation a new game named "Pro Rugby Manager". However, as CrueTrue predicted - hoping for 100.000 £ in one month was a tad optimistic. After half the campaign and only 7.000 £ pledged, Cyanide announced that the project had been cancelled on Friday.

Baugnies wins Man-Game Battenkill

The Man-Game has reached a bit of a slow period recently, but the cobbled Tour of the Battenkill has kept some racing going. Just like in every non-PT cobbled classic this season, it was Belgian rivals Jerôme Baugnies (HTC) and Pieter Vanspeybrouck (Bpost) who went head-to-head towards the end of the race.

Despite their efforts, the race eventually came down to a reduced mass sprint finish, however. Baugnies proved to have the most left in the tank and took his first win of the season, while Vanspeybrouck had to settle for 3rd behind Breschel (AMEX).

It's getting closer - but not quite ready yet.

The PCM.daily Expansion Pack is long-awaited, and justifiably, some of you may have lost your patience with us. For those who haven’t, we’re glad to announce the details of what we consider to be one of the best DBs ever released by PCM.daily.

Read more to get an insight to what the months of work have been spent on.

Hope you didn't miss me too much last week! I have now returned as the penman, with the 10th consecutive edition of the news since its return in August.

Meanwhile, we've also entered October - and you know what that means. Time to reveal the winners of the 2nd Story of the Month and the inaugural New Story of the Month awards! Without further ado, allow me to present them through the words of Mresuperstar:

#2 Story of the Month awards winners

We have two more stories to crown as the second edition of the Story of the Month comes to close. Although we had a less voters participate this month we still got two deserving winners as they both doubled their competitors in votes.

The main award goes to brewers90 and Team Bunzl-Centrica Video Story while the best new story in September goes to Cycleman123 for Fabio Melani | Road to Le Tour.

Staying active and posting updates frequently set these two stories apart from the others and now they will forever be remembered in PCM.Daily history by being placed in the official winners thread.

October's competition looks to be fierce with the PCM.Daily DB getting ready to be released, so I'm looking forward to a great month of story writing.

Hold your horses, the Daily DB will arrive soon

No release just yet, but at least a short update from CrueTrue:

Sadly, you will have to endure a few days more of GTAV and FIFA14 - the PCM.daily DB will not be released on time.

In last weeks news, we did promise a release this week, but even though we have worked as hard as we possibly can, we haven't reached a point where we can say that it's as finished as we want it to be.

Fear not - it's getting close, really close, and while we should probably hold off from setting a new, official release date, it'd be very surprising if the PCM.daily Expansion Pack wasn't released next week...

Stage race dominant Kritskiy adds Volta a Portugal to palmares

While the Vuelta a Colombia has been prevented from moving forward recently due to stage issues, the Volta a Portugal has kept the Man-Game going with its 11 stages, featuring a number of climbs.

The exciting run for overall victory started right from the very first day, where home team Prio-Porto's Ruben Plaza donned the leader's jersey. After briefly passing it over to Portugal's big star Rui Costa (CSC-Orbea) a little later, the Spaniard took it back before the usual queen stage to Torre.

That climb was just a little too much for him, however. Tinkoff's Timofey Kritskiy spurted clear near the top and grabbed the leader's jersey from Plaza, and then defended it through the individual time trial to take yet another prestigious stage race victory. Plaza joined him on the podium along with LukOil's Karpets.