No split for once, with "only" 7 races potentially being on the PCT schedule this month. And it's definitely one for the stage races, with only 2/7 races being classics! We also got one HC stage race, so expect some really big scores there!
And, as a late addition to this update, we also finally got the Vuelta a Colombia results in, another stage race - so we actually even end up with 6/8 races being multi-day events... And let's get started with the legacy race:
The Vuelta a Colombia, a 6-day PTHC stage race mostly for climbers, had to be postponed for organizational reasons. Did the PCT teams benefit from their additional preparation time or not?
At least for the three teams scoring above 100 points, it was worth the wait. Most of all for Popo4Ever, who were the best scorers. Padun with his 5th place in GC was obviously the biggest scorer - but Lutsyshyn with his day 1 stage win plus yellow and green jersey bonuses was a big contributor as well. Vasyliv's 35th place was worth some decent points, too - just like Popo4Ever's 3rd place in the team standings. All in all, the Ukrainians scored 186 points.
Olivier was the 2nd highest PCT finisher in the GC, right behind Padun, in 6th place. And a 6th place also was his most notable stage result (with Alben getting a 7th place on day 1). Leemreize and Carcueva finished 28th and 30th respectively, with the former also taking 3rd in U25. Van Dijke added the final 2 points for his 98th place - it's 140 in total for Sony.
3rd place might be a tad surprising, given that this team's highest finisher was only 18th in GC. But they won the KoM with Arifin, taking the jersey on day 3 and bringing it home - that's 61 points for the Indonesian (who also finished 27th in GC). Tenorio got the team's top GC finish with the aforementioned 18th place and 35 points, with 4 more riders in the Top 100 making it 104 points for Indosat.
Next up were two clashing races on day 1 of the "actual" month - which is well fitting, given that it was the International Workers' Day.
One of them was the cobbled PTHC classic Cheshire Cycling Tour. Quite some hills, and not too many cobbles - a perfect race for Benoot?
It turns out his cobbles skills weren't quite strong enough, so he only was PCT's 3rd best finisher in 11th place. What was a big surprise though was Cataford finishing 18th, and thanks to M. van Dijke getting a Top 50 as well, that's 48 points for Sony. Which was good enough for 3rd place among the PCT teams.
If we already started with 3rd place, let's continue with 2nd place and take the winner last. Even though Debesay somehow was a winner as well - being the highest PCT finisher taking a strong 4th place! That's 90 points for him and JEWA.
But even 4th place wasn't enough to match the huge depth of Specialized! Kasperkiewicz might have been a tad disappointed with 6th place, but Riesebeek in 12th and GvK in 13th place more than made up for one or two lost spots! Kumara also made the Top 50, so that's 125 points for the Canadians - a 2nd place's worth in terms of points!
On the same day, we also had a race in Austria, the only climber classic on the menu - the Pro Hallstatt Classic, which got demoted to C1 this year. A "light" version of the GP Liechtenstein, but still hard enough to attract the best climbers!
And one of the best in the division definitely is Olivier - who already won this race last year, albeit for a different team! It was much closer than last year, with a CT rider almost taking the win from him - but the Dutchman claimed the win and 80 points! Carcueva added 2 more points with 22nd place, with Sony taking home 82 points in total.
As mentioned before, 2nd place went to CT - with Meintjes in 3rd being the 2nd best PCT rider. That's 46 points for him and Bralirwa. Ranaweera came home next, taking 4th place and 41 points - which is Ekoi's total score as well.
And that's it with classics for this month. Onto the multi-day events then. The first one of them being the Tour de Romandie, promoted to HC this year - and hence attracting a big field of climbers!
He may have missed out on the GC win by a couple of seconds - due to a worse TTT result than the eventual GC winner - but 2nd place is still an awesome result for Reis! He took a great stage win on day 4, laying the base for his GC podium, and also finished 3rd in the MTT. Which was won by teammate Powless, who ended up 13th in GC. Reis also won the points jersey. All in all, a huge and much needed haul of 294 points for Benetton!
Thanks to great consistency - 2nd in the TTT, 3rd on the hilly stage 3 and the MTF on day 4, plus a solid MTT - Oomen ended up 14" ahead of Reis in the GC. He took over the yellow jersey after stage 3 and never gave it away, scoring 240 points in total. However, with his teammates "only" contributing 20 points (most of them from the TTT), Lierse end up with 260 points, "only" taking 2nd place scoring-wise.
3rd place went to Olivier - and 3rd place in terms of scoring to Sony, being the final team above 200 points. Their team leader didn't quite manage to get a win, but two 2nd places on days 3 and 4 were enough to get a decent gap, making up for slightly weaker TT skills than some competitors. 169 points for Olivier - but Sony also had Leemreize in 24th (plus 2nd U25), Carcueva in 29th and Hayter in 48th (3rd U25) - and 3rd place in the team standings. 224 points for the Indian team.
Next up was the C2 Olympia's Tour. Also 6 days, also including a TTT - but with an ITT and an epilogue on top, this was one for the TTers. And with quite some strong TTers going to CT this offseason, only 3 PCT teams bothered going to the Netherlands.
Two of them took home 20 points, sharing the win here. "Win" is a great keyword, as Berger got one on day 2, mastering the bunch sprint. He was also tied for the points lead after this stage, and ended up 8 in the points standings, scoring exactly these 20 points for Tafjord.
Another PCT rider got really close to winning - even twice, with Major sprinting to 3rd and 2nd on days 3 and 5 respectively, also ending up 3rd in the points standings, scoring 17 points. Perez added 3 points for leading the U25 standings after the first three stages - he only ended up 9th though after a mediocre TTT outcome of Podium Ambition.
And 0 points go to... Zalgiris. Dakteris came closest to scoring, taking 9th place on stage 3, but it wasn't to be.
We had the cobblers, the climbers, the TTers already - so we'll do the sprinters now! The C1 Baltic Chain Tour had a prologue and 4 flat stages - all of which did result in bunch sprints as expected. And so it's pretty obvious that the sprinters indeed dominated the GC.
"Domination" isn't exactly a fitting term for Ewan, as he didn't win a single stage - but the places 2-2-3-7 in the four bunch sprints were enough to claim both the GC and the points jersey! The Australian top-sprinter scored 186 points, which obviously was the best individual score by quite a margin. But ISA took even more jerseys, with Andersen topping the U25 standings! He was in white right from day 1, and also finished 19th in GC, contributing 22 points. Mraouni finished 23rd, and ISA ended up 3rd in the team standings - overall, that's 215 points for the Latinos.
Farantakis still didn't perform up to his expected level and was only the 7th best scoring sprinter, having a 4th and a 5th place as top stage results, ending up 6th in GC. But ELCO is definitely a depth team, and they played their depth really well here! Christapopoulos and Affini took 5th and 6th in the prologue, and converted that into 17th and 18th in GC. And Stavrakakis even won the prologue and finished 13th in GC, with Kortsidakis adding a couple of points as well in 21st place. And ELCO obviously won the team standings. All in all, the Greek scored 138 points here, despite some more questionable Farantakis results.
Another rider got his best results on the final two stages, like the Greek. But Coquard didn't just get some Top 5s, no, he won the last two stages outright! Despite a pretty bad prologue result and two sprints to forget, he ended up 2nd in GC and points, scoring 135 points. Which were the only points for Manada, but that's still good enough for a comfortable 3rd place in this race.
The Internationale Österreich Rundfahrt was the second C2 stage race of the month. With 7 days, it's one of the longest - and only attracted one single PCT team.
But this team left Austria pretty happy and with a decent amount of 66 points in the bag, almost 10 PpRD. And this team is Tafjord. Danish legend Guldhammer joined the breakaway on stage 4, which has a breakaway win by default - and Guldhammer was indeed the rider winning this stage, and at the same time moving up to 2nd in GC! He dropped down two spots in the final GC, but 4th is still a great outcome for him nowadays! Garby finished 20th in GC, and then there were some more small points by Ludvigsson (5th in stage 3) as well as Wandahl and Fjellheim (U25), to bring the count up to 66 points.
Last but not least, the Vuelta al Pais Vasco. A C1 race, including a TTT and an ITT, plus some rather long hills (or medium mountain terrain). You know which rider loves this kind of route most.
Obviously, there was just one possible winner. Which was already the case last year, though, where his team messed up the TTT big time. Not this year, however, with Indosat taking 2nd in this crucial stage. Dunbar then went on to win stage 4 - and two days later sealed his GC win. Not in the most convincing way, but a win is a win. And it was worth 167 points for him personally. Canty and Abdurrahman added some GC points with their 26th and 29th places respectively, and the 2nd place in the TTT was obviously worth some points, too. Overall, that's 179 for Indosat.
Last year's winner Oomen somehow didn't really find his legs this time - or at least not soon enough. In particular on what turned out to be the decisive stage 5, he was completely inactive, so his 2nd place on the final day was only enough to claim 3rd in GC. However, Lierse also had De Plus, who finished 2nd on said stage 5, getting an impressive 8th place GC finish. Van Gils in 22nd place got some GC points as well, and also finished 3rd in U25 - right ahead of teammate Potocki. Lierse also dominated the team standings, winning with an advantage of close to 7 minutes - all in all, 155 points for the Belgians.
THJ probably was one of the surprises of this race. In particular with Tryg losing almost half a minute in the TT, and the Dane dropping another minute in the ITT - I still wonder how he could finish 2nd in GC! But once again, S5 was decisive, gaining back 50" on Dunbar and Oomen, and getting some bonus seconds for 3rd. And then obviously winning the final stage was huge, and in the end he was just 16" behind Dunbar! He obviously easily won the U25 standings, totalling 128 points. Sleen (21st GC), Norsgaard (4th S4) and Wright (6th U25) added another 10 points, making it 138 for Tryg. Which is 2 more than UBS, and 6 more than Minions, who all were closely grouped (and the last teams above 100 points).
So, that's all 8 races covered. And do you now have an idea what the monthly rankings could look like? Well, let's just take a look.
It was very close at the top, and two of the most often named promotion contenders took the Top 2 spots.
Going first, and hence winning the month, are... Sony! Colombia, Hallstatt and Romandie were all great races for them, and with some more points in Cheshire and Baltic Chain, that's 525 points for the Indians. With a PpRD of 25, they're "only" the 3rd best team, but still very much on promotion track this month!
Just 18 points behind, totalling 507 this month, are Lierse. Romandie and Pais Vasco were their highlights - and given that they didn't race in PTHC band 3 (including both Cheshire and Colombia), they spent 2 RDs less than Sony and have a slightly higher PpRD.
The next two teams also had a good fight for the last podium spot, but are 100 points down already. Benetton end up winning the race 420 vs. 407, obviously mostly thanks to their fantastic Romandie result. This month should give them a very welcome buffer in the relegation fight.
Not fighting against relegation, but for promotion, are Indosat. 409 points is their total, with most of the points obviously being scored in Pais Vasco. But Romandie and more surprisingly Colombia were good races as well, with the latter partly making up for the Baltic Chain failures. However, having spent 25 RDs, their PpRD is only the 10th highest of the month. Still, points scored are good points, as I always write.
But the PpRD kings are Greek anyway. In the overall standings, and this month as well. ELCO "only" end up 5th, scoring 332 points - but they only needed 11 RDs to do so (Romandie and Baltic Chain), resulting in a 30 PpRD average. Just tell me - when will they actually really start spending all their remaining RDs?
Popo4Ever did a really good job this month as well - finally. Colombia was the obvious highlight, with Padun performing up to exepctations for once. Romandie wasn't completely awful, either, and a 20 PpRD average is pretty good. In particular in the relegation fight, where they surprisingly find - or found? - themselves.
UBS are 7th, but 4th in terms of PpRD, scoring pretty well in Romandie and Pais Vasco. 307 points for the Swiss, scored in 14 RDs. Which stands in contrast to Ekoi, who got 261 points from 22 races - just slightly more than half of UBS' PpRD. The French scored all over the place, with Hallstatt being their highlight this month.
And Ekoi actually lead a bunch of 6 teams within just 27 points, with Tafjord, Minions, ISA, Manada and Tryg being the other ones. Tafjord, ISA and Manada did well in the Baltics, whereas the Minions preferred Romandie and Pais Vasco. The latter also was a great race for Tryg. By the way, ISA had the 5th highest PpRD of the month!
The teams in 14th through 16th aren't far back, though - and it's only 3 points separating Lotto, Specialized and JEWA, ranging from 203 down to 200 points. Specialized and JEWA had Cheshire as their highlight races, with Lotto scoring all over the place.
Everesting are next with 176 points, followed by Sauber with 153 and Podium Ambitino with 139 points. In 20th place, we have the final team above 100 points, with McCormick scoring 108.
Below 100 points were Zalgiris, Llapi, Kraftwerk and Bralirwa, with Kraftwerk having the lowest PpRD of the month with just above 3. No good news for any of them, though.
Let's look at the hard numbers now:
Pos
Team
Col
Che
Hal
TdR
Oly
Bal
Ost
Vas
Total
RD
PpRD
1
Sony - Force India
140
48
82
224
0
31
0
0
525
21
25.00
2
Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam
0
0
31
260
0
61
0
155
507
19
26.68
3
Benetton Bimex Cycling
44
2
9
294
0
71
0
0
420
21
20.00
4
Indosat Ooredoo
104
0
0
123
0
3
0
179
409
25
16.36
5
ELCO - ABEA
0
0
0
194
0
138
0
0
332
11
30.18
6
Team Popo4Ever p/b Morshynska
186
0
36
107
0
0
0
0
329
16
20.56
7
Team UBS
0
0
32
139
0
0
0
136
307
14
21.93
8
Ekoi - Le Creuset
59
17
41
55
0
0
0
89
261
22
11.86
9
Tafjord Kraft
15
19
0
27
20
104
66
0
251
32
7.84
10
Minions
0
0
6
104
0
0
0
132
242
14
17.29
11
ISA - Hexacta
0
0
0
25
0
215
0
0
240
11
21.82
12
Manada Coyote
91
0
0
6
0
135
0
6
238
25
9.52
13
Tryg - Eni
0
0
28
68
0
0
0
138
234
14
16.71
14
Lotto-Caloi
35
11
0
69
0
88
0
0
203
19
10.68
15
Specialized
65
125
7
5
0
0
0
0
202
16
12.63
16
JEWA TIROL
20
90
5
51
0
25
0
9
200
27
7.41
17
Everesting
0
0
0
171
0
0
0
5
176
14
12.57
18
Sauber Petronas Racing
60
9
11
73
0
0
0
0
153
16
9.56
19
Podium Ambition
0
0
0
31
20
41
0
47
139
23
6.04
20
McCormick Pro Cycling
75
0
12
21
0
0
0
0
108
16
6.75
21
DK Zalgiris
45
29
0
0
0
4
0
0
78
19
4.11
22
Llapi-Vita
0
0
0
22
0
39
0
17
78
17
4.59
23
Kraftwerk Man Machine
11
0
0
40
0
10
0
0
61
19
3.21
24
Bralirwa - Cegeka
0
0
46
7
0
0
0
0
53
13
4.08
Full Ranking
With another decent month, UBS are continuing to cruise in the right direction - meaning promotion to PT. Obviously, nothing is safe yet, but 2,040 points scored in 93 RDs - or a 21.94 PpRD, as one of just 5 teams above 20 - is a pretty good sign.
Lierse made a nice jump from 6th to 2nd, overtaking ISA by 4 points, 1,765 vs. 1,761. Both teams are looking good as well, having very similar PpRDs - they're numbers 2 and 3 in this ranking as well, in the same order.
Things are looking slightly less bright for Indosat, despite moving up from 5th to 4th; having spent 91 RDs already result in a PpRD of 18.7, almost 1.5 behind the Top 5. But knowing that Dunbar has still plenty of RDs left should still give them a lot of optimism.
ELCO moved up from 7th to 5th this month, slowly turning their great PpRD into actual points. In terms of PpRD, the Greek are #1 of the division by far - by almost 7 points actually, as they're projected to end up more than 1,000 points ahead of the rest! They used up 39 RDs less than UBS - the two teams having the division's highest and lowest RD numbers so far. So even a 450 points gap could easily vanish...
Tryg have spent the same number of race days as UBS, so despite trailing ELCO by just 51 points, it's hard to imagine them beating the Greek. Specialized are in a similar case, having spent only slightly less RDs - but let's still mention that Tryg and Specialized are #7 and #8 in the PpRD rankings, so both could very well fight for promotion until the end - and who knows about disbands, in particular this year...
Sony as the final team above 1,503 are in a more comfortable situation again, being 5th in terms of PpRD, just above 20. They have moved up 2 spots, and considering that Olivier has only just really kicked off his season, promotion is very much on the table this year. The Top 5 are just 86 points away currently, which is the gap from 5th to 8th. Close stuff...
Ekoi managed to hold onto their 9th place, and their 1,340 points represent a more than 500 points buffer to relegation already - they're really doing far better than many expected. Which is still rather accurate for Bralirwa as well, who dropped two spots, but still have a gap of more than 200 points to the first non-Top 10 spot.
In 11th place, we find Manada, totalling 1,076 points. Benetton follow 34 points behind, but with 10 additional days to spend, and having gained 7 places this month. Zalgiris on the other hand lost 1 spots, just like Bralirwa. Minions aren't far away, either, currently at 997 points - roughly 200 points clear of the danger zone.
Meaning that the next teams probably all are more or less worried about relegation. Sauber's 932 points still give them a decent buffer, in particular considering that the bottom 5 teams all spent around 80 RDs as well. Lotto's position is quite a bit better in terms of projections, with the Belgians having spent only 60 RDs as the 2nd least active team.
Then we already have Popo4Ever, making a big - and important - jump up from 23rd to 17th. Their safety margin is just 50 points, but given that they were 100 points below safety last month, it's still some good progress. McCormick on the other hand dropped 3 spots and are really struggling after McNulty's departure - but at least Yates should still have quite some races left, too.
Tafjord did race a lot this month, but couldn't really make good use of their RDs. They did jump from 22nd to 19th, the final safety spot. But with 792 points, they're just 2 points clear of the relegation zone, so it could be a very long season for them.
The same obviously holds for Everesting, who are still struggling a lot and currently hold the first relegation spot. 2 points to safety and 3 more teams within 100 points should give them some perspective, but it won't be easy to get out of there.
Which definitely holds for JEWA and Llapi as well, totalling 773 and 759 points respectively. Kraftwerk are even another 54 points down - meaning 87 behind safety already. It's currently not looking good for them, maybe selling Ranaweera and Haller will actually backfire...
For Podium Ambition, there's barely any hope left, but everyone including their manager knows this. They still get some nice results every now or then, but sadly it's just not enough to realistically target another PCT season in 2025.
That was the textual representation of the current standings, here comes the numerical one:
The sprinters strike back! Baltic Chain Tour was enough for both Caleb Ewan and Bryan Coquard to pass an idle Andrea Bagioli, the Aussie now totalling 747 points, the Frenchman 659. Bagioli still has 599.
Sam Oomen made a big jump this month, moving up from 23rd to 4th, with 562 points. More than half of which scored in Romandie and Pais Vasco this month.
Eddie Dunbar also moved up, from 9th to 5th, totalling 525 points. Having done only 14/35 RDs, that is. Przemyslaw Kasperkiewicz is in a pretty different situation, with the cobbles being almost done; the Pole dropped from 4th to 6th this month, despite a decent Cheshire result.
Emanuel Buchmann also had a good race, in Pais Vasco, but also lost a spot. Niccolo Bonifazio even lost 3, after a lackluster Baltic Chain Tour. Mekseb Debesay on the other hand capitalized on a great Cheshire outcome, moving from 12th to 9th - but with not too many races left.
10th place goes to Adam Yates, almost the same spot as his brother has in PT (Simon is 11th). 409 points are currently enough for the Top 10.
Besides Oomen, we had THJ as a good improver, from 40th to 13th, Reis from 86th to 16th - and then obviously Olivier, from nowhere to 15th, scoring all of his 350 this "month+". Let's also mention Padun, whose good legs in Colombia brought him up from 96th to 21st.
That's all for this month - June will have plenty of PTHC mountain races, so potentially big points at play - we'll see how this reshuffles the rankings! But for now, it's these numbers that we have:
We continue to skirt with disaster, on the positive side of the line but not by much. Yates does have three races left (well he did at the time of those points). But more Sosa also has all but 2 of his race days to go - his performance in the TOA will probably be decisive for us.
ELCO seem like the favorites for the division but if they can't turn potential into actual then it could be wide open.
Thanks for the update Fab. It's fun to be leading the past couple months but ELCO is a menace and we are on borrowed time. The next month should be especially slow for us as well so I anticipate we will start to slide. Just hoping we can hold on for promotion.
Stability is good, though I feel our performance in July has really dropped so not looking forward to seeing the next one. But always a nice read Fabianski, thanks!
We've made progress but there's still some way to go. Olivier has started off well and has continued that form into June, so that's good stuff. Benoot needs to step it up a bit in the second half of the season, to keep us in promotion contention. The rest of the team has been contributing well.
We are really dissapointing in hilly and mountain stages. Fraile and Arndt don't score any points and I needed them to score some at least.
So this will be very tough to survive and our tactic of signing highly talented youngsters for the future instead of solid guys with our wage budget might have backfired a bit...
The promotion fight is close, so is the fight against relegation. And we're more than happy to have a good look at both of this fights (without being involved) from a save place at the top of the midfield.
Another month of just treading water, staying safe at the bottom of the midfield. We don't really feel like we are in a relegation battle but clearly aren't looking up the table much either, just staying nice and safe and probably on our way to another 16th place finish.
Fairly poor month in absolute terms, quite obviously as we're sitting at the bottom of the period rankings. But we only had few race days, and even fewer valuable ones, and Meintjes did a good job in Hallstatt to at least give us a little bit. Given that our focus is staying as far away from the bottom of the table as possible, rather than any thoughts about promotion, the full rankings still look very good, especially with the big points haul coming from Suisse in mind.
Really exciting in the bottom for us. Now tied on the last safe place on PPRD.
Wow. Couldn't be tighter. We really need another year of PCT-budget to make the necessary changes in our squad.
Another dreadful update for us. Seriously doubt we're going to make it especially knowing a good number of our rivals will get a scoring boost at ToA. This is a long long season for us.
Seeing Bagioli and Oomen both in the top5 of the division, kind of lifts my ego a bit seeing how similar they are to Stannard and Rodrigues who are both struggling to break into the top25.
Congrats UBS and especially ELCO for the great results so far. And thanks for the typical massive update, Fab!
It looks promising for us at first glance. Although I don't expect high scoring in the many stage races we still have left. So still both eyes on the relegation battle.
Great jump from Popo4Ever, I expect the same for teams like Kraftwerk, Everesting and McCormick to be honest. Interesting times, that's for sure!
MG - Lotto - Caloi
[MG] New Manager of the Year - PCM.daily Awards 2022
First of all, I'd like to apologize for my absence in the last couple of months. A more detailed explanation for this will be posted in the HQ. I am back, and intend to remain so for the near future as I enjoy this too much to leave behind. (Which was on my mind.)
Anyways, thank you Fabi for another great writeup, thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Especially as we are on the up and up again. I hope we can continue to rise up the ranks as I had expected better performances from us like we have shown the last couple races.
I would also like to thank all the reporters and other people working on MG. I haven't thanked any of you for a while but I do appreciate you all continueing this game for us all to enjoy as it wouldn't be possible without you.
As always an amazing write up Fabianski! You really are the king of these!
It's always nice when people have faith in us, but looking at our own projections it seems a little unjustified tbh. We are projecting 3383 points when looking at our initial projections, compared to actual scoring and adjusting for remaining races. We are currently 19% above our expected score, and if we say we expect that to continue rather than hitting our expected value for the remaining races we are ending up with 3657 points.
3383 points would see us around 4-5th in the overall rankings, while 3657 points would see us around 2-3rd in the overall rankings. None of my projections have us winning the division. And definately not with above 4000 points. Our current ~29,5 PpRD is also far to high for the realistic projection. The last 4 races (23 racedays) is having us hit 16 PpRD and this is actually exactly spot on our own projections of those 4 races (Well 3 points below, but that's irrelevant).
I would be very surprised if we were to win the division. Tour of America would have to be significantly better than what I have estimated for that to happen
