With only 4 races being on the PT schedule this month - thereof three in PTHC - you might think it was a rather unimportant month. But wait - cycling's biggest event was held this month, making it a crucial one despite little racing - we're obviously talking about Le Tour de France!
But let's first cover the other races. Even though they didn't have remotely TdF-like scores, they could still make a difference for well-performing teams. So let's get started with these:
On the first day of the month, a trip to Latvia was scheduled, with yet another sprinter classic awaiting the riders - the PTHC Riga - Jurmala GP.
Did I write sprinter classic? Well, you know, one of those that in theory should go to the sprinters, but that often don't because of sprinter teams misjudging gaps and mistiming their efforts.
And so, the probably most underpaid rider of the world struck once again, with Soren Kragh Andersen winning the race after a late attack! Yeah, when things go your way, things go your way, and Aker are the best example for this. Well, things didn't go Groenewegen's way, who finished only 30th, but 170 points for SKA more than made up for that. 175 points in total for the Norwegians, which should see them move up the (close) standings quite a bit.
2nd and 3rd both went to PCT sprinters, and so Grosu was the 2nd fastest PT man - and best sprinter - in 4th place. Van den Berg added some depth points with 28th place, that's 96 in total for Rabobank. Then we have to go down to 8th place to find the next PT rider with Philipsen, making Polar the 3rd best scoring PT team with 52 points. Overall, that would be 9th place, as it definitely was a race for the PCT teams in general...
What about another sprinter classic? This time in the U.S., where the Philadelphia International Championship (what a name!) was held. Pan-flat as well, could the sprinters succeed this time?
Yes, they did? However, it once again wasn't a PT sprinter who won. Nor a PT rider at all. It was a PCT sprinter - one who somehow does incredibly well in PT races this year, don't ask me why.
So it was all about 2nd place for PT teams. And it was Cullaigh who claimed this spot, rewarded with 125 points. Antonijevic in 17th place definitely made it a worthwile trip for cycleYorkshire, with the Brits scoring 140 points.
Gaviria had to settle for 3rd, scoring 100 points for Moser. Dainese came 4th, and with Wisniowski's 29th place, that's 95 points for Assa.
The final PTHC race of the month was the highest scoring one - pretty obvious, given that it was a stage race. 5 days in Slovenia, one for the sprinters, two for the puncheurs, and 2 for the TTers - even though the day 2 TTT required them to also have some teammates holding their own on the TT bike.
No need to let you guess the winner here, as it's obvious that this was a 100% Wirtgen race. And indeed, EA Vesuvio won the TTT, setting him up nicely (even though he lost a second by finishing 6th). He then once again showed his puncheur skills by taking 3rd place on stage 4, taking over the GC lead. Which we obviously didn't lose in the closing ITT, instead winning the stage and winning the GC by a minute flat. That's 275 points for him - and with Girdlestone finishing 15th, plus Munton and Pelikan in the Top 50 (and three more in the Top 100), that's 389 points for the Luxembourgers.
However, the best depth result was for another team. McNulty apparently had recovered well from a rather mediocre Tour de France, and won stage 4, moving up to 2nd in GC. His ITT wasn't good at all, though, and so he dropped to 4th in the final GC. But with Herregodts in 9th, Mano in 14th (after taking 6th in the TT) and Fung in 23rd place, King Power still got a great amount of points - 333 to be precise. Including the team standings win, unsurprisingly.
Some more depth, please? Not GC depth, but good results all over the place, that's what Tinkoff got. 2nd by Banaszek in the opening stage, 2nd in the TTT, 7th by Skujins on day 3, and a breakaway securing the KoM jersey for Skujins on stage 4. GC-wise, Vlasov ended up 8th and Rikunov 13th, with Zakarin in 35th also making the Top 50. 227 points for the Russians.
Now, what about a short summary before tackling the biggest race of the year? Here we go:
Pos
Team
R-J
Phi
Slo
Total
1
EA Vesuvio
0
0
389
389
2
King Power
0
0
333
333
3
Tinkoff Team - La Datcha
0
87
227
314
4
Team Puma - SAP
0
0
205
205
5
Cedevita
16
0
187
203
6
Aker - MOT
175
0
0
175
7
ZARA - Irizar
0
34
137
171
8
cycleYorkshire
0
140
30
170
9
Grieg-Maersk
0
0
156
156
10
Lidl Cycling
0
47
76
123
11
Assa Abloy
0
95
27
122
12
Moser - Sygic
11
100
0
111
13
Rabobank
96
0
0
96
14
Oxxo - Frisby
0
52
31
83
15
Polar
52
0
28
80
16
Jura GIANTS
0
0
58
58
17
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
29
16
0
45
18
Evonik - ELKO
29
0
0
29
19
MOL Cycling Team
26
0
0
26
20
Fastned
4
0
0
4
21
Gazelle
0
0
0
0
22
Xero Racing
0
0
0
0
It isn't overly surprising that the Top 5 are identical to the Top 5 scorers in Slovenia. But Tinkoff almost close the gap to King Power thanks to a good result in Philadelphia.
Riga winners Aker are next, very closely followed by ZARA and cycleYorkshire. Grieg, Lidl, Assa and Moser the final teams above 100 points.
Rabobank with a good output in Riga as well, Oxxo, Polar and Jura rather disappointed with their Slovenia performances.
The rest of the teams only had zero or one classic, with Xero being the only ones of having the excuse of not racing at all.
And now, what you have all been waiting for: The world's biggest race, the one and only Tour de France!
It definitely was a unique edition - at least I hope so, as it was the weirdest GT I've witnessed so far. And not one that was particularly appreciated from a spectator point of view - nonetheless, the daring and race-winning attack by Kudus definitely deserves kudos!
However, the fact that the Tour was basically decided after stage 8 wasn't the best situation scoring-wise, as we got lots of breakaway wins later on. So Moser's score actually ends up being the lowest GT-winning score of the year, despite the Tour de France points scale! And - even worse for the Czech - it wasn't even the highest score in the race!
Can you guess which team ended up on top then? Well, I'll tell you: It was Tinkoff! But... how on earth?
There were two main scorers, both totalling more than 500 points. First, obviously Sivakov. 6 Top 5 finishes, thereof 4 stage podiums (but no win), and 5th place overall in the end. Just 1 minute off the podium. That's 553 points for him, the 4th best score of the race.
But Tinkoff also had the 6th best scorer, which was Banaszek! He won stages 2 and 3, taking over green after stage 2 and yellow after stage 3. Whereas he lost the latter three days later, he was riding in green all the way to the Champs Elysées. Where he lost it by 7 points, ending up 2nd in the points standings... Thanks to the stage wins, the green jersey points and some more Top 10 results, he scored 508 points, being the highest scoring sprinter by almost 200 points. Definitely one of the big revelations in this race.
Not quite scoring as high, but still more than 200 points (and being the 18th best scorer) was Mamykin. He made his big move - following some clearly stronger climbers - on stage 18, where he only narrowly missed out on the win, moving up to 9th in GC. He only lost surprisingly little time in the next two big mountain stages, to take an incredible 11th place in GC - as a 77 climber! 225 points for him - you see, we're already clearly past the 1,000 points mark. And Tinkoff also had Rikunov in 27th, Foliforov in 35th, Arslanov in 40th and Rybalkin in 47th - somehow the Russians found a recipe for great depth that others with a similarly strong team missed out on.
In the end, that's 1,485 points for Tinkoff, which is the 2nd highest score all year long, higher than Polar's Vuelta winning total. Not bad for a team having "just" a 5th place in GC and no special jerseys in the end. But still deserved, as shown by their team standings win with a margin of more than 20 minutes to the rest.
Moser obviously scored fairly well, too. More important than their score must be Kudus' historic Grand Tour win, and you definitely can't argue he's a surprise winner! Even in a "normal" race, he could have challenged PHL as we saw during these three weeks - and his huge move could have heavily backfired if the peloton actually cared. They didn't, and so Kudus won the Tour de France with a huge time gap!
And he also won two stages, which could have been more without all the breakaway stuff happening. All of Moser's 6 Top 5 stage results were scored by him. And he also scored points for 7th in the points standings, and 4th in the KoM standings. And obviously for wearing the yellow jersey from stage 8 on all the way to Paris. It's 1,196 points for Kudus. 6 of his teammates made it in the Top 100 - thereof 4 between 86th and 99th - with Neuman being the only one scoring a couple of stage points for an 8th place. All in all, that's 1,331 points for Moser. Good - but will it be good enough?
Lecuisinier was the defending champion, and it looked like a perfect route for him to go back-to-back, in particular with the long ITT giving him a good edge over Kudus. But his team definitely underestimated Kudus' huge move, and they lost the race on that one stage. Even worse, they did so while PHL was in yellow - it was his only GC leading day in the whole race. He trailed by 8'23" after this infamous stage 8, and could only cut that down to 5'44" in the end.
PHL still didn't leave empty-handed, getting a stage win and no less than 4 2nd places. Which was enough for 4th place in the points standings. With 964 points scored, it still was a disappointing race for him, as he scored 400 points less than last year. Not all of which is due to missing out on the GC win.
On a more positive note, Evonik also celebrated a stage win by Eenkhoorn on day 17, with the Dutchman taking 21st in GC as well. Around 150 points for him, still more than the rest of the team combined. Thanks to 6th in the team standings and 4 in the Top 100, there were still a couple of depth points scored, but 1,231 points can't be what Evonik expected from this race.
There's one team left that scored above 1,000 points. Logically, it should be MOL, thanks to Haig's 3rd place overall. But no. The combo GC rider and sprinter was key again to score high, and that's exactly what Cedevita did!
Sprinter Rajovic and GC captain Pogacar won one stage each. The former got one 3rd place on top of that, the latter two - and almost another 3rd place, in GC. But Pogacar ended up a measly 25" short of his first GT podium - we'll probably not need to wait for much longer, though. Definitely a good race by the Slovenian - and also by the Serbian sprinter. The two scored 711 points combined.
But Rajovic actually wasn't even the team's second best scorer; Cedevita also got a stage podium with Buitrago, finishing 2nd on stage 17 - plus 28th in GC and 2nd in U25, netting him 171 points. Habtemichael (29th) and Power (39th) also finished well inside the Top 50, and so Cedevita - who came 4th in the team standings - scored 1'023 points all things considered.
We've already talked about MOL, who are indeed next now, rounding off the Top 5. Haig was pretty consistent throughout the race - but without ever being able to get a win. He got very close on stage 9 that was won by Pogacar, and also took 2nd on the infamous stage 8 - it was a little less close there, though. And that's MOL's only podium spots of the race.
Which makes it pretty obvious what their struggle was: depth scoring. Haig was the 3rd best scorer of the race with 618 points - which is more than 300 less than PHL, though, clearly not explained just by the GC points. Almeida also scored some notable points - 110 to be precise - finishing 19th in GC and getting a 4th place on stage 14. With Brozyna, they had another Top 50 finisher - and that's it with notable points.
2nd place in team standings obviously is a good result as well, adding another 40 points for the team - but all in all, it's still "just" 887 points for the Hungarians. Will it be enough to move them out of a pretty bad situation?
Not in a bad situation at all are Aker, the defending PT champions. They're not quite as strong as last year - but given their lineup, they still did an absolutely awesome job.
OK, I admit I don't like climbers who can't TT, but even if I did, I wouldn't have expected AHJ to do as well as he did. He doesn't like hills, has no stamina or recovery - but still was fighting for the KoM until late into week 3 where he ran out of gas. His win on stage 12 surely was one of the team's highlights of the race - just like bringing home the white jersey! 363 points for him - the 8th best score of the race!
And that wasn't all. They also had that 78/78 sprinter who showed some really crazy performances - even getting two stage wins, thereof one on the Champs Elysées! We're obviously talking about Peak, who for me is one of the big revelations of this Tour. Sure, he's a beast on the flat, but otherwise nothing special - yet he did have something special that brought him up to 3rd place in the points standings - 3 spots ahead of Grosu who on paper was the fastest sprinter by far! 287 points for the Hungarian - #12 in the race.
Aker actually are the only team with more than 2 stage wins in this race, getting 3 of them - and SKA didn't even contribute! It might be the team's biggest disappointment of the race that the King of Prologues surprisingly was beaten - and even by 2 riders, imagine! This still made him Aker's 3rd best scorer, as otherwise they "just" had Donovan, Harper and Lastra finishing in the Top 100. But their two leaders got them a ton of points already, so Aker ended up 6th with 791 points. As a team without even a Top 20 GC, pretty respectable. When you're on a roll, you're on a roll.
Next up is another team without an outstanding GC contender, but they did have the depth! They got 14th, 20th and 31st in GC. And they got a big stage win, in the final mountain stage of the race - won by Faglum Karlsson!
So we're obviously talking about Lidl, whose GC captain got 14th in the end. Burke took 20th, Prado 31st. The Swede scored 203 points in total, definitely not a bad outcome. He also was tied for 6th in KoM - alongside teammate Burke. And behind Mansouri, who finished 5th. Did I already talk about depth?
The team's 2nd best scorer, though, was a sprinter - with Larsen taking 2nd on stage 2 and subsequently taking over the yellow jersey (after a 6th place in the prologue)! Larsen ended up with 135 points, and Burke with 126.
Mansouri and Prado were above 50 points as well. And with Lidl finishing 3rd in the team standings, there were some other nice points coming in. All in all, 663, enough for 7th place. But probably not enough to move them out of misery at the bottom of the table.
"Bottom of the table" is definitely not a fitting expression for King Power - unless you turn the table upside down. In 3rd place pre-race, they were hoping for a great GC result by McNulty. They were surely - and maybe rightfully - hoping for more than 9th place. But he had a completely awful day on stage 8, losing 4+ minutes to the top climbers, and 3+ to riders he should have been able to keep up with. In the end, he was 1'03" behind 6th place, so it's easy to see where he lost quite some points...
With 9 Top 5 results, King Power actually were #2 behind Tinkoff - but they only managed to get three podiums and zero wins. The first podium came right on day 1, with Leung finally beating SKA in a prologue - only to be beaten by someone else... Hsu got the other two podium spots, finishing 2nd in stages 4 and 5.
McNulty was the team's top scorer, obviously, scoring 231 points. Hsu was next with 155 points, even though he didn't manage to get a Top 10 in the points standings. Leung also got slightly more than 100 points - a good prologue can do wonders! Herregodts also got 50+ points thanks to 5th places in the prologue and the ITT, a decent outcome.
That's it with notable points, but with the scoring distributed on so many shoulders, the overall score was still not too bad - 627 points for King Power.
We have reached the final Top 10 spots now - and it's getting crowded now. No less than 5 teams - from 9th to 13th - are separated by just 26 points! The best of this bunch are... Fastned! Definitely a big - and welcome - surprise for them!
And that surprise has a name: Cras. While he seemed not to care about the GC at all early on, losing time on stages where he shouldn't have, he ended up 6th!!! in the final GC!
Of course, this huge result was only possible thanks to big breakaway success, but thanks to pretty good physical condition, he managed to gain time via breakaways and then not lose too much when riding in the pack.
And from the breakaway, he did some nice stuff, definitely - most notably a 3rd and a 2nd place on stages 12 and 13. And after a 7th place on stage 18, he even was 2nd in GC! Most "experts" expected him to still drop down the GC, but he only dropped down to 6th place. A huge result - complemented by 3rd place in the KoM standings - rewarded by 425 points. Which is the 7th highest score of the race. Hats off.
And so, it didn't matter too much that the rest of the time didn't contribute a lot. Gonzalez Salas was the 2nd best scorer with 47 points, getting some decent results from the prologue and the ITT (although not as good as expected). And Schelling ended up 45th in GC. That's it - but it's enough for 9th place with 560 points!
Another 13 points down - scoring 547 in total - we have the next newly promoted team, Jura GIANTS. Which is pretty surprising as well - but given that they had a rider who's almost equally strong as Cras, not that big of a surprise after all.
Well, it's only that this rider - Darbellay - actually got nowhere close to what Cras (or also AHJ, to name another 78 climber) did, and with 23rd in GC and 73 points only was the team's 3rd best scorer.
The biggest scorer wasn't breakaway rider Rohendi, either - even though the Indonesian got a 5th and a 3rd place from breakaways, and also was looking good in KoM at some point (he ended up 9th). He scored 82 points.
But Jura's big name obviously was Groves. A pretty well-rounded sprinter, but clearly weaker than Grosu. And he didn't have the greatest start, as he didn't get a single stage podium in the first two weeks.
However, Groves then won stage 15, which moved him up to 2nd in points, 8 points off the lead. And going into the final stage, he still was just 13 points off, gaining back 6 at the intermediate sprint - and the sprinting to 2nd behind Peak on the Champs Elysées.
It was enough for Groves to rather surprisingly claim the Maillot Vert! This final stage alone was worth 130 points for him (50 for the stage, 80 for the jersey), and he ended up with the 9th best score overall, 311 points.
The Swiss only had a single rider (in addition to Darbellay and Rohendi) in the Top 100, but despite some rather limited depth score they claimed the final Top 10 spot with 547 points.
Another point down are Gazelle. They were among the 6 teams winning 2 stages each - for the Dutchmen, the winners were the two Polishmen Barchol (stage 13) and Malecki (stage 16), both from a breakaway. Warchol got another 3rd place, and Lander got one as well - that's it with the Top 5 stage results. Only 4 of them, but all on the podium - efficient.
GC-wise, Warchol got a decent 12th place, about what could be expected. Combined with his stage results, that's 251 points, with Malecki scoring 115. Vervaeke made the Top 30 as well (24th), scoring 64 points, whereas sprinter Lander totalled 46 points in the end.
All in all, that's 546 points for the PT leaders - not a great score, but not an awful one, either.
The next team in this batch are the Pumas. Indeed, even without Herklotz or another good GC option, they can score 500+ points.
One of the reasons for this was Kanter, one of the most consistent sprinters in this field. He got three stage podiums - more than Green jersey Groves and runner-up Banaszek - but failed to get a win. Which made him drop to 5th in the points standings in the end. 231 points for the German sprinter.
Whereas these results by Kanter could be expected (maybe even a little more), this might not be quite the case for teammate Madouas, who also got three stage podiums. The big difference with Kanter was that the Frenchman actually got a win, on stage 6! In the only stage that didn't end on home soil, anecdotally. He scored 219 points, which definitely was the difference between a mediocre and a good TdF for the Pumas!
Because the other 6 riders didn't even score 100 points combined. So without Madouas being so efficient, it could have been a rather poor race. Now it's 12th place with 539 points.
Whereas 534 points doesn't sound like a particularly bad results, ZARA probably were hoping for even more. And with Jakobsen and Shikai, they brought two strong potential scorers, the latter being among the outsiders for the Green jersey even.
Well, Shikai got a decent result. The Top 5 were clearly out of reach. 6th place might have been possible, but on one hand ZARA didn't provide enough help to control the breakaways, so Cras could end up that high. And then Carthy just was a tad too strong on the final mountain stage. On the other hand, keeping McNulty at bay couldn't necessarily be expected, so 8th doesn't feel completely wrong. And 213 points aren't an awful outcome given the competition.
What went rather wrong though were the sprints. Jakobsen only got two stage podiums, 3rd on stage 5 and 2nd on stage 10. What is remarkable about the latter is that he actually finished behind his leadout Hesters who won the stage - ZARA's big - and lone - highlight of the race! 10th place in the points standings confirms that Jakobsen's sprints just didn't work out - in particular the leadouts will need some more fine-tuning. 148 points means that 6 sprinters scored higher than him, slightly below par.
Hesters obviously scored some points as well - the 80 points for the stage 10 win were the only ones he got besides finishing points, so 90 for him in total. Otherwise, some points for Rodriguez' 42nd place in GC, plus Storer getting a Top 100. All in all, 534 points as mentioned before.
Next up - in 14th place - are the Vuelta winners, Polar. The Finns had one main scorer: Mas. And Mas got más (more) KoM points than anyone else, claiming the Maillot à Pois! He launched his KoM challenge on stage 12, where he also finished 2nd behind AHJ. On stage 14, he took over the Polka Dots and defended them until the very end, with a margin of more than 50 points against a tiring AHJ!
By the way, Mas moved up to 3rd in GC after stage 18 - just 14" behind Cras. However, he didn't have quite as much left as the Belgian, fading to 15th - still a great result and the highest one for his team! 308 points scored by Mas, an awesome race for him.
Inkelaar was supposed to be Polar's GC leader, but wasn't really competitive at the highest level. He even ended up behind Mas, finishing 18th. Still, two in the Top 20 is a great result for the team, who will happily take the Dutchman's 102 points.
Otherwise, they had Barthe, Jaramillo and Oldani in the Top 100 - 500 points flat for Polar.
Yes, we did have wildcard teams as well, and yes, they did steal some points from PT teams! In particular Popo4Ever, ending up 15th in terms of (unofficial) scoring.
Obviously, most of their points were scored by Padun, one of PCT's top climbers. A 2nd place from a late attack on stage 16 and a great 3rd place in the final climb of the race, on the penultimate day, were the highlights on his way to 10th overall. 293 points is his total, 11th place in terms of scoring.
Vasyliv also had a decent race, ending up 30th in GC, scoring 52 points. Papanov and Andriafenomananiaina missed out on the Top 50 by less than 2 minutes; the former at least ended up 4th in U25. All things considered, it's 479 points for the Ukranians.
How can a team having a rider who is 7th in GC end up having only the 16th best score? Well, if they don't get any stage results!
And this was exactly Carlsberg's case. Carthy did well - maybe even better than expected, leaving both Shikai and McNulty as strong TTers behind - but even he wasn't able to get a single stage Top 5! Only two teams ended up with this big fat Zero, and it's obviously one that hurts the scoring.
So, Carthy scored 270 points in the end - thereof 230 for his GC result. Now compare that to the Giro where he got more than 300 non-GC points...
And the depth? Well, so-so. Gregaard was 32nd and got 47 points. Skjelmose finished 44th, but thanks to 3rd place in U25 still outscored his teammate by getting 56 points. Otherwise, it's just 2 more in the Top 100 - and sprinter Walls, another outside favourite in the green jersey race, scored a grand total of 8 points from stage results! Safe to say that the Danes used up their luck in the first GT of the year...
Still, 457 points isn't an awful score and surely won't bring them down to the danger zone.
The next team is Not Found. So if you're an IT dude, you'll guess how many points Oxxo scored here, otherwise I'll tell you at the end.
With Aular, they had a decent yet not top-level GC contender. Top 10 was probably the dream, 13th place the reality. And with 135 points, he scored only 15 points from stage results, just showing how strong the competition was.
And I'll just tell you that he wasn't the team's top scorer. Instead, that was Lopez Nolasco, scoring exactly one point more. The Honduran finished 16th in GC - but on top of that got a 3rd place from the breakaway on stage 13. After another breakaway on stage 18 he was even sitting in 8th place in the GC, but couldn't quite hold that. Still, 136 points aren't a bad outcome.
Otherwise, not too much to write home about. Osorio made the Top 50 as well, and Beltran and Galvan Ramirez got some U25 points. And the team ended up 5th in the team standings, which is a honorable mention at the end. And yeah, the total score was 404, which is the error code you get when your web browser doesn't find a page. Ranking updates sometimes are even educational ^^
There was one big, one obvious favourite for the points jersey. Like there was one big favourite in the Giro and the Vuelta. However, unlike in the other GTs, the favourite didn't quite deliver here in France - which obviously isn't just sad for Grosu in his final maxed GT, it's also bad news for Rabobank.
Sure, Grosu did win a stage - the one that had "Grosu" written all over, the hilly stage 4. But what couldn't be expected back then was that this would not just be his only win, but even his only podium of the race! He did pick up quite some more results in particular in the 4-7 range, but that's obviously not satisfying at all for a sprinter of his format. With 238 points, he's still the 3rd best scoring sprinter (behind Groves and Peak), but it feels like he should've scored twice as much.
And more bad news for Rabobank - Champoussin didn't really do what they expected him to. They wanted to see him in breakaways, doing what AHJ or Cras did (and the Frenchman isn't really worse, on the contrary) - but he didn't. His highlight was 4th place on stage 18, and that's it. 25th in GC isn't good enough (despite his awful TTing), nor are his 84 points. Still, he was the only other scorer above 20 points, meaning that Rabobank leave the race with a disappointing total of 386 points added to their balance.
EA Vesuvio probably expected to be rather low, and so they are. Van der Lijke hasn't been great all year long, and - sadly for them - couldn't really change this impression in France. Some of the stages would have been perfect for him, but he just didn't really manage to get going on the hills.
The race actually started pretty well, with a 4th place on stage 2. But it was his only Top 5 result. With 59 points, he still was the team's 2nd best scorer.
The top-scorer expectedly was Kirsch. Like many others, he inexplicably lost some time early on, but kind of recovered from that to get an acceptable 17th place in the end. However, his race highlight definitely was stage 18 - which he won from the breakaway! That stage win makes up for almost half of his 175 points.
Firdaus was the 3rd best scorer, finishing inside the Top 100 and holding the white jersey for 4 days in total. Otherwise, Girdlestone in 37th and Ries in 49th scored some GC points as well - in total, it's 372 for the Luxembourgers.
We're left with the bottom 5. Even though the next team is far closer to the teams above than those below, scoring still more than 350 points.
But if you're this far down despite getting two stage wins, you probably don't have a very deep team. And that's definitely the case of Xero. Ganna was our first race leader, after - rather surprisinlgy - beating SKA in the prologue. He only had the jersey for one day, though, before handing it over to Larsen.
Ganna also won the long ITT mid-race, and with just these two stages scored 217 points. Without these points, it could have been a really poor race for Xero.
Because the next scorer is Fouche, who is still overstrained with his GC leader role. He just finished inside the Top 50 - by taking 50th place in GC. By finishing 4th on stage 12, he at least ensured that there was another Top 5 stage result besides Ganna's. It's 46 points for him.
Otherwise, Van Zyl's KoM lead after stage 3 surely was another highlight for the team, even if it didn't net them too many points. Which is pretty much true overall, though, as the Kiwis head home with 354 points in their bags.
More than 100 points down - but still more than 100 points ahead of last place - we find Grieg. They got their highlight on the final day, when Trondsen sprinted to a great 3rd place on the Champs-Elysées - making him the 2nd best scorer of the team with 47 points.
The highest score goes to Cort Nielsen, who finished 26th in GC - after an unlucky puncture late in the race, otherwise he'd have finished 3 spots higher. He also got a 5th place on stage 18 as his best daily result. It's 72 points for him.
Vingegaard also made the Top 50, and with Roman and Nesset getting a Top 100, that's 227 points for Grieg.
Now we dive below 200 points - with cycleYorkshire scoring 1,103 points less than in the Vuelta, dropping from 1,296 down to just 193. No climber, no sprinter, just hoping for breakaway points.
Which actually did happen to some extent. Stedman claimed the KoM lead on stage 4, holding the jersey for 3 days and then staying in the Top 3 for some more days. Before dropping out of the points. Still, his efforts were rewarded with 60 points, making him the team's best scorer.
Otherwise, they had Hayter taking 8th in the prologue and a great 3rd place in the longer ITT, scoring 48 points. And that's it with really notable scores, with the team's total being 193 as previously mentioned.
Two teams are left, fighting for (or rather against) the red lantern. And it's actually a tie! Both Assa Abloy and Ekoi ended up with a measly 123 points, right at the end of the table.
Assa surely put some hopes in Abdul Halil, but the Tour de France stage was just a tad too big for him. He got one Top 5 result - 4th place on the Champs-Elysées. And he got 38 points, which is the team's highest score.
O'Connor got a Top 100, Renard got 5 points from the KoM standings after stage 2 - that's it. 123 points for Assa.
Ekoi didn't even get a stage Top 5. But they got two 7th places from Pinot on stages 12 and 13, plus 38th place in GC - 43 points for the Frenchman. Garibian just made the Top 100 as well, and that's the 123 points we've mentioned before.
A lot of text, once again - but no numbers, as you'll find them in the TdF discussion thread. And in the monthly table right below.
But before showing you the numbers, let's talk about it, as usual.
With 3rd place in the "others" block and the highest score in the Tour, it's pretty obvious that Tinkoff are the July winners! And they didn't just narrowly win the month - I'd say they dominated it! With a total of 1,799 points scored in 28 RDs, they get a PpRD of more than 64 - definitely an awesome performance! And probably not the most expected one.
More expected are Moser in 2nd place, even though with Kudus' Tour win 1st might also have been possible with some better stage results. It's 1,442 points for the Czech team, followed by the PHL-led Evonik squad totalling 1,260 points. Their "others" block wasn't good, but that's not overly surprising given that they just had one flat classic.
In the end, it was close for the final podium spot, with Cedevita - #4 in the Tour - scoring well in Slovenia, and totalling 1,226 points this month. Just 34 less than Evonik - however with a clearly worse PpRD given teh 5 additional RDs compared to Evonik.
It's then a 260 points gap down to the final Top 5 team, which is Aker! A strong Tour paired with the Riga win got them 966 points, which is 6 points more than King Power with their huge Slovenia and decent TdF scoring.
MOL also are pretty close with 913 points, almost all of which come from the Tour. It's only 125 points further down that we find the next team, with Lidl showing a great sign of life - just in time or too late?
EA Vesuvio were the only team scoring more points in the "other" races (Slovenia to be precise) than in the Tour - which mainly is a sign for really big points in Slovenia, though. 761 points for the Luxembourgers. The Pumas as the final Top 10 team did a bit better in the Tour and a bit worse in Slovenia, being 17 points down in the end.
Just outside the Top 10 are ZARA with 705 points, thanks to a strong Tour of Slovenia. Jura were a tad stronger in France, but clearly weaker in Slovenia, and end up exactly 100 points down.
Polar's 580 points have them in 13th place, followed by Fastned and Gazelle who basically have their Tour score. Fastned got 4 points from a PTHC classic, Gazelle none. So it's 564 vs. 546 in the formers' favour.
Carlsberg aren't too far off with 502 points, but they're actually closer to Oxxo and Rabobank right behind them, with 487 and 482 points respectively. The latter duo will surely be disappointed after this month, with Rabobank having had a bad Tour with Grosu and Oxxo not having scored much in Slovenia.
The next teams are another 100 points down, and while Grieg can be more or less happy with their Slovenia scoring, the weak Tour definitely pulls them down here. Similar for cycleYorkshire, who did very well in Philadelphia, but not in France. 383 and 363 points for these two teams.
Xero had an OK-ish Tour score, but didn't race otherwise, so they're left with their 354 points.
And at the bottom, nothing fundamentally new, with Assa scoring only 245 points. With 122 vs. 123, their "other" races almost outscored the Tour points as well, but only just.
Definitely enough words for now, here are the facts:
Pos
Team
w/o TdF
TdF
Total
RD
PpRD
1
Tinkoff Team - La Datcha
314
1485
1799
28
64.25
2
Moser - Sygic
111
1331
1442
25
57.68
3
Evonik - ELKO
29
1231
1260
23
54.78
4
Cedevita
203
1023
1226
28
43.79
5
Aker - MOT
175
791
966
23
42.00
6
King Power
333
627
960
26
36.92
7
MOL Cycling Team
26
887
913
23
39.70
8
Lidl Cycling
123
663
786
28
28.07
9
EA Vesuvio
389
372
761
26
29.27
10
Team Puma - SAP
205
539
744
26
28.62
11
ZARA - Irizar
171
534
705
28
25.18
12
Jura GIANTS
58
547
605
26
23.27
13
Polar
80
500
580
28
20.71
14
Fastned
4
560
564
23
24.52
15
Gazelle
0
546
546
23
23.74
16
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
45
457
502
25
20.08
17
Oxxo - Frisby
83
404
487
28
17.39
18
Rabobank
96
386
482
23
20.96
19
Grieg-Maersk
156
227
383
26
14.73
20
cycleYorkshire
170
193
363
28
12.96
21
Xero Racing
0
354
354
21
16.86
22
Assa Abloy
122
123
245
28
8.75
Full Ranking
The Tour mostly didn't cause major shakeups - at least not as many as I might have expected. The biggest winners were the TdF Top 3 scoring teams, gaining 7, 6 and 6 spots - we'll find out the details. Three teams lost 4 spots, which was the biggest move in the other direction.
At the top, we still have Gazelle, though. Their month clearly wasn't outstanding - 15th place, 13th PpRD. 6,793 points scored so far, projected to end up with 7,501, still well on track for the title. Aren't they?
Wait a second! Because in 2nd place, we now have the month's biggest winners, Tinkoff! And the gap is just 57 points, with the Russians having 6 additional race days to spend - and hence now have the highest PpRD of the division with 42.9! They're projected to end up 200 points clear of Gazelle - can they indeed get the title this year?
Let's take a look at their remaining schedules. Tinkoff will race in Germany, where they should get some good depth scoring - and if their sprinters exceed expectations once again, it could be a big race. Arenberg shouldn't be the best race for Gazelle, then. East Midlands might favour Tinkoff thanks to the depth, wheras Ras Tailteann could go either way for them. The big unknown is ToNE, where anything could happen.
Tinkoff then have Batenkill, whereas Gazelle has Rheden - no direct duel, but again, depth might favour the Russians if Teunissen can't get a huge individual result. And then it's just Japan Cup and Lombardia left for both - where Gazelle will likely have an advantage given how the hills panned out so far.
So all in all, impossible to predict which team will end up on top, with both having their chances of doing well - but by now I wouldn't be overly surprised to see Tinkoff keeping the momentum going and cruising to the title!
Let's move on in the rankings. While the Top 2 seem to be out of reach, the final podium spot is still very much up for grabs! Polar are in the best position, currently holding onto that spot with 6,297 points. Their main hopes for big points probably are on Mullen's shoulders, as he should do well in Germany - and probably Philipsen as well.
Evonik did have a good TdF, but not a great one. They moved up from 10th to 4th, but with 6,133 points are still 164 off the podium. Balkans should be a huge source of points, and who knows, maybe MAL can win Lombardia? Polanc surely wants to score some more good points as well.
In 5th place, just 12 points behind Evonik, we have the final team above 40 PpRD - and given that fact, King Power should actually be the favourites for 3rd place. Mano should net them some good points in Germany, and then it's up to Gidich to score big in the hills. Tiller and Salzmann could also get some solid points on the cobbles - so 3rd could be doable, but going higher up seems unlikely given the Top 2's possible lineups.
Will another team be able to still claim a Top 5 spot? Aker aren't that far off at least. It's 6,063 points for them, 58 less than King Power. But they've done 11 RDs more. However, if they use their remaining RDs well - in particular the hills have quite some potential - who knows where their journey may end up...
As for Puma, I'm actually pretty surprised they're still that high up in the rankings, with 7th place. But Kämna just proved his worth in Slovenia, and both Madouas and Kanter did well in the TdF. They've still got quite some races left, but they'll miss Ganna in Deutschland, and it remains to be seen whether their climbers/puncheurs are strong enough to make an impact in Balkans. They'll definitely be among the top contenders in Lombardia, though, beware!
It's then a 350 points gap down to cycleYorkshire in 4th, which is quite a lot at this point of the season. The Brits dropped from 4th to 8th and hence are among the biggest losers. They'll be hoping to get some depth points in Germany this month, and stage points from Cullaigh. Who should also be a strong contender in Ras Tailteann, which might bring them closer to the other teams again. And Yates surely wants to get some big results at the end of the year as well?
However, the next team is one that potentially has even more firepower - I just say: Areruya. He surely must be back to defend his Balkans title, and he'll also target the end-of-season hills. And they have Pidcock who must be among the top contenders in ToNE, he's just the kind of crazy rider it takes to succeed there. So while they (expectedly) lost 4 spots this month, they should be among the stronger teams in the final months of the year - maybe not in August though, "thanks" to Ganna not being in Germany.
Carlsberg round off the Top 10, trailing Xero by just 10 points, totalling 5,458 currently. They will probably mainly be targetting the ToNE with Per, who is a pretty good allrounder. Otherwise, Aranburu for the hills - and AKA for Ras Tailteann?
The 3rd team in a batch of three within just 36 points is Fastned! The Dutchmen had a great Tour, mainly by Cras, and managed to hold onto their 11th place. While keeping a decent gap to the second half of the table. Vansevenant will likely be looking forward to ToNE as well, where he already did well last year. Balkans could also suit them, and the hills at the end of the year are surely Vansevenant terrain again.
It's then a gap of almost 200 points down to 12th place, where we find Jura. The Swiss were already 12th by the end of June and managed to keep their spot mainly thanks to Groves' Maillot Vert. With Küng, they also have a rider who should like ToNE, and otherwise Schmid will look forward to some more hills. With 5,258 points, they're currently looking rather safe - but it's still here that the relegation fight actually starts! So basically every team in the lower half could still relegate depending on how things go - even though it's more likely the teams from 14th on downwards who really might be in danger.
So Moser in 13th - the 3rd big movers by gaining 6 spots - should be safe, too. In particular given that their 5,159 points are already more than what was needed to stay up in the two years since the race day reduction. But they honestly don't have many big obvious scoring opportunities left. Kudus should compete in Lombardia, but otherwise? Gaviria is done for the season and will miss out on Ras Tailteann. There's no big cobbler, no big TTer, no big puncheur - will they still pick up enough points to stay up?
Next up are Oxxo in 14th place, totalling 5,030 points. However, they do have a rider for most remaining races, with ToNE being the big unknown. If Zmorka could take a podium in Germany, this would give them a lot of air to breathe - and Higuita should also be able to get some more points. So should Halvorsen. Given their scoring potential on most terrains, they should be able to stay up. But who knows...
Rounding out the Top 15 are Cedevita, jumping up from 18th place. While they're still not safe yet, they must feel a little more comfortable now after TdF and Slovenia. Germany should also net them a good couple of points. However, after that it could indeed be a pretty rough final races. Siric should be one of their key riders, in particular for ToNE - but the hills at the end of the year aren't their main strength...
One of the issues of the aforementioned teams is that in 16th place we have EA Vesuvio. And it's pretty sure that they'll score big in Germany, and likely in Arenberg as well. Balkans might not be their best bet, but Mohoric could definitely get some important points in the hills as well. Still, could it be that the Luxembourgers relegate? I don't think it's too likely, but definitely still possible - Wirtgen already had a couple of bad performances, and if he has another one...
17th place is the final safe one. And it's currently taken by Rabobank. Who should have been moving up instead of down, but Grosu let them down. So, what's left for the end of the year? Apart from the mandatory races, only climbing. Balkans, GP Cyclistes, Japan Cup, Lombardia. He only has 9 RDs left, though, so someone else will need to jump in. Maybe Gerts, who could get them crucial points in East Midlands anyway, and potentially in ToNE, too? Or Champoussin, who disappointed in his home GT? They'll need to find solutions, but at least they're used to this situation...
So, the bottom 5 teams are left. The bad news for them is that the gap to Rabobank is more than 100 points already - at least for two of them. For the other three, I personally don't see any more realistic hope.
And to be honest, MOL might also have a hard time. They're currently projected 250 points behind safety and definitely will need something special. Scotson in Arenberg could work out, as it did last year. The cobbles in East Midlands, ToNE and Rheden? Altur needs some more great results! And then some more hills for Ardila - there can be a path to success, sure, but with just 17 RDs lef they'll need everyone to perform!
Which obviously is true for Grieg, too. The Danes are 4 points behind MOL, 4,730 vs. 4,734. With Germany and Arenberg this month, they should have some decent chances to move out of the relegation zone - and Pedersen then should do well in East Midlands and Rheden. ToNE is the biggest question mark for them - the end-of-year hills aren't really, as they already know they normally don't have a big scorer for these.
The big question for these two teams will be how well Rabobank perform in the final months. Because catching EA Vesuvio, who already are almost 150 points further up, or even Cedevita and Oxxo another 50 points away, will take some great effort. It's not impossible, but not too likely, either.
And then, we have the bottom 3. I wrote I don't really have any more hope for them. Why? Because of the gap to safety. It's 749 points and more. That's a fact, not a pleasant one for the teams down here.
The highest ranked of them are ZARA in 20th place, with 4,089 points. They did actually have a pretty good month - but given that we also had the likes of MOL, Cedevita or Moser down here - with Haig, Pogacar and Kudus - it's not a surprise that they couldn't really get closer to safety. All they can do is hope for some truly amazing results, like Cosnefroy defending his ToNE title - some more similar results would be needed though!
Lidl have handed over the red lantern - by a big margin actually - after finally having a really good month. Or at least a really good Tour. But with 3,907 points, it's more than 900 points to safety already. Even though I love their depth approach, I can't see a path to success here.
In last place, we now have Assa Abloy, after a really bad month. They only scored 3,433 points so far, almost 500 points less than Lidl. Scoring more than 1,400 points more than Rabobank in the final months looks pretty much impossible.
In the last two years, the final safe team scored 5,109 points. In 2022, that was Huski, and last year ZARA. I could however imagine that this score isn't enough to stay up this year - but we'll find out in 3 months. If this again is the threshold, all teams down to Moser should be safe - we'll see.
For now, enjoy the final update of the year including a GT (at least for PT teams):
There was no change in the first two positions, as expected. Silvio Herklotz still easily leads the standings with 2,427 points, and now after all the GTs are done there's definitely no more doubt that he'll win the standings once again.
Egan Bernal is still sitting in 2nd place with 1,970 points. And currently it doesn't look like he'll be threatened. Definitely not by Fernando Gaviria, who has used up all of his 35 race days, ending up with 1,683 points.
Lachlan Morton lost his 3rd place to Gaviria - by a mere 10 points. Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier then rounds off the Top 5, making a big jump from 38th to 5th - he was surely hoping to end up at least 3rd.
Merhawi Kudus made an even bigger jump, from 77th to 6th, and now totals 1,541 points. Just 56 less than PHL. Can he overtake him in the final race of the year?
Tom Wirtgen made some good progress in Slovenia, moving up from 12th to 7th, having 1,416 points. With Germany and Arenberg coming up, he'll likely seal his Top 10 finish - maybe even a Top 5? Or a podium?
Joseph Areruya slipped down from 5th to 8th now, and will still have to wait until next month to claim back a few spots. With his 1,358 points already scored, it's not excluded he'll also mount a podium challenge - it's actually even rather likely!
Alexey Lutsenko also lost 3 spots, still trailing Areruya by 47 points. All of Mauri Vansevenant, Thomas Pidcock and Mads Pedersen also dropped 3 spots, the former being the final Top 10 rider now, the latter two dropping out for the moment. Dombrowski even fell 4 spots, from 10th to 14th.
In terms of improvers, the two biggest names were already mentioned with PHL and Kudus. Pogacar also made a good jump, from 32nd to 13th. And Sivakov even jumped up from 51st to 19th. Outside the Top 20, we definitely have to mention Haig (69 -> 24), and Groves (42 -> 29) also gained more than 10 places.
That's it for now. In the next month, we've got some races for the TTers, the sprinters and the cobblers - the present and the future ones! But let's not look ahead too much, as the present is right here:
Thank you again for the writing, Fabianski! Huge work, and very enjoyable to read.
Very good update for us! Obviously a great Tour with AHJ and Peak being our heroes. We are just about in contention for a top 5 finish now, but it also looks difficult to catch any of the teams ahead of us. Polar has been great all year, but might be our best chance seeing the schedule left. Though, there is a lot of teams with great races left just behind us, so right now it feels a very long way from a top 5. A top 10 is probably the most realistic goal for the remaining races.
Very happy to see our depth in the top 100 individual ranking with 7 riders. Hopefully something to build on for the future!
Sad to see Assa, Lidl and ZARA at the bottom with such gaps. Feels over for them, unfortunately. Would definitely be quite a comeback if one of them gets back in contention for survival.
Edited by ember on 06-04-2025 07:07
Indeed that is a HUGE amount of work. It’s absolutely wonderful to read through it all. Even when not in the division, I always take the time to read your updates across all divisions. It’s really a sublime piece of work!
Not a great month for us, but to be in the top 10 as late as August is something we couldn't possibly have imagined early in the year, so I'll take it. The 1,000 point season from Hugh Carthy certainly is the difference maker for us this year. To know we're fully safe this early is phenomenal.
I don't think it's impossible that we manage to stay in the top 10 with what's left, though it's an optimistic goal. We actually have a decent number of Per race days left with East Midlands, TONE and Battenkill. TONE will be the difference maker I think, depending on if Per is featured or irrelevant. We also have AKA's final maxed race coming up in Ireland. Would love to see a swan song from him.
Thanks for the update!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Yikes, that's not looking very good. We've been getting nothing out of the GTs and that's really showing now. And even when we have for example Würtz scoring, the depth is lacking at the moment. We might creep out of the drop zone in Deutschland now and we have some good races to look forward to, but we need to take every chance we get now if we want to stay up.
Sadly, for our team it doesnt look so good. We have some more races and hopes left, but at this time i give a 80 vs 20 that we go down. I some plans for that case too, but prefer to stay up
A very good TDF for us even though it felt like Pogacar wasn't at his best and we added some solid points in Slovenia. I can't complain where we are in the standings at the moment given where we were a month ago. I do think the teams below us have better scoring races remaining so we need to find more good results if we're gonna squeeze in another season in PT.
With Aular, they had a decent yet not top-level GC contender. Top 10 was probably the dream, 13th place the reality. And with 135 points, he scored only 15 points from stage results, just showing how strong the competition was.
Can't disagree with this (final) line, though. Top-10 wasn't just a dream but a very realistic outcome, together with some ok stage results. The AI simply disregarded Aular the whole time, and except for one good stage it also made some not superb decisions concerning Lopez Nolasco. Our 78/78 sprinter scored like three points in total, making this three GT's in a row where we vastly underperform our realistic goal.
Adding to that some other quite unlucky moments and bad AI decisions, like also in Slovenia, means we're now still very much in relegation danger, whereas with just a normal amount of AI, not even luck, we'd be in a safe position by now.
Think the times one of the riders 'clearly' outperforms have been rather invisible this season, with the biggest outlier probably being Halvorsen 5th in Qatar. But the rest of his sprinting season lately definitely has been making up for that in the other way anyway
Hopefully our riders don't do super crazy stuff from here on and perform on par. Then I have good hope of staying in, but that's what I've been saying for the last couple of months now.
Thanks for another great rankings update, Fabianski! I think you described my tour quite well. In the end it's like all season basically, the result feels disappointing and I definitely expected more but somehow the scoring is still kind of decent.
However, I would enjoy the racing more if we would have some standout results. McNulty's stage win in Slovenia was only the second at all this season. I am definitely hoping that at least Gidich will be able to add another in the last part of the season. He will have some opportunities for that!
It totally escaped me how good of a tour tinkoff had. I noticed the sprint stages but didnt connect the dots. Crazy to see them still in the title fight.
For us the gap to the top seems too large to play a proper role. We are close enough that we can open a big "what if" discussion but for now, we have to make sure that we get the top 5 (?) Sponsor goal.
Very close fight on the final 2 relegation spots. A lot of teams that can still be drawn in there. Should make for an intriguing final.
Thanks for another wonderful update. Love them! (But please dont feel the pressure to always make them this monstruous if you are short on time. Simple tables without any text would already be appreciated as well)
We did poorly in France, not a surprise at all but somehow 2 teams managed worse
As a result, we've fallen down the rankings somewhat and sit 8th, a very good season by all accounts but we really need to keep up with some of the teams around us, I really don't want to fail our Top 10 rankings goal for yet another year!
Morton still has Balkans to ride which is a risk but hopefully he still scores well enough and we still have Yates and Romo to an extent to cover the hill classics that remain. Our only worry is that yet again we don't have a cobbler so ToNE and East Midlands will be close to 0 pointers so I feel we should be looking down not up.
John St Ledger in Team Bunzl-Centrica and Team U25
Oh wow! I did see that Tinkoff was having a good Tour, but I didn't realise it was THAT good. They are actually favourites for the title now, being 200 projected points ahead and scoring chances in the remaining team schedules looking more or less equal.
King Power and Polar are also still close in terms of PpRD.
To win the title we will need some outstanding performances from our cobblers and puncheurs. Teunissen will need to step up big time.
It totally escaped me how good of a tour tinkoff had. I noticed the sprint stages but didnt connect the dots. Crazy to see them still in the title fight.
Oh wow! I did see that Tinkoff was having a good Tour, but I didn't realise it was THAT good. They are actually favourites for the title now, being 200 projected points ahead and scoring chances in the remaining team schedules looking more or less equal.
Really suprised to see Tinkoff getting that many points from TdF, did not expect this. Should be an exciting fight for the title!
I was just as surprised as you when I looked at the updated table. But I completely underestimated Banaszek's score I guess (just 19 days in Green are 190 points, plus the 160 for the stage wins, and so on), and Mamykin taking 11th obviously was huge as well. Surprising, but all correct
I can obviously be happy with where my team currently stands, even though the Top 10 team standings goal - which I considered completely unrealistic - is probably out of reach by now. Staying up would already be a big success, and Groves obviously contributed big time so far. He's not been very consistent this year, but 2 great races brought great scoring.
Hoping to hold onto the Top 15, but with Cedevita, Oxxo, Vesuvio, Grieg behind us that won't be easy...
First off in Slovenia, we finally did see Kämna perform pretty well, with a solid p7 overall thanks to a decent TTT and good legs on the (admittedly rather easy) hilly stages.
Stork taking 12th and Cemazar even winning the U25 jersey added to a very good race for Puma.
And then the Tour de France, where we went with stage hunting in mind, and surprisingly, stage hunting we did!
I was lowkey hoping for our two best non-Herklotz riders to repeat some of their earlier success, particularly Madouas who always seems to like GTs if we think back to his KoM+U25 wins at the Vuelta while unmaxed.
But to get a total of six stage podiums, a stage win resulting in a day in the maillot jaune, and to have Kanter lead on the Champs-Elysées with mere meters to go and still with a shot to win green...that was a special race all-around!
Big props to Madouas for his great showings on the hilly stages culminating in that deserved sprint win after already coming so close the days before, and while Kanter had ups and downs throughout the season so far, he definitely delivered amazing consistency here.
There could be complaints lodged against Zimmermann and Zwiehoff for basically doing nothing all race long, but we far outscored our expectations here so that's easy to ignore.
We did drop slightly out of the running for a Top 5 spot with that bunch a few hundred points ahead, but that's nothing we weren't prepared for no matter how any previews looked.
Much appreciated Fab 
