Throwback: It's the off-season between the 2021 and 2022 season and I'm seriously considering disbanding the team. Previous "All in" attempts to go for the title failed and i was burned out with frustration about the game and a lack of short and long term goals to aim for.
At the time, i did a meetup with someone most of you know as Croatia14. Sitting on my balcony we discussed possible options to move forward for hours and i found that the idea of aiming to complete the Grand Tour triple might motivate me enough to continue and for me there were three possibly available leaders to go for it: Jack Haig and Tom Wirtgen looked like there was a chance their teams would disband and they had the base stats where massive training could lift them into possible GT winners and Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier who was a proven GT winner already and was announced to be available to acquire funds for the Greek training fond.
When the disbands didnt happen, i knew i would be going all out to target Lecuisinier and managed to acquire him in one of the most expensive deals of all time. I did think that i overpaid and didnt think this was an ideal play for a possible future title chance but i didn't care too much as this was a play to deliberately ignore the title race for a while and instead target Grand Tour wins alongside our ongoing mission to win LBL as our final missing monument.
Once i acquired Lecuisinier i formulated a long-term vision for the next few seasons with detailed salary cap plans until at least 2024. Here is a quote from my document i wrote back in 2022:
Longterm Vision
Goals (
in order of importance)
1. Win Giro + TDF + LBL to complete ALL GTs + Monument history achievement
2. Make Lecuisinier the TDF Goat (First to win 3+ TDF editions)
3. Possibly challenge for the PT title in 2024+2025+2026:
The Plan:
1. Keep Lecuisinier as the key pillar: TDF + Liechtenstein + 10 RDs (PTHC?!!!) until he is 34 in 2027
2. Keep Lopez for everything hilly
3. Luke Plapp OR Blums (+ X) as Giro + Vuelta + smaller stage races races
4. Blums + Krasts + Neilands as our latvian faces (useful, still fairly cheap)
5. At least one more big-ish leader on a different terrain or multiple 100-200k leaders (Cataford, Foss, Masnada, Gamper / Anderberg, Tiller, Max Kanter, Waersted, ...)
6. Build a somewhat decent GT TTT team (not a winning one)
a) because the TDF might include a TTT at some point
b) To maximize the value of Plapp / Lopez in shorter stage races
-> Gavars, Hänninen, Krasts, Ansons, etc are cheap options that fit very well and are quite useful outside of TTTs as attackers, mountain doms
7. No big sprinter, sprinterless with rouleurs / attackers in classics, one 78-80SP guy for stage races
8. No big interesting training so cash can be used to optimize the surrounding rider material, trading around those min wage riders might not be too necessary
The Timeline / Leaders:
2023: Lecuisinier + Lopez + Polanc, train Lecuisinier + 1-2 TT
2024: Lecuisinier + Lopez + Polanc + Lvl4 Plapp + New 200-300k Leader(s)
2025: Sell declining Polanc, a newly maxed Plapp fills the new cap space, possibly even carry over unneeded cash for 2026?, possibly train someone signed till here (Foss, Hart, ...)
2026: 1st year of Lecuisinier decline, Use extra cap space due to Lecuisinier decline for a new leader (possibly cobbles to replace Polanc), train Plapp if no better options
2027: Rebuild year (?)
Salary & Loan Cap Planning:
2023: Talent Development, using the loan cap to loan out a new talent or Plapp , 31 or younger signings
2024: All Options are possible, keep the new signings young, loan cap to loan in 2-4 riders
2025 + 2026: 20 riders only, some younger talents to have more RDs, Loan Cap to maximize current roster strength by getting the best fitting loanees or possibly even do max rider loans again, old signings are okay
And the plan worked quite well: Lecuisinier won the 2022 Giro & the 2023 Tour to complete Evoniks Grand Tour triple quicker than we had expected (Taaramäe already won the 2021 Vuelta for Evonik) so we we were on track to achieve most goals already. 2024 was the first opportunity for Lecuisinier to crown himself the TDF goat but the team gambled the race away in one of the weirdest stages possible gifting main rival Merhawi Kudus a minute gap in the second week via the usual breakaway that was not really chased after.
So 2025 came and Lecuisinier helped achieving our longterm plans: He won his third TDF and is now the undisputed TDF GOAT while the whole team won the PT title which means we have managed to achieve two of the three big goals we set ourself back in 2022.
We sticked to a lot of our roster building ideas we envisioned a couple years ago although some ideas were adapted due to changes in the game or unexpected opportunites but in large, we feel like our title winning team resembles our 2022 vision a fair bit.
Having achieved every goal with Lecuisinier that he can help us achieve, we decided to skip another title challenge when the opportunity came to sign our cobbles leader of the future in del Grosso. The transfer meant that we would need to trade away either A) Lecuisinier, B) Plapp or 3) Eenkhoorn+Krasts and with the del Grosso deal being a long-term move it made the most sense to trade away Lecuisinier if we would get a solid offer.
And so Lecuisinier moves to cycleYorkshire for next season and we will be cheering him on in each of his races as if he was still part of our team. We don't know yet where he will race but if it were to us to decide, he would target a possible fourth Tour de France victory on a route that should suit him fairly well.
In the end there is not much to say except: Thank you for 3 fantastic GT victories and the contributions to our first PT title and even more important: Thank you for helping me find motivation for this beautiful game again. Without PHL this Evonik team might not exist anymore today.
