The final part of the transfer season saw us focusing on support for our weakest areas: Climbing and Cobbles.

First we managed to close a deal with PT team Berg Cycling that allows Awet Gebremedhin to develop best possibly. We could be in for a good battle for this years Loan out of the year p/b Evonik award.

With his departure we had an open spot on the team that we were very happy to give to our old friend Joonas Henttala, who will be of great help to König being both strong in the mountains and a good help when TTT'ing.

Two further riders we were sad we had to cut were picked up in the draft. Gökhan Hasta joined us in our very first season and we have seen him grow since then. Given a free role last season he didn't do much but nevertheless he is an important addition to Königs mountain team.

The fact that Kari Brynjolfsson didn't get a contract despite winning a classic for us last season says a lot about how tough the relegation renewals were for us. That only makes us more happy that we were able to bring him back on the very last moment of the transfer season. As last season his main task will be to make sure Kulppi isn't entirely alone on the cobbles, but obviously he's welcome to grab a win again if the opportunity arises.

Contract renewals were tough, but I feel we have managed to put together a team with options in most terrains.

One priority was renewing the best Finnish rider on all terrains and we have an ongoing dogma of letting a Finn lead us on at least one terrain. The other priority keeping all leaders except Lo Cicero within wage cap allowing a largely stressfree transferseason.

Full stats are here, but I'll walk you through it as per tradition

This is definitely the area where the most have happened during transfer season even though all three support riders have been with us several years.
König is the strongest stage racer we have ever had and whole he shouldn't be a dominant force in the division he should be strong enough to pick up a large amount of points.
He will ride every mountain race we have and the others will largely be part of the hill-support when not with König.

			Mtn	Hill	TT	Acc	Rec
	Leopold	König	79	75	74	67	72
	Gökhan	Hasta	76	70	69	60	75
	Sakari	Lehtinen	75	73	65	67	70
	Joonas	Henttala	74	68	73	67	72

We kept our leader and his two most important helpers. Still slightly less depth than last year though but with the climbing helpers joining up the support should be sufficient for the division at least.
Gautier was last year often caught in Hagens and van Garderens crossfire using a lot of energy trying to match the two superstars. This season we hope that he will be the one putting in attacks that leave the others hanging.

			Hill	Acc	Flat	Sta	Mtn
	Cyril	Gautier	80	77	72	76	68
	Paavo	Paajanen	75	69	69	70	71
	Ingvar	Omarsson	74	72	70	71	71
	Sasu	Helme	69	72	68	68	68

Sprinting is important and we're rolling out a brand new team with three riders only just maxed.
Aaltio have been a locomotive in the past and his return will do our train well.
Manninen and Liepins rider their first season on their peak but both got some noteworthy results last year as well.
Even Vinther did well in teh past and could possibly get a strong season on CT level.
Manninen will always get good support but Liepins ans Vinther will both get some chances to ride for own success meaning that we will be featuring at least one of these on most flat stages we race this year!

			Spr	Acc	Flat	Hill	Sta
	Matti	Manninen	80	80	74	66	71
	Emils	Liepins	78	79	73	66	73
	Troels	Vinther	77	74	74	65	72
	Risto	Aaltio	61	61	77	68	66

Without comparison the area that have taken the biggest hit after selling Paillot to make room for König and being forced to cut TTT depth following the relegation.
Nevertheless Pökälä is no bad TT'er and should be able to get some results over the season.

			TT	Prl	Flat	Hill
	Samuel	Pökälä	77	76	70	71

Last season we said Kulppi had missed his shot at leadership. Then we relegated and he gets another chance.
He have been sent to training camp in Flanders to hone his skills and while we won't be dominating the cobbled classics he should have every chance of getting some good results.
We even managed to get him a little support towards the end of the season.
Brynjolfsson even won a cobbled classic last season...

			Cbl	Acc	Flat	Hill	Sta
	Olli	Kulppi	77	70	73	67	73
	Kari	Brynjolfsson	73	68	71	68	70
	Aviv	Yechezkel	71	72	69	62	67

All these are signed mainly with the future in mind and will be racing a variety of racese to gather experience and make up numbers.
Hänninen should develop into one of the worlds best in short TT's, Aasvold is a solid allrounder, though with little potential for development while Vainionpää has a future as a cobbls heelper but also tends to join breakaways.
Vaionionpää and Aasvold won't start full-time racing until August though.

			Flat	Mtn	Hill	Cbl	Spr	Prl
	Aleksi	Hänninen	65	61	63	56	68	72
	Kristian	Aasvold	68	65	69	68	64	64
	Oskari	Vainionpää	69	58	63	66	62	58

It seems we have somehow managed to strengthen the team despite relegating.

There are very few race days we haven't got a top 10 candidate and between Manninen, Gautier and König promotion is a must!

Atlantius wrote:
We could be in for a good battle for this years Loan out of the year p/b Evonik award.

Jakstar22 wrote:
Some very strong leaders!! Honestly a really scary squad to be facing this season!! Gautier and Edmondson may have a few battles this season!!

With the emergence of a bunch of ambitious amateur teams a number of our old riders have been given a chance to boost their careers after losing out on a full-time contract.

Philip Lindau was one of the riders it really hurt having to let go after relegating.
He joined us in our very first season, where he was our 5th best scorer while still far from the level he is today.
He remained on contract with us but spent the following two years riding for Swedbank-PEAB and Evonik-ELKO before returning to our team strronger than ever last year being a key rider in Gautiers support squad.
We expected him to get picked up by another team but somehow he didn't - at last until he became one of the most coveted amateurs to join the B&O amateur team run by his manager from the Swedbank days.

Jesse Kaislavuo first joined us in 2016 with the plan of developing him mainly into a cobbles helper.
However his 2017 with Team Reddit in CT where he went into a lot of breakaways and even managed to get a win along the way proved that he has the potential to become more than just a pure domestique.
Sadly the challenges of downsizing also left him without a contract.
He will learn a lot from even a small race program which is why we nominated him as one of the riders given a more favourable stance in contract negotiations.
Obviously we were both relieved and happy for Jesse when he was one of the very first amateurs offered a contract and we will be following his year with RBC - Spidertech with great interest.

Mattias Westling have been unemployed since he was thrown out of our team after the 2015 season.
He can be a great sprinter when he bothers as he showed when he won Himmerland Rundt in 2014. However that was pretty much the only time he bothered giving it a go in the two years he was with us.
That resulted in him being the only rider leaving the team with a public recommendation to all other teams to avoid giving him a contract.
Now two years later he have been given a second chance by cio93 at Vattenfalls amateur team and our hard feelings have softened enough for us to follow him with interest even though it's unlikely that he will ever ride for us again.

Joining Westling is Viktor Renäng, who also rode with us the first two seasons but parted ways in a much more benovelent way as we sold him to Kayak-Clas Ohlsen after our promotion to PCT.
Especially in our first season he did very well getting us two stage wins, but the following two seasons he couldn't quite deliver on the same level, which resulted in a break from racing in 2017.
As long as he rides a bit slower than Pökälä when they meet we wish him the best of luck with his comeback.

Time to properly reveal our full calendar.
We have gone with a big focus on C2 racing over C1 only adding the latter to make best possibly use of our leaders race days since we can't expect to produce as much results and points when facing PTC teams.
Still all our main leaders will get their chance to prove worthy of a leading role after we hopefully promote back up.

Our variety in leaders also means that we have very few race days where we haven't got someone capable of getting a top 10 on a good day.

Manninen will obviously lead us in the biggest sprint races, but Liepins and even Vinther will get their chances to get a result for themselves. Liepins will be going to Tour of Turkey, Tour of Slovenie and Benelux Challenge to follow up on his Vuelta-podiums from last season and Vinther will have his chances in Tour Down Under, Grand Prix du Midi Libre and Herald Sun Tour. We don't expct much from the Dane but in 2016 he proved that on a good day he is capable of an upset result and we hope/expect a weak sprinting field in at least the last two.

Without further ado here it is:

	Race	Days	Cat.	Leader
	Clasico San Cristobal	2	C2	Gautier
	Tour Down Under	6	C1	Gautier
	Great Ocean Road Classic	2	C2HC	Manninen
	Clasique Pico Basile	2	C1	König
	Tour de Langkawi	7	C2HC	König/Manninen
	Kuurne - Bruxelles - Kuurne	2	C2	Kulppi
	Ras Tailteann	3	C1	Manninen
	Gisborne GP	2	C2HC	Gautier
	Etoile de Besseges	3	C1	Gautier
	Hong Kong Challenge	3	C2	König
	Circulo de Juarez	5	C2	Manninen
	Geraardsbergen-Bosberg	2	C2HC	Kulppi
	Tour of Turkey	6	C2HC	König
	Nakhon Ratchasima Trophy	2	C1	Manninen
	Grand Prix du Midi Libre	7	C2HC	König
	Coppa Placci	2	C2	Gautier
	Betonexpressz GP	2	C2	Manninen
	Tour of Cyprus	4	C1	König
	Lincoln GP	2	C2HC	Kulppi
	Sochi Cup	2	C1	Gautier
	Corsica International	3	C1	König
	Windhoek ITT	2	C2HC	Pökälä
	1 Jour de Dunkerque	2	C2	Kulppi
	Tour du Faso	3	C2HC	Kulppi
	Giro del Trentino	3	C2	König
	La Tropicale Amissa Bongo	5	C2	Manninen
	Lillestrom GP	2	C2	Kulppi
	Tour of Slovenie	5	C2HC	Gautier
	Paris - Tours Espoirs	1	U23
	Tour d'Andorra	5	C2HC	König
	Tour de San Luis	8	C2	Gautier
	Tour of Bulgaria	5	C2	König
	Vilnius GP	2	C2HC	TTT
	USA Pro Cycling Challenge	4	C2	Manninen/Pökälä
	Liege - Bastogne - Liege U23	1	U23
	Benelux Challenge	6	C2HC	Kulppi
	Rio Vista Chinesa	2	C2	Gautier
	Grands Prix Cyclistes	2	C2HC	Gautier
	Tour de l'Avenir	9	U23
	Paris Tours	2	C2HC	Manninen
	Euskal Bizkleta	4	C2HC	Gautier/Manninen
	Colombian Venteaux	2	C2HC	König
	Hanko Classic	2	C2	Manninen
	GP Yekaterinburg	2	C2	Gautier
	Ronde van Vlaanderen Beloften	1	U23
	Heistse Pijl	2	C2	Kulppi/Manninen
	Herald Sun Tour	5	C2HC	Pökälä
	Course de Solidarnosc	4	C2HC	Manninen
	Zuri Metzgete	2	C2HC	Gautier

What do you think?

Our season started off in Cuba with a hilly classic, obviously lead by Gautier.


We took on the responsibility of controlling things early on letting three riders get away that we shouldn't have any trouble getting back.

Special mention goes to our debutant Helme, who pulled the peloton to pieces in the middle of things.
We should probably talk to him about clever ways to use your power, but it was great seeing his big capacity put to use already in his first race.

We continued keeping things under control and Gautier near the front heading towards the final climb.

Ben Nasser opened the attacking with Gautier right thre in his wheel.

Gautier saw that Zaini was strong and followed his wheel on the final climb.

With riders coming up from behind he felt he had to make a move, but it was too early so he cracked and Zaini went on to win.
Cyril still managed to salvage 2nd place though, which is also a great result.

1	Tommy Zaini	Compal-Merida	5h23'12
2	Cyril Gautier	Valio - DeLaval	+ 20
40	Gökhan Hasta	Valio - DeLaval	+ 3'49
53	Sasu Helme	Valio - DeLaval	+ 3'56
54	Paavo Paajanen	Valio - DeLaval	s.t.
58	Ingvar Omarsson	Valio - DeLaval	s.t.
73	Sakari Lehtinen	Valio - DeLaval	+ 5'59
103	Samuel Pökälä	Valio - DeLaval	+ 9'16
153	Aleksi Hänninen	Valio - DeLaval	+ 20'20