We might be halfway through Q4, but regardless we feel like doing our regular quartal review of what happened, and introduce our team for the final Q4 races.
Both Q1 and Q2 went surprisingly well as you can see below. Q1 ended up 546 points higher that expected! Let's break down the numbers for Q2.
A lot of races, and fortunately a lot of solid races, was ridden in the Q2 department. In the end we come away just shy of 500 points higher than we anticipated. Most races were pretty much on par, but races like Tour of Slovenia, Tour of Northern Europe and GP Moscow contributed heavily to the periods success. But we have to highlight our consistency as the main factor for doing so well, that outliers can produce points directly to the bottom line.
Kinoshita performed exactly as we hoped in the ardennes, Altur almost exactly as expected in his cobbled races and our depth set in where we expected it to do so. This leaves us with magnificent (and surprising) over performances mainly from Farantakis, but also riders like Karatsivis and Kiriakidis chipped in with solid performances in Criterium du Daupine Libere and Tour of Northern Europe.
We did have a fair bit of more negative results compared to Q1 aswell though, but fortunately those results were still affecting us in a minor way. Paris-Roubaix was OK, the doubleheader of Rheden and Battenkill slightly underwhelming, but in no way disastrous and Chrono des Herbiers were also ever so slighlyt out of tune. It was only in Scandinavian Open road Race were we turned out to be a no show, despite having a reasonably strong potential with Kinoshita in particular. We came away with 45 points, and expected around 100.
Still another perfectly executed period to set is around 5th in the overall PT standings, and realistically well above our final expected result.
Let's take a look at Q3, which is slightly lower than normal, in order to make Q4 have an actual effect..
July Racing
Only two races in July, but plenty of racedays. We participate in the flat one day race Rund um Köln, as well as the Grand Father of Cyling - Tour de France! We expect something similar to 400 points combined.
Start
End
Race
Category
01-Jul
Rund um Koln
PT
Exp. pts: 150pts Expectations: Having Stylianos Farantakis present we always have a hope for something good. He could be winning the race, but also missing the top 10. The most likely scenario is somewhere around 3-5th.
Start
End
Race
Category
03-Jul
23-Jul
Tour de France
GT
Exp. pts: 250pts Expectations: We bring a very attack-minded setup without any real leaders. Therefor we expect to be visable in the early part of the race picking up the KOM fight, and maybe minor stage results. Ideally we come away from the race with a stage win - or atleast something remotely close to that. From a GC perspective this is probably a low scoring race, significantly lower than Giro d'Italia atleast.
August Racing
The 5 races in August is likely going to determine whether we can settle in as a top 10 team in the overall standings, or if we are going to be in an outside risk of the upper relegation spots. We have mainly cobbles and sprints aswell as a single timetrial, which on paper is a good fit for our team. We are expecting around 700-750 points from this month
Start
End
Race
Category
01-Aug
GP Kigali
PT
Exp. pts: 150pts Expectations: Altur is here with his solid team around him, and thus we expect his usual performance around 4-7th in the race suplemented with some depth results.
Start
End
Race
Category
03-Aug
05-Aug
Ras Tailteann
PTHC
Exp. pts: 175pts Expectations: Farantakis have fond memories from last season where he did reasonably well here. He seems to have lifted his game further and we think he have a realistic shot at a podium, aswell as a couple of good stage results.
Start
End
Race
Category
07-Aug
East Midlands Cicle Classic
PT
Exp. pts: 130pts Expectations: Much like in Kigali we expect Altur as our leverage, and some depth to cover the points difference. Should be a decent race for us.
Start
End
Race
Category
13-Aug
Chrono d'Arenberg
PTHC
Exp. pts: 100pts Expectations: This race have give it's ups and downs in the past. Still with riders like Stavrakakis, Cavagna and Vlatos here we should be able to pick up a decent amount of points.
Start
End
Race
Category
16-Aug
20-Aug
Deutschland Tour
PTHC
Exp. pts: 175pts Expectations: Farantakis is here to lead us in the sprints. 4 flat stages should be enough for him to get atleast a couple of good results. The rest should come from depth points in the Timetrial where we have 5 riders from 76-78TT.
The season is slowly beginning to fade with just 5 more races left to race. The Q3 have effectively been ridden, and it turned out to be another decent period for us!
Rund um Köln
EXP: 150pts
ACT: 292pts
Tour de France
EXP: 250pts
ACT: 178pts
GP Kigali
EXP: 150pts
ACT: 146pts
Ras Tailteann
EXP: 176pts
ACT: 348pts
East Midlands Cicle Classic
EXP: 130pts
ACT: 90pts
Chrono d'Arenberg
EXP: 100pts
ACT: 120pts
Deutschland Tour
EXP: 175pts
ACT: 174pts
STATUS
EXP: 1130pts
ACT: 1348pts
It's a little bit interesting, because we "failed" 4/7 races, but still ended up with a good period, where we outscored our expectations by 218 points. Mostly it is because we actually managed to hit all races pretty spot on, except for 3. Tour de France gave a negative of 72 despite having low scoring ambitions, but we won both Rund um Köln and Ras Tailteann which combined make for 315 points above expectation.
GP Kigali and Deutschland Tour was both very much on point, only 5 points below in total on an expected 325 points. So among the more important races to get right. Overall we come away with a good feeling, but also a feeling that it is very much Stylianos Farantakis that keeps us going with a total of 645 out of those 1348 scored points.
Regardless of how the final 4 races is going we are ending up with a higher pointscore than we expected prior to the season. We expected 5.500 points which should be sufficient in the survival battle. We are currently on 5.851 points, and if we keep our expected scores we will end up with 6.761 points in total. Last season this would have equalled 6th in the Pro Tour. Seeing how the July rankings ended up it seems very likely that 6th will yet again be scoring around that amount of points.
We do have one more Grand Tour to go however, which can always trigger new normals, and we expect to score similarly to the Giro d'Italia, which was a good race for us. Given how we performed in the Tour de France, we might well be on a very low score though. We expect to end up around 6.500 points in total, which is still very much better than pre-season.
Let's take a look at Q4, before closing the season.
September Racing
Just two races. A one day race in the cobbled department, and the final Grand Tour of the season, La Vuelta a España!
Start
End
Race
Category
03-Sep
Strada Appia Antica
PT
Exp. pts: 130pts Expectations: Marcos Altur leads the way for one last time here in Italy. He have been remarkably solid throughout, without any real outliers in either direction. He topped the season getting 4th in Ronde van Vlaanderen, while his lowest was 11th in the most recent race - East Midlands Cicle Classic. We expect somewhere in between.
Start
End
Race
Category
10-Sep
30-Sep
Vuelta a Espana
GT
Exp. pts: 450pts Expectations: Giannoutsos is here to lead the way, and is being fairly held up by the likes of Ioannidis, Kiriakidis, Agrotis and Christakos. We don't expect big things, but we hope it will be enough to fight for a top 10 aswell as seeing some aggressive riding, like we did in the Giro. Koumpetsos is also here in the hope that he will participate in the bumpy sprints of the race.
October Racing
The final 3 races of the season should suit us better than the races of September. Farantakis is present in both Praha and Philadelphia so atleast we have a realistic chance of scoring points, while Lombardia probably isn't for us.
Start
End
Race
Category
07-Oct
10-Oct
Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha
PT
Exp. pts: 150pts Expectations: With 2 sprint stages, 1 prologue and 1 long ITT we believe Farantakis is a good fit. Not for the overall GC, but sufficient to do damage early on, maybe with some luck claiming the leaders jersey at one point aswell as a stagewin. That is the ambition, and then we hope our TT department can supplement with some depth, despite facing serious competition here.
Start
End
Race
Category
13-Oct
Philadelphia International Championship
PTHC
Exp. pts: 105pts Expectations: The last dance for Farantakis to put the final nail in the coffin scoring an unbreakable Greek high! He have Zingle to lead him out and the usual domestiques for the early and later part of the fight. A win would be amazing to end the season, hopefully a top 3 is possible.
Start
End
Race
Category
17-Oct
Giro di Lombardia
M
Exp. pts: 75pts Expectations: Kinoshita have done pretty well in the ardennes in the long endurant races. This will be his last stint in the ELCO - ABEA jersey before "retiring" from the team. We wish him a good final race and have invested everything we have in aiding him. That being said, this isn't an ideal race as it could well be too difficult.
Paris - Roubaix
Giro d'Italia
Tour of Slovenia
GP Liechtenstein
Amstel Gold Race
Fleche Wallonne
Tour of the Battenkill
GP Moscow
Hanko Classic
Tour de Suisse
Scandinavian Open Road Race
STATUS
Rund um Koln
GP Kigali
Ras Tailteann
East Midlands Cicle Classic
Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha
