Post the Ardennes is pre Vuelta. A very classic filled area between the two early GTs. Except for the PTHC Cheshire, we had the full Ardennes tripe, the hills in GP Wallonie, the cobbled TT in Arenberg and the sprinter classic in Koln.
So who did best?
It was close between ISA Hexacta and King Power really. Just 7 points seperation or the non participation in Arenberg probably, which led to a win for ISA.
Basically they surprised a lot here as Vakoc was really strong in the Ardennes and even taking the biggest one in LBL taking care of his team to outscore all other teams in the triple! Add a strong Arenberg and Köln and you take the period lead.
King Power mainly with Mohoric in the Ardennes but also a fantastic Cheshire.
Following are teams that also did well in the stage race in Grieg Maersk, Tinkoff in a huge relegation battle here with a surprisingly strong Trakhov in the Ardennes as well or Isostar, who should have had a better Cheshire like some others but had a good variation of scoring in the other races.
Zwift, Gazelle and Aegon follow. Later being 2nd best in the Ardennes due to 2 wins and one fail by De Bie but haven`t really scored a lot elsewhere.
Puma is still having quite a comfortable lead but it was reduced a lot by Isostar and Grieg, who scored a lot better here.
ISA also goes into the podium fight passing Huski, who are dropping to 5th.
Festina as well dropped a spot and are under pressure by King Power now, who climb a lot from 12th to 7th.
Gazelle, Moser and Mol remain in the top10 but Zwift, Aegon, Evonik, Tinkoff are all not far behind really in a very very close middle area.
And also not a lot of a gap downwards then with EA Vesuvio struggling a bit lately just like Farfetch with Mapei having scored a bit better here which brings Amaysim, Generali and Xero into big problems.
Keep in mind that only 3 teams relegate this season, which might be helpful for some teams.
No changes at the top2 as they didn`t race. Wisniowski though climbs a bit coming closer to Phinney at least.
Yates from 17th to 5th with a big climb, while also Bewley and Sagan going up just like Gerts with Kudus still in between.
Lutsenko and De Bie just outside the top10 post the Ardennes with Vakoc being up to 22 from 107 and also, even if not as strong as hoped, MAL going up to 27 from 155. De Bie could have gone as high as 5th with the triple or podium but is still already up to his usual yearly scoring and is having a good year so far.
Not too shabby. Not ideal to have messed up 2/3 ardennes, but still very close to 4th. The Vuelta will see us drop further, but we do have a (expectedly) great Tour de France to bounce back.
To see all my 3 selfmade french leaders up high in the individual rankings is very satisfying!
Dropped a couple of places, but this could turn out to be our best season to date.
Gerts will probably break the 1000 points mark by the end of the season, while Grosu needs a great Vuelta if he plans on having a shot at doing the same.
Decent but not a good period for us. We need more advantage ahead of Festina and others and Catch Puma before Le Tour, especially with the unlucky startlists at the GTs.
Another good update thanks to two very good races. Great for us to be in 3rd, but we will drop heavily with two GTs + Suisse/Dauphine coming up. Hopefully we can still be in the top 10 after that.
Lovely sight to still spearhead the rankings, although I know it'll be short-lived with Isostar rightfully catching us.
The most important development after this stretch is to only have lost 200 points on Festina and Evonik each, which lessens the impact Koretzky and Lopez were expected to have against our puncheur-less squad significantly.
Grieg remains the dark horse up there, with ISA now making up ground on the back of Vakoc.
All I hope for in the second half of this season is to retain a podium spot for the glory and particularly to achieve the sponsor goal, and we're still doing extremely well in that regard.
Individual rankings show how Ganna's improvement already pays off, with him nearly crossing the 300 points mark with plenty of prologues left to come.
Zimmermann's stretch of breakaways has seen him collect great points in unexpected circumstances and complements nicely with Kämna's scoring, while Stüssi and Vasyliv hopefully have some individual scoring potential in them in the coming stage races.
The season continues the way it began: For every LBL there are two Kölns / Fleche Wallone. Still being in the bottom half of the table post Ardennes is very weak and tells us that we tells us that it is time to finally do that big rebuild i originally wanted to do this year.
Trakhov's Ardennes classics+Kamyshev's Cheshire gives us some momentum, hopefully we can continue this with Kritskiy during the Vuelta, Suisse and Dauphine!
