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Pro Tour 2010 Preview
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| Setzel |
Posted on 14-11-2009 18:20
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Classics Specialist
Posts: 3166
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SotD wrote:
It's impossible to catch you Mrlol... The TdF will hardly be giving as much points to the winners as the others have I think. The competition is much tougher...
Tdf is my weakest grand tour...from my point of view domina will not catch mrlols team...i bet all on Giro and Vuelta and got good results  but mrlol got better
Eating my daily Breakfast at 9 pm
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| SotD |
Posted on 06-02-2010 16:14
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World Champion
Posts: 12631
Joined: 29-11-2006
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This was the guess before the season started.
1 La Gazetta dello Sport
2 Accumalux - Huez
3 Domina Vacanze
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4 Philips - Hummel
5 Festina - Seiko
6 Lipton Ice Tea
7 Unicef RT
8 Rabobank
9 Wikipedia
10 SIC - Radical
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11 Virgin Media
12 Eurosport
13 American Suzuki
14 Crédit Lyonnais
15 White Bear - Wild Horses
16 Team B&O
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17 Warner Brothers
18 Team Champion
Looking at the list now:
1 La Gazzetta dello Sport 8464 (SPOT ON)
2 Wikipedia 8240 (SWAP WITH ACCUMALUX, ALMOST)
3 Festina - Seiko 7278 (+2)
4 Domina Vacanze 7164 (-1)
5 Lipton Ice Tea 6868 (-1)
6 Philips - Hummel 6784 (-2)
7 Accumalux-Huez 6541 (-5)
8 Rabobank 6528 (SPOT ON)
9 SIC Radical - Timberland 6356 (+1)
10 Virgin Media - Caisse d'Epargne 5915 (+1)
11 Crédit Lyonnais 5693 (+3)
12 White Bear - Wild Horse 5175 (+3)
13 Warner Brothers 5153 (+4)
14 Unicef RT 5003 (-7)
15 Team B&O 4812 (+1)
16 American Suzuki 4291 (-3)
17 Eurosport 4118 (-5)
18 British Airways - Martini 4012 (DIRECT SWAP FOR TEAM CHAMPION)
The top battle is pretty well balanced imo, and the chance that Philips Hummel will take another spot or 2 up is pretty good, while Accumalux will probably also take 1 up if the hilly races match up.
Some teams have been misplaced, but the worst case is 7 places, with Unicef, which I had thought would do much better than they did. They still have a shot at moving up 2 places though.
So what do you guys think? Should we continue to do these guesses for seasons to come or is there a better way of doing it perhaps?
Edited by SotD on 06-02-2010 16:49
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| SportingNonsense |
Posted on 06-02-2010 16:20
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Team Manager
Posts: 31706
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2>7 is -5 not -6 
I always knew I was never going to be as high as 2nd, going more experimental having won last year, Otherwise, it looks like you badly overestimated Unicef, and didnt look beyond Boonen at Warner Brothers - but overall pretty good.
I do like pre-season predictions though, and it would be great to see more people give their take on it ahead of next season.
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 08-12-2025 01:55
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| SotD |
Posted on 06-02-2010 16:44
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World Champion
Posts: 12631
Joined: 29-11-2006
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Setzel wrote:
If sotd predictions are good the manager of Domina Vacanze will take Sotd into a big nice vacantion in Ibiza to party 
I should probably let you take the 3rd place overall, looking back at this :-)
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| SotD |
Posted on 06-02-2010 16:56
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World Champion
Posts: 12631
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SportingNonsense wrote:
2>7 is -5 not -6
I always knew I was never going to be as high as 2nd, going more experimental having won last year, Otherwise, it looks like you badly overestimated Unicef, and didnt look beyond Boonen at Warner Brothers - but overall pretty good.
I do like pre-season predictions though, and it would be great to see more people give their take on it ahead of next season.
Corrected...
Well as I said in the preview, it wasn't as much the team, but more the mastermind behind the team that qualified you for a position up there, but Wikipedia's manager has been the real mastermind imo, getting that team in 2nd overall is quite an achievement I think. I have to say that Spilak has been performing MUCH better than I ever imagined, and so has Burghardt.
I still think that your team had the potential to do top 3, but it didn't add up in the end, perhaps the money spent on trainings were a bit off, or you didn't use it all, I don't really know.
My money spent on trainings has been giving results way beyond my expectations.
Samuel Sánchez has been extremely well riding this season, but I believe he was last year aswell, Castaño will probably end in 26th place after his training, while Ardila is also just around top 40, eventhough he has been racing for quite some races as a helper. I'm very pleased with my decisions of training. I was thinking about training Contador instead of Samuel Sánchez, which I still think might have given me a chance to get 2nd place overall.
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| fenian_1234 |
Posted on 06-02-2010 17:15
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Grand Tour Specialist
Posts: 4726
Joined: 06-12-2006
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So what do you guys think? Should we continue to do these guesses for seasons to come or is there a better way of doing it perhaps?
I really enjoyed the previews. Hope one will appear for next season.
Eurosport would've done better if Cavendish had been able to ride the Tour of Qatar.
In hindsight too, Gomez Marchante should only have rode the Vuelta and the Tour. Not sure if he would have had enough race days to do this though. Not good enough in the hills for most of the shorter stage races.
EDIT - Cavendish also might have had more points in the Vuelta if Schleck hadn't won all the flat stages after the mountains. 
EDIT EDIT - I'm not bitter. 
Edited by fenian_1234 on 06-02-2010 17:23
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| SotD |
Posted on 06-02-2010 17:28
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World Champion
Posts: 12631
Joined: 29-11-2006
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He should easily have enough racedays to do 2 GT's. He should also have something like 55-60 racedays all in all I think.
I really do think that the major problem with Eurosport is that they tend to bring all their captains to one race, instead of spreading out the captaincy. Mancebo should've been able to do top 10 in most small spanish tours, while Klöden could've done the same in some other small races.
Goméz Marchante should've done Vuelta a España and ONLY that as GT, and the a lot of other small tours which had no real hilly stages. Gerdemann should've been trained +2 in hills, hence giving him the ability to race for top 10's in the short tours with hills involved. And finally should Cavendish had been able to do better.
I really see a lot of potential in the team for this season, but the season planning hasn't been very good I think. Not that I know I could've done better, but putting both Klöden and Pereiro Sio in Germany Tour is a bad mix imo. Who is the captain? Why not Klöden, Gerdemann and Knees as captains?
The team doesn't have the strongest set of captains, but with the right training and race selection it could be quite a team. Atleast a team that would've gone EASILY out of the relegation battle I think. Don't know how much money they had for training but f.x. 3mil could've been spent on +2mountains for Gomez Marchante (Now easily the best spanish climber) +2hilly for Gerdemann (Now quite an important rider in both hilly classics, and small tours without too many mountains) and +2mountains for Lövkvist (Who would now have been a mini Nibali, and easily a rider that could be in contention for top 10-12 GT's. Or perhaps a +2sprint for Cavendish (Which would've made him the 3rd best sprinter around).
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| fenian_1234 |
Posted on 06-02-2010 18:23
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Grand Tour Specialist
Posts: 4726
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Well, as I took over after the season began there was no room for training though it would have been very useful. 
I also filled in the race planners in a couple of hours so the team could make the start at the Tour of California, after having missed Qatar.
Marchante did only ride the Vuelta as I thought that was the one he had the best shot of winning. After that he mainly rode the shorter Tours but missed out on doing anything in most of them. Hence I said he should have rode the Tour and Vuelta and the team would now be safely out of the relegation zone.
There wasn't much for sprinters throughout the season in the PT. Cavendish raced all three 3 GTs as I worked out he'd have more flat stages to compete in than if he raced smaller stage races. However, Bennati dominated in the Giro and Cav missed the time cut on one stage, he was unlucky in the Vuelta (dropped on a flat stage while in the leaders jersey) and then outsprinted by Schleck in flat stages later in the race and then did OK in the Tour. Don't think I could have got more out of him - obviously he would have ridden Qatar and a few other shorter stage races and probably missed the Giro if this option had been available, but it wasn't.
Main problem with Eurosport as you said was with the other captains. Riders like Mancebo, Pereiro, Kloden, Lovkvist, and Gerdemenn doubled up in a lot of races. Unfortunately, I took the view that having a strong team unite behind one leader would be the best way to race. That doesn't work most of the time though, and what you need the way the AI is set up is one absolute leader supported by a bunch of relative muppets. |
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| SotD |
Posted on 06-02-2010 18:34
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World Champion
Posts: 12631
Joined: 29-11-2006
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Agreed. Or not muppets, but it's very evident that you have ONE leader, and only one. Like in the Northern Europe Tour I had 2, Hushovd and Samuel Sánchez. Eventhough Samuel lost a lot of time on the cobbled stage, he could've taken a stagewin or 2 and probably ended better than Hushovd if let there alone. He rode for Thor the most of the time, and only when Hushovd got dropped on the last stage did he take chances himself, but WAY to late...
Next season will be much different for you. If Eurosport does relegate you can't be manager for them or what? Or well, if Vespa promotes, then of course you can :-)
But the team will look quite different. Klöden and Mancebo will be useless, Pereiro also quite useless, so only 3 captains left + Cavendish. Room for improvement :-)
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| SportingNonsense |
Posted on 06-02-2010 18:57
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Team Manager
Posts: 31706
Joined: 08-03-2007
PCM$: 200.00
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SotD wrote:
SportingNonsense wrote:
2>7 is -5 not -6
I always knew I was never going to be as high as 2nd, going more experimental having won last year, Otherwise, it looks like you badly overestimated Unicef, and didnt look beyond Boonen at Warner Brothers - but overall pretty good.
I do like pre-season predictions though, and it would be great to see more people give their take on it ahead of next season.
Corrected...
Well as I said in the preview, it wasn't as much the team, but more the mastermind behind the team that qualified you for a position up there, but Wikipedia's manager has been the real mastermind imo, getting that team in 2nd overall is quite an achievement I think. I have to say that Spilak has been performing MUCH better than I ever imagined, and so has Burghardt.
I still think that your team had the potential to do top 3, but it didn't add up in the end, perhaps the money spent on trainings were a bit off, or you didn't use it all, I don't really know.
I believe my issue to be not enough points-scoring riders, and that was always going to be in the way of a Top 3 finish. I trained Schleck +2 hill to get him to 84 - he had a brilliant Ardennes, but dissapointing in Pais Vasco, Badaling and Emilia.
My other training was Intxausti +2 mountain, and that paid off brilliantly with 2nd in the Vuelta, and 5th in the chaotic Tour.
Other than those 2, Ive only really got Pellizotti. He did very well in the Giro, but has never really looked like a winner of smaller tours. And those smaller races were key - there were a few where I didnt really have anyone, and others where those that i had just didnt perform as they could or should have.
I came into the season expecting to finish lower anyway - hence why I was happy to sell Cancellara - even prior to salary caps coming in.
Edited by SportingNonsense on 06-02-2010 19:05
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| SotD |
Posted on 06-02-2010 19:09
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World Champion
Posts: 12631
Joined: 29-11-2006
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You are probably right... Although Schleck would probably have gotten similar results with 82 hilly stat, don't you think?
Instead Pellizotti could've had 83 climbing og 80 hilly, that would've made him very likely to win small tours...
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| SportingNonsense |
Posted on 06-02-2010 19:30
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Team Manager
Posts: 31706
Joined: 08-03-2007
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SotD wrote:
You are probably right... Although Schleck would probably have gotten similar results with 82 hilly stat, don't you think?
Instead Pellizotti could've had 83 climbing og 80 hilly, that would've made him very likely to win small tours...
It wasnt worth training Pellizotti, due to his age and the fact I only really kept him due to him being World Champ
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| SotD |
Posted on 06-02-2010 19:39
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World Champion
Posts: 12631
Joined: 29-11-2006
PCM$: 2980.00
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Oh, right, hadn't seen his age. Would be a pretty silly disposition I see...
It was with Samuel Sánchez also I think, but I suppose he will be quite useful next year aswell, together with Ulissi :-)
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| fenian_1234 |
Posted on 06-02-2010 19:54
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Grand Tour Specialist
Posts: 4726
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SotD wrote:But the team will look quite different. Klöden and Mancebo will be useless, Pereiro also quite useless, so only 3 captains left + Cavendish. Room for improvement :-)
I hope I get to keep them, but will only happen if Vespa manage promotion. That'll be a lot clearer after the next bunch of continental races though. |
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| p3druh |
Posted on 06-02-2010 20:24
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Small Tour Specialist
Posts: 2388
Joined: 28-09-2007
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These predictions are really nice and entertaining so, provided you have the time and the motivation, I would really like to see them again next year.
And, honestly, I am really surprised to see that you more or less had the right prediction for my team. Especially since I expected to be way down the table at this point. I really expected to see a bigger difference between my team and the other mostly because I didn't have that big a budget to train them. And also, my team relayed on only 4 riders to deliver the points (Sinkewitz, Ballan, Fothen and Rujano) and they are nowhere near the best in their field...
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| SportingNonsense |
Posted on 07-02-2010 14:03
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Team Manager
Posts: 31706
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fenian_1234 wrote:
Well, as I took over after the season began there was no room for training though it would have been very useful.
On the bright side, that means if the situation goes your way and Vespa promote, you will have more scope to really rebuild Eurosport
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| SportingNonsense |
Posted on 07-02-2010 14:31
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Team Manager
Posts: 31706
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SotD wrote:
You are probably right... Although Schleck would probably have gotten similar results with 82 hilly stat, don't you think?
Nope, I dont think so - this season has been his most successful in the hilly classics, and I credit that to the training
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