But for me the biggest upset is Evonik. And it's pretty obvious why they didn't end up winning - like I think they should have. My old superstar Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier with 1597 points, making HUGE hickups during the season in spectacular fashion. Not only during the Tour de France where Kudus almost made a Giro/Yates kinda coup (but much earlier) also the Liechtenstein GP stood out as a farce for the frenchie. And I have absolutely no idea why!
But seeing him finish close to 1000 points behind Herklotz is just awful. He's easily the 2nd best rider in the game IMO, so finishing 11th is always going to hurt - even if your team is amazing.
But rather than focusing on that I'll say we have a clear favorite for the title next season!
Its indeed very easy to highlight where we lost enough points to push us to the front. Lecuisiniers two bad days, the time where Polanc punctured in a clearly winning position, the three october hilly classics for Lopez. But every other team has those moments where they unexpectedly lost a ton of points too. Its just more obvious when it happens to the top favourite.
I totally get why you say that there is a clear favourite for next season but there is a high likelyhood that someone like Polanc will get sold due to cap concerns and then the situation looks a lot worse. Also most of the biggest hickups happened in goal races which will limit my chances to replace him properly.
So while i will surely be in the podium fight again come prediction time, there are several teams who could easily come out of transfers with at least a similar quality as they have more room to grow.
And we survive another year! And quite comfortably, I'd say. Things were looking quite grimed before ToNE, but Gerts really pulled a race for the ages there.
Congrats, DD!
Sad to see Roman relegate, but I think this will also be a great rebuild opportunity as both Gaviria and Kudus could be very marketable and open the door to some interesting business opportunities.
A season with many ups, some great wins, and some not so good races. All in all happy that we handled ourselves so good in the most important races for us, highlighted by Pedersen being so high up in the rankings.
A stellar season also from Würtz, while the rest of the team is lacking a bit. Luckily a transfer season around the corner. Thanks for all the updates, Fabianski. A tight race for many spots in the end, but of course a big congrats to DD on the win. Good to see a veteran of the game putting the pieces right and having such a good season.
Sad especially to see Roman go down. Feels weird to have the TdF go down, but it goes to show that it was a high level this year.
Congrats to Gazelle for winning th ProTour and congrats to Herklotz/Puma - SAP for winning the individual rankings. Did we loose the title? Hell no, we won 2nd place, I bet nobody saw that coming. Getting 2nd without star riders (zero riders in the top20) is one of the biggest achievement in (my) ManGame history.
Of course you can say we easily could have won the title if the cobble races had a more normal outcome, then again the Tour de France was amazing for us, so in the end it all levels out and every team ends up where they should be.
Many thanks to everybody involved, reporters mostly but also the managers who do work behind the scenes, Fabianski for the ranking updates, etc. etc.
A difficult season for us. We needed both Dainese and Wisniowski to have great seasons in order to save our spot, and unfortunately none of them did. Wisniowski fortunately had his moments in the later part of the season, but the consistently poor performances from Dainese compared to last year is disappointing.
Still, we'll take some fine memories with us from our first PT season. I think especially Gesbert and Abdul Halil has delievered well, and there is no need for a drastic rebuild going forward, although we'll be on a lesser budget next year.
Thanks for all the work to everyone who keep this game running and made another season possible!
I have to admit I lost my motivation during parts of the season, because it mostly did not feel like things were going my way or the way I had hoped. However, coming here at the end of the season and seeing that we are third and ahead of Evonik who I considered the title favorites in the beginning, I cannot be too displeased with my team and looking at the scoring depth I do think I definitely have nice team to build on. I do hope in coming seasons we will be able to celebrate more than two measly stage victories, though.
Congrats to the two teams ahead of me. In the end it got much closer than I expected. After a strong spring it seemed to me that Gazelle already had a gap big enough to basically have secured the title. Both Gazelle and Tinkoff are teams that are successful mostly not on the back of individual riders but a strong and deep team effort. It's nice to see that.
Most importantly: Thank you Fabianski for your continued excellent coverage of all of these monthly updates!
It's much appreciated and I hope you can view all the effort you put into these as worth it with our collective thanks being sufficient to keep going.
Then, before getting into the racing, I sadly didn't manage to make good for my early-season absence in the latter stages of the season despite my promises.
All I can do is apologize and renew my long-term commitment to this game in the face of personal struggles that I hope I can work on in the near future, mostly when it comes to tackling any backlog of activity that has the tendency to quickly develop into a pathological issue in many facets of my life, sadly not only when it comes to a growing list of races I have failed to comment on here on an (in the grand scope of things inconsequential) internet forum.
It certainly must be annoying to deal with and I can understand if it costs me some goodwill built over many years.
It's all identified now and will actively be worked on for the future, and I truly hope my lack of content this season does not come across as a lack of respect and admiration towards all the amazing efforts made by everyone contributing to the ManGame!
The final two Madouas-led classics went fine on average, with a good 6th in Japan making up for his bad position in Canada where his sprint should've given him more than 9th from the group and 11th overall.
And of course, the big one to finish it all, Lombardia came.
I don't know if the strategy contributed to the lacklustre finish, but overall that was not a good day for us. No real attacks when it mattered, and a bad sprint approach meant sadly nothing was to be gained and no records to be matched.
That of course meant that there was not much to look forward to regarding the final update, but I can't help but commend Xero and Areruya for this monumental win and thus their late jump past us in the standings.
7th or 8th doesn't really make much of a difference for us, since I can now reveal we only had a Top 10 team classification goal anyway.
Surely a GT-winning team should be considered for higher accolades at the conclusion of a season, but the gradual loss of secondary leaders and depth for the sake of making the team more German and keeping it young meant there wasn't much more to aim for.
A GT win makes any season a great one, and so we are happy with this 2024 thanks to Silvio Herklotz taking his 6th Grand Tour win in 7 years.
Adding Liège to the Giro makes it a great season regardless of the overall standings, but to have that be enough to retain the individual PT crown to make it 3 titles overall is the cherry on top.
There wasn't a standout second rider for us this year after having lost Ganna too, but every secondary leader had their big moments. Whether it was Madouas winning a Tour stage and subsequently spending a day in yellow, or Kanter doing well in classics throughout the year and fighting for the maillot vert, there were memorable results from them too.
Riders like Felix Groß with a couple of stage wins or Jannik Steimle with some very surprising punchy and sprint results proved our approach right, and we again have a still very young team heading into the off-season that could do fine without much change next year.
What would there be to complain about!
Overall, the theme of the 2024 season was surprises.
Both in singular races like Pidcock winning MSR or the obvious TdF shenanigans, the title fight with Tinkoff making such a strong bid for a shock win, and the relegation fight where even said Tour upset was surprisingly not enough for Moser (with not even Gaviria's good season on top being enough for safety).
Especially Moser's entirely unexpected fate helps putting our 8th place finish vs a predicted podium chance by some into extra perspective.
So, first off my personal congratulations to DD for another ProTour title victory!
It's been a while and a lot has changed, but your approach certainly didn't and it went back to be a successful one in its very final year. Well done and enjoy!
Of course there's not any less to congratulate Tinkoff for.
To be in the title fight until the last climb of the season is an outstanding effort, particularly considering how your team was never min-maxed to be tailored towards allround success. I'm glad you see it the same, Oleg! Cherish the moment and I trust you to make the most out of the future too.
King Power has been doing great work for many years now building a very solid allround team, and finishing on the final podium step is a great achievement to prove that.
Polar got their payoff for the massive Bernal investment already, congratulations on the Vuelta win and a very good season overall!
On the other side, Evonik did not get their expected success and still manage a Top 5 that is certainly met with mixed emotions, but at least you win our personal battle knockout.
Aker and Xero deservedly finish ahead of us as well, with Aker having great young hybrids deliver along more established steady points scorers like Groenewegen and SKA, while Xero really did not need to get a lot out of Ganna already with expected insane Areruya results and the less expected insane Pidcock results!
Congrats on two monument wins with these incredible riders that will shape the coming 5+ years.
Looking at the relegating teams, as I said Moser stings as they got pretty much everything they wanted out of their leaders, but just didn't have the team to translate it into more. Roman has the experience to make things work and I can't see this PCT stint be too long, and at the very least this does spice up the transfer market significantly.
MOL sadly went from great Phinney heights in 2023 to just performing according to their stats now, and the last transfer season just didn't set them up to be sufficiently successful with lesser riders. Best of luck in PCT!
ZARA is a great team with a very capable manager that certainly will be back sooner rather than later thanks to their long-term approach. You know I really value you personally and your work LLS, and I trust you to make the right moves to be back stronger and permanently then!
Lidl's demise I feel somewhat personally responsible for due to the entire Ganna saga in transfers, again apologies jph that it all ended up like this for you! You'll certainly bounce back though.
And then we have Assa Abloy, who I'm glad to see saved from disbanding. Your team doesn't need much work to get back here again as you said, and I'm looking forward to seeing your next PT stint be more successful.
Last but not least, thank you to all the people working in front of and behind the scenes to make another smooth MG season happen! It's no small feat for such a community to have this game run this consistently over decades, and I hope everyone contributing is aware of how much their work is appreciated by such a large group of managers day in and day out.
As I said I apologize again for the lack of continuous participation I had this season.
I vow to make personal progress to improve on that again in the times to come, particularly when it comes to offseason deadlines first and foremost, and it is not in any way indicative of not appreciating the great work and especially time commitment being done by many people in this amazing community.
Well despite some underperformances and frustrations, particularly with Manninen (leaving a bit of a sad and sour taste in my mouth as he's been consistently my favourite sprinter in the game before signing him), it's hard to take this season as anything less than a best-case scenario compared to my pre-season hopes thanks largely to the overperformance of Pidcock and to a certain extent Areruya (the fact that he fluffed a lot of classics is a scary thought). Achieved survival, our Top 10 goal, and full beast Areruya and maxed Pidcock made dream entrances to the PT with a Monument each and 3400 points to share. Not that that's the standard now, or that I can rest on my laurels, but that feels like a pretty good foundation to have when the riders are 28 and 25 (and have Ganna and Vermeersch at the same ages).
7th itself sounds a lot better than 10th, maybe just because I've been on the wrong end of those late-season upper-mid-table scrums a lot before (and lost rankings goals), so to come out on top of it with that final day win (our second in a row after historically being pretty bad in them) is a very cool thing.
Great title battle between two great MG teams and managers, congrats to Gazelle and DD on another awesome title victory! Love Oleg's outlook that this was a won second place by Tinkoff, a great season for them.
Commiserations to the teams going down, five great managers and five absolute forces to be reckoned with in the PCT next year, my god!
Thanks so much for the updates this year Fabianski, you are the man and add so much to every team's story and every division across the whole MG. And of course so much thanks to every reporter and behind-the-scenes admin and helper who makes this game tick and continue to run not just on schedule but with the consistently high quality we love it for. I always appreciated everyone but as I get closer to adulthood it's just even more crazy the amount of work you all do purely out of love for the game - and that's me judging by student lifestyle never mind the number of you with busy jobs and even kids and families! Thank you all so much, and apologies for my lack of usual activity at times this year both in commenting and in helping with tasks.
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
