The Rider wrote:
Great to see plenty of people enjoying the racing.
The race really needed that windy stage 5, after those predictable sprint finishes.
Plenty of teams won't be taking too many points away from the race but, I have to say I don't think I have ever seen a team as anonymous in a stage race as Tinkoff was in this one, sorry Oleg! Had to check the rankings after stage 5 to make sure they were still here!
Indeed. Without that one it would have been a very boring race. But it just edged things - Too bad the 17 riders didn't manage to get a gap, to make it for an even more interesting final - Especially for me as that would have given me two riders in the top 10 and Coquard as top 3 Youth
Thanks for the reports btw. You did that very well.
tsmoha wrote:
At least Ford is a reliable force... Poor TT from Durbridge though: no GC result and U25 ranking given away. Instead, Li delivered, not yet a GC threat.
Overall a shocking bad race from Goss and Durbridge.. Ford, Ma and Ligthart doing fine. Well, season is opening really poor, what else can I say?
Thanks for the quality reports! Enjoyable read if Oz had delivered in a way
Really poor start? I see your guys all over the place in the TT and guys like Ma or Wen Hao Li overperformed massively, Goss was sprinting at least. Ford inside top10 in GC as only TT guy next to Coppel. 5 guys in top50 of GC. And i am the one who always complain.
Durbridge was only one who failed you imo...
Zmorka with shite TT. 17th in GC is nice , but i expected better and some of the guys who have beaten him in epilogue are rather surprising, which proves unfortunately how unpredictable TT can be because of daily form, very worrying for my team prior to whole season. I guess pure TTists should really decrese in value and wages, they are not sure decent scorers even when being 80+ .
At least top20 in GC for him and 4th in younf jersey competition, where Yatsevich really surprised me, i was not counting him to favourites.
Nobody else in top70 of GC is horrible for us, after Lagkuti was looking good with bonus seconds prior to stage 5.
Guardini was beyond horrible, late top30 as best stage result.
Thanks for the nice reports Rider and congrats to Vesuvio and Becherovka, who already collected some nice points.
tsmoha wrote:
At least Ford is a reliable force... Poor TT from Durbridge though: no GC result and U25 ranking given away. Instead, Li delivered, not yet a GC threat.
Overall a shocking bad race from Goss and Durbridge.. Ford, Ma and Ligthart doing fine. Well, season is opening really poor, what else can I say?
Thanks for the quality reports! Enjoyable read if Oz had delivered in a way
Really poor start? I see your guys all over the place in the TT and guys like Ma or Wen Hao Li overperformed massively, Goss was sprinting at least. Ford inside top10 in GC as only TT guy next to Coppel. 5 guys in top50 of GC. And i am the one who always complain.
Durbridge was only one who failed you imo...
Well, I feel I need to complain at the moment, since my three best riders failed so far (Bobridge, Goss, Durbridge) Of course Ford did well. Li with a nice TT indeed, but useless as for the GC.. Durbridge easily should have Top-15'd this race as well. And Goss did sprint (as a 82 sprinter should do), but just two minor Top-10s and three total fails for almost nothing points-wise.
I didn't complain about the AI though, just being negative with my riders' performance afterall
Congrats to Vesuvio? Swift was lucky when he got his sprint train in all possible opportunities.
I don´t think Roman is happy with this race in general, so no congratulations to Becherovka
Despite of reaching TOP3 goal with amazing Degenkolb here, with squad I brought to Qatar, I still feel I´d have to fight for overall win against Bewley and possibly Swift here, not only defend 3rd place in final TT. I do accept Vesuvio were able to build sprint train in all stages, but why for fuck sake Venchi??? Is really Van Stayen better sprinter then either Degenkolb or Mohs on pan flat terrain? I doubt. I was very frustrated not to see my sprint train (83-83-80-77) in any single fucking stage. Instead, we could see alone Degenkolb trying to find position far away from best contenders almost every day.
At the end, I think this picture is the best evidence of awesome AI behaviour. (No offence Crommy ^^)
@beagle Well, you are absolutely right about Becherovka's ToQ - it is quite ok, but absolutely not satisfied that we have seen only one sprint train from our team. Howard absolutely wasted here.
Btw that picture is just great, but you even missed one major thing...
