TMM: Definitely hoping your last sentence proves correct, no matter how this season plays out!
bbl: Yeah, only realized my mistake in the chart this morning. That was the training that indeed was planned and set in stone for him. It would have felt a lot safer for all classics to have him at 81 hills and 80 MM, but we've got to deal with it. Hopefully he finds his good daily form legs again and again. After all he has proven he can be brilliant on those days, whatever classic or stage race it is.
Del Toro and De Lie... unbelievable future here. Just going to be a sickening duo to face for the best part of a decade.
As I've said to you I'm not convinced at all that you're sacrificing your Pro Tour place for this deal, I'm looking forward to having all the teams together in the DB but I doubt I'd predict relegation just looking at your squad and the quality of leader and depth as well as the experience of the manager
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [PT] Xero Racing
jandal: Yeah, I'm super excited for that duo to indeed be maxed out and take it from there. On paper, it looks sensational, and really something to cherish for many years and seasons
It will take a lot of convincing to talk me out of a potential relegation favourite status, but I definitely think it will be close between several teams, which is where I think we should be right among those teams. Fingers crossed we can find our feet and score good points in the Grand Tours, if not, I'm afraid we'll have too many no scoring race days.
Love the age profile of this team now and a lot of my under rated riders Gaze, Eekhoff and Colombo made it here which is nice. going to be the hardest season of the project no doubt but if you make it through this season its only going to look up!
I share your fear of relegation as there's not much depth (if any) behind Valter, Novak and Anderberg and the former two probably just aren't among the biggest names in their terrains. The future looks bright though because you added some really nice talents apart from del Toro. I especially like Rex as a cool domestique for stage races and GTs!
jt: Thank you for your nice words! And yeah, the rebuild age wise was something I was happy with also before I decided to move for del Toro, having a very different team there, but also a younger one. The way things went, we went kind of extreme mode, now having 12 riders not maxed.
kb: Exactly! Fully agree on your thoughts. I'm admittedly especially worried for Valter, who has been phenomenal all his seasons with us, which was also the reason for my original decision to train him. I do fear 80 hill on him won't cut it anymore as a sure 1000+++ points scorer, which he has been previous seasons.
