A total of 8 races were potentially on a CT team's schedule this month - with 3 of them however being HC races with just a couple of open spots (and not many teams daring to apply). Still, with 4 stage races and classics each - including the end-of-month clash in the HC hills - it was a pretty big month of racing, so let's dive into the details!
Starting right on the first day of the month, the C1 Tour de Vineyards is a good option for CT teams, given a PTHC clash for about half of the PCT teams. Moreover, Vineyards has a TTT, whereas most PCT teams opted for sending their best TTers to Germany - so some good scores incoming for CT?
At least two teams indeed scored really well. Most of all definitely Trans, who had a great mountain stage with Primozic taking 3rd place on day 3, and both Knox and Munoz getting a Top 15. Thanks to a pretty solid TTT performance, Primozic was able to defend his 3rd place in GC, with Knox and Munoz ending up 12th and 13th. A really great result, complemented by 3rd place in the team standings! A performance that was worth 115 points, the 3rd best C1 score for a CT team this year!
Spark was long awaiting a great result from Bennett - and now the finally got it! Well, partly actually - the mountain stage was big, with the Kiwi ending up a clear 2nd, but the dreaded TTT made him drop down to 5th in the final GC. Still, stage and GC results plus 2nd in KoM got him 82 points, with Rodriguez adding 2 points for 4th in U25. So that's 84 points for Spark, who definitely needed this result to get closer to the promotion spots!
Promotion is also Genii's big goal, and they did a good job for at least staying in the fight. The biggest chunk of their points was scored by one rider - not a climber, not a sprinter, but a puncheur! KHJ used the bumpy stage 4 to claim 3rd in the KoM standings - but more importantly the stage win with the green jersey on top of that! 52 points for him, with Hagen getting some points for 23rd in GC, and Theorpanous one point for 8th in KoM. All in all, 57 points for Genii.
Next up, yet another stage race for the climbers including a TTT. This time at C2 level, and even completely without nasty PCT competitors. Just 16 CT teams, with all but 2 participating. The formula is a TTT followed by a decisive mountain stage and a traditional breakaway stage - that's the Giro del Trentino.
Of course, you all know who came out on top. There's just one climber who wins them all, and that's obviously Jorgenson. Newton Foundation did lose more than 20" in the TTT, but he easily gained that margin back on stage 2, where he cruised to a solo win. GC win, points win, U25 win, team standings win - just the KoM jersey missing this time. Still, that's a huge amount of 126 points scored in just 3 days. And that obviously wasn't enough. Elosegui finished 8th in GC, with Madrazo taking 13th. And Quinn adding a 3rd place in U25. 172 points for Newton Foundation, or more than 57 per race day. You see that in PT usually, not in CT. Domination.
Behind them, it was fairly close. The next 9 scores: 61, 60, 57, 53, 52, 52, 47, 46, 45. 9 teams within 16 points, a very balanced division, with Newton just riding two leagues higher at least in this race.
So, which teams do these numbers belong to? 61 is for Babymetal, with Gaspar creating THE upset of the race, taking 2nd in GC thanks to his stage 3 breakaway effort! Kawasaki got the team's only other point via U25 standings.
And 60 is for Euskotren, who finally, finally had a good race again. Thanks to 2nd place in the TTT, Iturria's 6th place on day 2 was enough to move him up to 2nd in GC - before dropping to 3rd behind Gaspar on the final day. 51 points for him, with 8 more being points for the great TTT lineup, and Agirrebeitia getting the final point from U25.
On the same day as Trentino, we had also the HC Post Danmark Rundt starting - with the Turtles being the lucky ones claiming the single free spot.
However, whereas their hopes were pretty high, they didn't play it well. Their decent TTers all lost time on the flat and hilly stages, and so they couldn't get many points. Tivani was their only rider being on the right side in every flat stage - but his TT skills were not quite enough for the Top 50, as he finished 54th. So his 5 points for getting 4th on stage 4 were all he got. And almost all the Turtles got, with just Obando adding a point for being 3rd in KoM after stage 2.
All in all, that's just 6 points for the Turtles, not really making their trip a worthwile one.
Back to C1 racing then, with one of the most spectacular races awaiting the riders - the legendary GP Kigali! Only one cobbled section on the course - but if it needs to be done 8 times, is about 2km long and includes a sharp hill, then that's still a race for the tough cobblers!
Zepuntke definitely is one of them, and he got one of his strongest results of the year by taking 4th place! 41 points for the German and his Würth team.
2nd place goes to Duvel - but not at all thanks to Van Lerberghe, who only finished 20th! Instead, Dewulf and Noppe created a pretty big surprise by taking 11th and 13th; being solid on the hills definitely helped them, whereas Van Lerberghe's speed on the cobbles didn't make a difference! 25 points for the Belgo-Chinese.
For once, Trans' cobblers didn't do a great job. The lap probably contained too much climbing for them. So Moulingui's 15th place was all they got, which was worth 8 points. Still enough for 3rd place among the CT teams, with none of the others getting more than 2 points.
From cobbled hills to hills without cobbles, from Rwanda to Russia - where we got the return of the GP Yekaterinburg, a race with a long tradition that was in hibernation since 2020. Now, it's back on the calendar, in the C2 category.
The profile made it pretty clear that it was one for the puncheurs who can also climb, and so it's not a huge surprise that Lyu took the win, perfectly timing his final dash to the line! The Chinese wasn't Duvel's only scorer, though, as Hermans had a huge race as well (given his lack of skills on longer climbs), finishing 7th. And even domestique Noppe managed to score, ending up 24th - making it a very strong C2 classic score of 68 points for Duvel!
But the thing about "puncheurs who can also climb" wasn't really a thing, actually, looking at the next riders. Maybe it's a seasonal thing then? I mean, the later in the season we are, the stronger Wackermann gets! Having won the final race of the year twice in a row, it's about time for him to wake up, and that's pretty much what he did. With 500m to go, he only was in 8th place, but then sprinted all the way up to 3rd! And the reason that this was enough for Euskotren to be the 2nd highest scoring team was their depth - with Pacher taking 13th place, Rodriguez 16th and Doubey 23rd. Which sums up to 41 points, another good race for the Basque team!
He looked like the sure winner even with just 200m to go - but Korosec apparently digged a little bit too deep to get into prime position, and then cracked pretty hard in the end. It's still 2nd place and 35 points for the Trans rider and his team, but he'll still be quite disappointed. At least it's another result that should keep his team going in the race for direct promotion.
The Tour du Maroc is one of the yearly highlights for the pure climbers, given the lack of TT stages. And even though CT climbers often struggle against the strong PCT competition, this year's startlist was pretty favourable for them. And if on top of that the best PCT riders underestimate their CT rivals, it can actually be a perfect race for the latter!
Which is exactly what happened. Bennett was anonymous on the first uphill stage, and then took 3rd place on the second one. Which wasn't enough for Barguil and Godoy to really have him on the radar - it's still inexplicable how they could let him ride away on stage 5! But he did, and he won the stage - and was gifted a decisive gap by the usually pretty lax timekeepers! It was enough for the Kiwi to get the GC lead - which he easily defended on the final day! 146 points for him, the 2nd highest individual score of the race. But to make it an even better race for Spark, Beltran got a co-win in the KoM standings! Schleck then added some GC points, whereas Rodriguez and Karatsivis scored in U25 - and Scott got a 4th and an 8th place in the two bunch sprints. 181 points for Spark!
However, it wasn't "just" Spark doing well. In total, we had 5 teams scoring 100+ points - and two of them were CT teams! The second one being Ethiopian Airlines with their GC captain triple-P. Penasa got two 5th places on stages 4 and 5, resulting in 4th place overall and 67 points! But the Africans actually even managed to get four Top 20 GC finishers, with Chamorro (15th), Grmay (17th) and Berhane (19th, plus 5th on stage 2) being the others besides Penasa! The team standings win - by over 4 minutes - is an obvious and well-deserved consequence of a massive team effort - rewarded with 109 points!
It was a far less spectacular, yet still pretty good scoring race for Genii. Bernard for once didn't go only for KoM points (he finished 3rd in KoM) - but he also got 3rd in a bunch sprint! Yeah, it was on that one completely crazy stage won by a neo-pro. And then he discovered his GC rider genes, doing in particular a great final mountain stage with 4th place, and finishing 9th overall! Ulysbayev in 14th also contributed some nice points, and Ahmad Zamri also got some for 26th place. Add some stage points for Robov, and you get 65 points for the Luxembourgers. 10 PpRD reached, job done.
So it's just the end-of-month hilly HC clash left. One more for the climbers among the puncheurs, one rather for the sprinters. Let's start with the former, Milano - Torino, with 3 CT participants.
Even though his best days are already a couple of years back, Beltran still managed to get a notable result in Italy, taking a good 11th place for Spark. And with Svab just sneaking inside the Top 30 as well, that's 27 points for the Kiwis.
Right behind Beltran, we had Lopez taking 12th place for Newton Foundation, which was worth 18th points, which also was the team's score. Hilcona failed to bring a decent puncheur - and failed to score.
The other race was the GP "Lugano" in Switzerland, where most of the climbing was in the first half of the race. And where a group of 14 finished together, fighting for the win - including one rider each of both participating CT teams!
The first was once again Korosec, who is having an absolute banger of a season! Sure, the profile suited his skillset - but many stronger puncheurs still didn't make the split. He did, and even fought for the win - and ended up with a fantastic 3rd place, a podium in an HC classic! 82 points for him - plus 7 for Govekar's 19th place, plus 5 for Pibernik's 21st place - a big score of 94 points for Trans!
Nikiema was trying to achieve something similar, but he couldn't create enough of a surprise by moving first, and subsequently droppped all the way down to 12th place, scoring 18 points. Thanks to Smit in 27th place, Simba Cement still scored 23 points - definitely not an awful outcome, either.
So, after all this racing, what do we get in terms of monthly rankings? Let's take a close look:
Finally, finally, it was a month just like Spark were dreaming of! The Kiwis really dominated - and in particular Bennett did, scoring well in Vineyards, Trentino and obviously Morocco! 353 points for Spark, thereof 280 by Bennett - this alone would've been enough to win the month! However - surprise, surprise - their 19.6 PpRD average is just the 2nd highest of the month - but it should still see them move up quite a lot!
They definitely won't get past Newton Foundation, though, and they almost certainly won't even at the end of the year. The Americans also had a great month - once again mostly thanks to Jorgenson, who dominated in Trentino. 262 points for them, and having spent 18 RDs just like Spark (actually sharing the exact same calendar), they're also clearly behind in terms of PpRD. But 14.6 is still a great value!
It was actually really, really close for 2nd place, with Trans ending up just 8 points short! The Slovenians had two outstandings races - Vineyards at the start of the month, and Lugano at the very end. Morocco and Trentino with just 1 point each are certainly at the other end of the emotional scale - but all in all, it's another big step closer towards promotion!
The next three teams are quite a bit further down already - more than 60 points behind Trans. Ethiopian Airlines are first, just missing out on the 200 points mark, with 193 points and the months' 5th best PpRD. Maroc was their standout race.
Genii scored decently everywhere, without getting the really huge results - but 179 points are rock solid. Duvel on the other hand - missing out on the Top 5 by just 10 points - seem to have found their mojo again, and the Yekaterinburg win in particular could turn out to be vital to their promotion challenge! 169 points for the beers team, just 24 behind Ethiopian Airlines.
It's then another 40 points jump down to the next teams, the "midfield", led by Simba Cement. It wasn't an outstanding month for them, but 7th place (with 127 points) is still pretty solid for a promotion contender. Euskadi are next with 118 points, but as they were among the most active teams, their PpRD isn't that good.
Würth's good Kigali result helps them get just above 100 points - 106 to be precise, with Euskotren's 101 points rounding off the Top 10. The Basque are the final team above 100 points - and actually the most efficient scorers, given that they just needed the 5 C2 RDs to get their points! A 20 PpRD average is an indication that their form is going up - as always at the end of the year it seems... Or just Wackermann's?
Rounding off the midfield are Babymetal and Gjensidige - and whereas that's a rather decent result for the former, it's definitely very bad news for the latter in the title fight.
In 13th place, we then have both Hilcona and the Turtles - the former needing just two classics for their score (thereof a zero-pointer, though...), and thus getting a good PpRD. The Turtles used up 15 RDs and have a PpRD of just 2.8 - definitely not good enough to get closer to their targets. Both teams scored 42 points by the way.
Race day usage is still very widespread, even by the end of August. There's a 29 RD difference between Zain's 97 and Ethiopian Airlines' 126 race days spent so far, so some teams are still hard to compare. Numbers will be much closer after the next month, though - but we'll obviously take a look at the current situation now!
And there's actually a new leader! After another strong month, Newton Foundation have taken the lead, and even with some margin. 1,507 points should easily be enough for promotion in a normal year - and even with several CT teams potentially getting a massive ToA score (including the Americans as well, though), it should be enough. The projected final score of 1,918 points is also looking good, and it's the highest projected number.
Gjensidige on the other hand lost all of their advantage and more after a weak month. The Norwegians are now 124 points down, totalling 1,383 points. They have 6 additional RDs to spend, but are currently projected roughly 50 points behind Newton - so the title race still seems to be wide open! Maybe the ToA, with both of them participating, will already be the decisive race?
In terms of PpRD, the Top 2 are 3 points and more above the rest. But #3 both in terms of points and PpRD are Trans, for whom it's really looking good to get back to PCT. 1,270 points scored by the Slovenians so far, but with 123 RDs already spent they won't be racing much anymore. Fortunately for them, the 4 next teams aren't participating in ToA either and won't make huge unexpected jumps.
Next up are Simba Cement, who also had a pretty decent month which was enough to hold onto 4th place. And with the 4th highest PpRD, so they're currently well on track, too. But with 1,103 points, they still need some good scoring, as that's a score that should definitely be within reach of quite some other teams.
Then we have Duvel and Genii, with the latter only being able to close the gap by 10 points this month. So the Belgians still hold the final automatic promotion spot, with 1,068 vs. 1,046 points. We're surely in for a great duel between these two teams - but both will need to score well in order to hold onto their good current placings!
There has not been much movement in the Top 6, with only Newton and Gjensidige swapping positions. So the two spots gained by Ethiopian Airlines actually is pretty good news for them! They're now in 7th place, and with 912 points they're just a little more than 150 points behind the Top 5. The bad news for them is that they only have 14 RDs left this year, though, so they'll need to use them well!
And then, the biggest winners of the month! Spark have made a huge leap towards their season goal, moving all the way up from 14th to 8th place! And, having spent only 102 RDs, they even have the 6th highest PpRD by now. They will race the ToA as well - which could well make or break their season... With 902 points, they're definitely not far away from the promotion spots anymore, but they'll need some more strong races to actually get there!
Team Würth lost one spot to Spark, now totalling 850 points. But what's worse for them is that they have much less racing left to do, and with 119 RDs already done their PpRD actually is just the 10th highest for now. Can they at least hold onto the Top 10?
The Top 10 isn't something Glanbia were targetting - they wanted to get back up to PCT. But even though they have ToA on their schedule, this will be tough to achieve, given their lack of proper GC riders. With 780 points, they're almost 300 points behind the promotion spots - they'd need an awesome ToA to close that gap!
Which holds even more for Euskotren, still sitting in 11th place, with 716 points. Even making the Top 10 won't be easy it seems. Which holds even more for the Turtles aud Euskadi, who both are close to Euskotren with 712 and 701 points respectively - but neither have many RDs left.
Instead, Zain-Omantel, dropping from 12th to 14th, are looking to overtake this duo again, at least according to projections. With 591 points, they're more than 100 points behind Euskadi, but well, some good results in "America" and that gap is gone.
Babymetal are another 100 points down, still sitting in 16th place. They will be in ToA as well, just like Hilcona and Air New Zealand, both staying in their current spots as well.
Yes, I have mentioned ToA very often now - the reason simply being that there's very limited participation this year, in particular with just 4 PCT teams being present. Which leaves a lot of points available for CT teams, so this year's participants could really strike gold, and I guess we can expect some 200+ scores by CT teams this year. But we'll see.
Otherwise, San Luis and Faso will be crucial races as well in September, and some teams probably are also hoping to get some good results in Amissa Bongo.
Another month, another stage race win by Matteo Jorgenson. However, the victory in Trentino was his final one of the year, as he's done racing. The question wasn't anymore whether he'd win the individual standings. The only open question was whether he'd beat Chiarello's outstanding 2023 score.
Yes, he did! Jorgenson scored 891 points this year, beating Chiarello's 853 from last year! Both clearly dominated the division - the difference was that Jorgenson was still U25 eligible, and these points were decisive in the end! Well done!
Another question was whether someone would reach even half of Jorgenson's points. The answer is: Yes! But it did take an awesome month by George Bennett to get there, with the Kiwi scoring 280 points this month alone - pretty impressive, given that he scored 198 points in the 7 months before! Bennett is done racing as well, so he'll end the season with 478 points - will it be enough to stay in 2nd place?
Rok Korosec might be the biggest surprise of the year! The Slovenian is incredibly consistent, and is doing well at all levels! He has even further moved up the standings - from 5th to 3rd, totalling 411 points. And it's not like he's done with the season yet, so we'll see where his journey ends...
Thymen Arensman lost one spot, but the Dutchman can still be pretty happy with 4th place overall - even though in particular the Trentino result wasn't overly satisfying. But he still managed to overtake Richard Carapaz, dropping from 2nd to 5th, and now trailing 314 vs. 331 points.
Brent van Moer lost 2 spots and still totals 308 points, but he should still have two target races left that could see him move up quite a bit. Dion Smith also lost a spot, despite scoring decently in Trentino. He should still have a race left (Britain?), so a Top 10 looks possible.
But the competition is fierce. Kristian Haugaard Jensen should also have some races to look forward to, after having scored surprisingly well in Vineyards this month already - allowing him to hold onto 8th place.
Ruben Zepuntke just managed to stay in 9th place with 262 points, but Julien Bernard - moving up from 15th to 10th - is trailing by just one point after great performances in August.
Dropping out of the Top 10 are Kennett (7 -> 11) and Kozhatayev (10 -> 14). Besides Bennett - gaining 10 spots - the most notable improvers in the Top 20 were Triple-P (26 -> 13) and Primozic (32 -> 18) - but with ToA offering so many points, we can expect some reshuffling by the end of next month!
Yeah, it's time to get that beast that is ToA out of the way - but pre-ToA, this is what we have:
That was an awesome month! Really great read as well Fabianski so thanks for that!
Happy with how that went but it’s not done. We need to finish the season strong and at least improving our PpRD or keeping it close if we want to promote. At least we have put ourselves in with a shot now!
Bennett moving to 2nd in the individual rankings is awesome to see as well! He had an incredible month! Now it’s up to the back up leaders! Really hoping for a strong ToA from Mudgway, Davila and Rodriguez. Fingers crossed!
Not really a bad month for us but far from being good too. Again we couldnt score as much as we wanted on the cobbles. Thats the story of our season, though we do good we dont do as good as we should. So far I was always calling out Zepuntke, but after all he is our best scorer (but with 200 pts more it was more like our plan). But another one we need to call out here is Nareklishvili as our second option and lets face it, 27 Pts is just not good at all. Also lets talk about Willi Willwohl who have done better in the last year.
Lets hope in the last 2months all of my team can regain some trust and confidence i had in them.
Think the top 3 is quite set for promotion right now. It is known that positions six and seven will also be going up for sure, so it's quite an open promotion battle right now.
After a hot start to the season, Duvel-Tsingtao has really cooled off but as you say, Fab, stabilised in the past couple of months. Really hoping to secure one of our team goals for the season and get a top 5 placing en-route to promotion, but this is proving very tricky with Genii and more breathing down our necks.
A few great scoring opportunities still to come for Van Lerberghe and Lyu/Hermans but Smith is all out of RDs. It seems the hill squad is peaking at the right time, so hopefully more to come, but this looks to be coming down the final race at Zuri Metzgete!
Thanks again to all the reporters and previewers throughout the season, y'all are the real heroes
Some mega scoring this month, congrats Spark, that's what was needed from Bennett and puts them right in the fight for top 7 with their raceday advantage as well.
A couple of disappointments this season, WURTH probably the main ones, but as Ezee said, Zepuntke himself has actually scored pretty well across the season, with Guerriro and Vanhoucke maybe depth hindering them.
Similar season for ourselves so far, though this month was far from a bad one with reasonable scoring in Maroc, considering we sent a weaker team. We are still lacking a 2nd leader, but that was a transfer issue and not something that could be controlled by the en,d though not sending our puncher squad to Russia was an "interesting" call.
Thankfully, our month this time is looking exceptional, and we should start to move up the rankings now to the end of the season how far we go depends on the last two weeks of TOA.
Have to say I didn't expect us to have done so well this month, C1 scoring always seems to take me by surprise a little bit.
Shaping up to be an interesting end to the season, but as we already had the fewest RDs left and just had an abysmal San Luis, I think those lurking behind are bound to overtake us. Still, if we manage to hang on to the top 10 I think we can be happy, fullfilling our standings goal and showing improvement as the season went on. Considering disbands we may still be in the race for promotion, but given the squad is basically a bunch of pensioners it would probably best to stay in CT and gun for the auto promotion spots next year.
Thanks for the nice write up Fab and good luck to everyone for the tail end of the season!
Well, my San Luis has been so-so and with only 15 RD remaining, I doubt that I'll get big of a score - Bernard only has Zuri left, while KHJ also has Tour of Britain (C1 race) in addition to Zuri. There's also the Herald Sun Tour where I have once again Barta as my main rider (+ the youngsters, Restrepo and Verona). And I have Tour du Faso, but at this point I expect nothing - my cobble squad has been attrocious.
Thanks for the report Fab - it's not all doom and gloom, but perhaps should be looking over my shoulder
Read this post a number of times today to see if there was anywhere I could find hope for our Turtles... alas there is not much. We love all of our remaining races - Amissa Bongo and Herald Sun likely to be decent results for us - and lots of hope for our guys in Tour de Faso although based on how many of the other cobbled races went maybe I should not have.
But our team tried an extra experiment this year and it has provided us results. Maybe not the results we hoped for (definitely not) but it told us a lot about our riders, how to use them and where we want to go in the future.
It has been a fun ride this year and overall a very fun season here in CT. Hoping to enjoy the final races and see many others riding the ups and downs of the final days.
Circling back to this now that I have time. Fantastic month for our team!
Using my own custom formula to produce a season rating, Jorgenson had the seventh best season in our team's history:
Last Name
First Name
Season
Division
Season Rating
Yates
Simon
2021
PT
86.12
Van Garderen
Tejay
2017
PCT
79.31
Tenorio
Justo
2020
PCT
79.16
Van Garderen
Tejay
2016
PT
76.58
Tenorio
Justo
2019
PCT
71.28
Abal
David
2014
PCT
65.43
Jorgenson
Matteo
2024
CT
62.18
Van Garderen
Tejay
2015
PT
62.08
Tenorio
Justo
2018
PT
49.42
Yates
Simon
2020
PCT
46.40
And the second best in terms of value if you factor in the wage he was making:
Last Name
First Name
Season
Division
Season Rating w/Wage
Yates
Simon
2021
PT
26.35
Jorgenson
Matteo
2024
CT
17.69
Yates
Simon
2020
PCT
16.20
Swift
Ben
2021
PT
13.16
Abal
David
2014
PCT
12.72
Van Garderen
Tejay
2016
PT
11.15
Garcia
Egoitz
2016
PT
9.26
Fraile
Omar
2019
PCT
8.71
Powless
Neilson
2023
PCT
7.07
Tenorio
Justo
2020
PCT
6.58
In terms of impact, can't be quantified. He had all the pressure on his shoulders to perform in every race he entered, and he delivered time and time again.
Jorgenson set a new team record with nine wins (5 GCs, 4 stage wins), along with six U25 wins, three green jerseys, two KoM, and two best teams. He swept all the jerseys at the Tour of Vancouver -- another first in our team's history.
He led by example and certainly has carried us back into the PCT division. A top 5 finish in the standings will also mark the first time in 13 seasons that we will achieve all five our team goals. Especially crazy when we hadn't achieved a single team goal since the 2020 season.
After back-to-back relegations, I can finally say that we have started to turn things around here with Jorgenson at the helm.
