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Tour of America Discussion
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| SportingNonsense |
Posted on 07-02-2011 01:04
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The Tour of America is at last upon us, the longest ever Stage Race to feature on the continental tour. From East coast to West coast - albeit with the help of a rest day journey or two.
We start in Manhattan, New York - but the race doesnt hang around there, the opening flat stage and we already move into a 2nd stage, with the finish in Philadelphia. Stage 2 and State number 3, with a flat finish in Baltimore. For the 3rd stage, we get to the capital city Washington DC - but thats only on the route, before a flat finish in Hagerstown.
Various state parks and forests are ridden through on Stage 4 as we have the first of 2 key stages involving Morgantown. It's a hilly stage to get there, and a 26km TTT once there. The journey west continues from there, with 3 flat stages ending in Parkersburg, Columbus and Dayton, as we move from West Virginia to Ohio and then into Indiana, with Stage 9 ending in Indianapolis to close the first 9 days of racing and bring an end to the mostly sprint dominated action.
The rest day flight of over 1000 miles takes us over states including Missouri - who have had their cycling fix for the year - and into one of the central points in American cycling, Boulder, Colorado. Immediately into the mountainous stages, and the first part of the route takes in some tough climbs in the first half before not the hardest finish in Breckenridge. The next stage to Minturn is next, classed as a tough hilly stage, but what follows is a mountain time trial at Vail Ski Resort - first going up, then back down again. Stage 13 next, and the Queen stage. From Vail, we head through towns Dillon, Silver Plume, Empire and Winter Park until the stage finish up Rollins Pass. 5 tough climbs that should have a huge effect on the race. The mountains continue on Stage 14, heading north from Winter Park, the big climb here coming on the Trail Ridge Road - which is closed in winters! Still over 100km to go from there though, but its not an easy route as we move back into Boulder. The Colorado leg ends on Stage 15, with a couple of laps of the Morgul-Bismarck cycling loop around Boulder.
Another 1000 mile rest day journey and we are in Reno - perhaps not the best chosen place for a race day given the amount of casinos! It makes Nevada the 8th state visited, and we are soon into California (where we will stay) in a route around Lake Tahoe and ending in Tahoe City. I dont know why there is a Nevada City in California, but there is, and a hilly stage through the Tahoe National forest reaches it for a tricky stage finale. Any sprinters with energy left will enjoy Stage 18 - probably their last chance of victory aswell - as we head to the flat lands of Sacramento. Worries you may have that this route is light on individual time trial kilometres can be put to rest on Stage 19, a 57km course in and around Sacramento. In normal Grand Tours, the last TT would be the last decisivie stage. Not here, the race designer (i.e. me) has opted to end the race with 2 hilly stages. Stage 20 takes us to Santa Rosa and in Stage 21 we quickly reach San Francisco, with an intermediate sprint on or close to the Golden Gate Bridge, before we then head slightly eastwards to the Mt Diablo State park for the final climb of the race!
A massive thanks to OlegTinkov for making the stages!
Now onto the riders. Unlike the European Grand Tours, this race has got more hilly stages than mountain stages - so while gaps will be bigger in the mountains, victory here is going to require a good all-rounder. Someone like Franco Pellizotti maybe, and look, he is here! In this small field, his YouTube team really do look strong. Also here are Igor Anton, Ochoa Quintero and Niemiec - plus Bertogliati, Pozzo and Txurruka. In a race of just 5 teams, they will be under a lot of pressure to take on a lot of work.
Red Bull probably have the best American hope, but Kilun will be working alongside Parra Bustamente alongside team leader Konstantin Siutsou. Haidar Anuawar is their sprinter and will expect a couple of stage wins - potentially challenged by Quiksilver's D'Amore. Quiksilver though are the team of the Spanish champions - with last year's 2 surprise winners. Team leader Mercado, and TT Champion Gutierrez Palacios. Mercado is well supported - Venezuelan Yeison Delgado is better in the mountains but weaker in the hills than him, while the two Cuban Martinezs will each do well on the climbs aswell. In Zak Dempster they also have a very good time trialist, and Quiksilver will have a good fight with rivals Tinkoff in the TTT. Tinkoff are led by Evgeni Petrov, and can boast some very good support in Kritskiy, Kunshin, Belkov, Brutt, and Ovechkin - as well as sprinter Markov.
Our final team is Pirelli, with the ageing Ivan Basso leading them. He probably never expected to lead a team in a 3 week race again, but here he is. Look out for mutiny on the climbs though, Kenyan Zakayo Ndbiri is much better on the Mountains - will he be forced to hang back, or allowed to battle for the stage wins?
YouTube
1. F.Pellizotti
2. I.Antón
3. R.Bertogliati
4. P.Niemiec
5. R.Ochoa Quintero
6. M.Pozzo
7. A.Txurruka
Red Bull
11. K.Siutsou
12. A.Haidar Anuawar
13. R.Kilun
14. M.Matthews
15. E.Parra Bustamante
16. A.Semple
17. S.Zwizanski
Quiksilver
21. J.Mercado
22. C.D'Amore
23. Y.Delgado
24. Z.Dempster
25. J.Gutiérrez Palacios
26. Y.Martinez
27. D.MartÃnez
Tinkoff
31. E.Petrov
32. M.Belkov
33. P.Brutt
34. T.Kritskiy
35. A.Kunshin
36. A.Markov
37. A.Ovechkin
Pirelli
41. I.Basso
42. B.Curfs
43. H.Dupont
44. N.Kinney
45. Z.Ndbri
46. I.Nozal
47. S.Robert
Control
51. T.Boonratanathanakorn
52. S.Batchelor
53. K.Michely
54. A.Niyonshuti
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| dave92 |
Posted on 07-02-2011 03:25
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Will certainly be fun to watch
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| Smowz |
Posted on 07-02-2011 06:47
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I am hoping that Siutsou, Martinez and Petrov can push Pellizotti all the way until the end!
I am expecting the stages to sprints/climbs/breakaways! So perhaps leading the race overall coming out of the middle section is not quite as good as it could be.
Two Americans in my squad gives me a fair bit of hope here, Kilun has fought really well in all his races. Looking for four stage wins to complete my 15 stage wins in a season goal - which was partly why I selected this race. Secondly I recognized that Siutsou was unlikely to actually win anything - albeit he performed brilliantly in the Volta - I thought that no really big names would be sacrificed here.
Pellizotti and a very strong Youtube squad is here - but I am not sure that is going to give them as good a value as they thought we shall see.
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| Gustavovskiy |
Posted on 07-02-2011 12:29
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dave92 wrote:
Will certainly be fun to watch
x2
I also think this will definitely be a very pleasant race for all participating teams givien the fact that there are only 35 riders for 21 stages and 4 classifications.
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| ltt |
Posted on 07-02-2011 12:36
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Gustavovskiy wrote:
dave92 wrote:
Will certainly be fun to watch
x2
I also think this will definitely be a very pleasant race for all participating teams givien the fact that there are only 35 riders for 21 stages and 4 classifications.
Everyone could come away from this race with a serious haul of points, especially the winners.
I am a bit surprised that so few teams entered this though. |
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| rycadinho |
Posted on 07-02-2011 12:38
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Damn what an incredible route, nice job Oleg!
We clearly have send the weakest team so a stage win would do fine. I'm pretty sure that the team will be quite active in breakaways, and perhaps can good old Ivan do well in the GC.
Pelizzotti will win this, unless he crashes a couple of times..
It will be fun to watch though, great preview too SN.
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 06-12-2025 16:34
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| Rin |
Posted on 07-02-2011 12:41
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After I see the PCM stage profiles I would have signed up as I couldn't figure out how good or bad the profiles would look with the internet profiles as seen in the race profiles thread
 Team Bianchi - 2012 Man-Game ProContinental Tour Champions
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| Smowz |
Posted on 07-02-2011 16:21
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It is such a shame that more CTers are not here really, Oleg and SN have put loads of work into this. It certainly is one very good reason to move toward pcm2010 if we get a few more excellent races like this.
But tactically it was always going to be a risk... I looked at the Channel Islands profiles and this and realised a lot of the ones that look hilly are really going to be pretty much pan flat (well I hope they are for Haider's sake).
The other factor was the race days it took up for the potential point gain - if eight or more teams had been here it would have been tough for any team to make too much hay out of this race.
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| Kami |
Posted on 07-02-2011 16:24
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I would have loved to be here, but i can't because i'm just not able to. I might have been able to get the race days togheter, but don't have a team that would get an advantage from racing here.
Also, why the hell is Youtube here with such a strong team? 
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| dave92 |
Posted on 07-02-2011 16:33
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I would love to see something like this in the Pro Tour. At the very least this is exactly the type of CT race i would send a decent squad to (as is the idea being thrown around). For example I could send an all american squad minus the elite Phinney, Zabriskie types.
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| Smowz |
Posted on 09-02-2011 06:34
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Cool pic Oleg!
Well, Haider gets the young persons jersey so I hope this inspires him to get better positioning for the sprint and stop my team from blocking him.
Matthews was dropped there which is a bit disappointing, mind you it is quite a trek from New York to Philly. A couple of flat ones before we get to see the full dynamics of the teams that are here. Could it be possible that it is best off not leading the race into stage 4?
Hoping that my two Americans Zwizanski and Kilun can be my aces in the hole.
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| rycadinho |
Posted on 09-02-2011 15:32
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Rather good start, we have been quite active in breakaways and even managed to finish on the podium, thanks to the lack of sprinters here! I've started to regret that I didn't take Loddo to this race, he had been able to challenge Markov.
Basso seems ready and Ndbri could perhaps be a contender for the KoM, though I doubt he will have the strength to win it.
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| Smowz |
Posted on 09-02-2011 16:22
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rycadinho wrote:
Rather good start, we have been quite active in breakaways and even managed to finish on the podium, thanks to the lack of sprinters here! I've started to regret that I didn't take Loddo to this race, he had been able to challenge Markov.
Basso seems ready and Ndbri could perhaps be a contender for the KoM, though I doubt he will have the strength to win it.
Rycadinho, if you would have taken Loddo to this race I would wager that he would have done exactly the same as the other sprinters here and done nothing but sprint for the damn primes and make a mess of the finishes.
I begin to understand after a year of frustration with his sprinters why SN is thinking about a change to pcm 2010. In fact there are loads of advantages - the amount of fresh races for one thing. Though I do worry about the cobbled races really - I see a lot of sprints at the classics for example.
I am personally coming round to the idea after watching the first two stages here! The thing I keep saying to myself is that with Haider out of the yellow jersey reckoning perhaps stage four will be a good thing for Red Bull (and a bad thing for Tinkoff!). But seriously go around Matthews damn it (and please a break of three or more go away one day!)
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| rycadinho |
Posted on 09-02-2011 16:50
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Smowz:
Yeah you might be right, and I shouldn't complain when a young fella like Kinney can finish that high up - I remember the last couple of races that Loddo has been participating in as extremely frustrating, for that would a change to PCM 2010, regardless of the cobble/hilly races, be a welcome addition to the game.
I haven't got any idea how much work SN would have to do, just to convert the db to the latest game. I must admit that 2010 beside the good graphic didn't impress me that much, and I have much higher hopes for the next game, since Cyanide should focus a lot more on the AI instead of the new graphic engine.
2011 could also potentially fail completely and we would have to wait for several patches like the last one, before the game was playable, it's a tough call really! The new graphic engine could make the race reports even more enjoyable than they are now, but for what price?
I think it should be up to SN completely, if he thinks it's worth it spending more time on a perhaps slightly improved AI and better graphics. To be honest, then it won't bother me to stay at least another season with this game version.
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| beagle |
Posted on 09-02-2011 18:04
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you can´t say in general that AI in PCM10 is worse than in PCM09...the most annoying thing in PCM10 is lack of fighting for KOM and sprint jersey, when some riders are ahead of pack. On the other hand, AI in PCM09 is not perfect as well...are there any hills during the stage, but last 40km are flat? Who cares, puncheurs will attack on flat... Is there small hill shortly before finish and stage is considered as hilly one? All possible favourites will attack there, no matter stage profile before...IRL most sprinters would survive and here, PCM10 can give us more realistic results in this kind of stages.
in all cases, decision whether switch to PCM10 or stay with PCM09 will be hard one
Manager of Polar in Man-Game
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| SportingNonsense |
Posted on 09-02-2011 18:11
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OlegTinkov wrote:
Freaky: up until now I have won 6 stages this season during stage races and all were the second stage (Missouri, Österreich, Luxembourg, Bayern, Sardegna and Méditerranéen) So very disappointing we didn't won Stage 2 of the Tour of America, but maybe it's a good sign!
What do you mean, you didnt win Stage 2 in the Tour of America? Uh...
OlegTinkov wrote:
About the PCMswitchthingy: PCM10 is worse than PCM09 AIwise. Don't think PCM11 is going to be any better. So the big question is: What is more important -> 3D or AI?
3D has zero importance as far as Im concerned. AI does though, and Im thoroughly fed up with what PCM09 has to offer.
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| rycadinho |
Posted on 09-02-2011 19:00
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Robert and Curfs - I can't accept that you are being beaten by riders from the control team!
Oh and I didn't expect Pelizotti to stamp on his authority on a stage like that, just can't wait for the mountains now.. 
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| dave92 |
Posted on 09-02-2011 20:12
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rycadinho wrote:
Robert and Curfs - I can't accept that you are being beaten by riders from the control team!
Oh and I didn't expect Pelizotti to stamp on his authority on a stage like that, just can't wait for the mountains now..
On the plus side Kinney is riding well, and Curfs at least has tried attacking which should work out at some point
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| Smowz |
Posted on 09-02-2011 20:50
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Well, Pellizotti has the lead now by quite a margin. Hard to see him losing the lead now really over the next two stages or perhaps indeed the whole race.
Looking for my team to wake up really, this next stage offers opportunity to wear down that super strong Youtube team.
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| rycadinho |
Posted on 10-02-2011 17:01
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dave92 wrote:
rycadinho wrote:
Robert and Curfs - I can't accept that you are being beaten by riders from the control team!
Oh and I didn't expect Pelizotti to stamp on his authority on a stage like that, just can't wait for the mountains now..
On the plus side Kinney is riding well, and Curfs at least has tried attacking which should work out at some point
Yeah, they have been quite impressive and hopefully can one of them be part of a breakaway that might have a chance to battle for a stage win. Both of them will probably be out of energy, when we are in mountain terrain, so they are wise to perform to their best now!
- another win for Pelli, though Smowz must feel pretty satisfied too, weird stuff by Tinkoff, Petrov must feel pretty upset by his team! Pretty sad to see Curfs and especially Dupont lose out the break like that, though both Basso, Ndbri and especially Nozal showed good legs in the final.
Edited by rycadinho on 10-02-2011 18:50
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