Season 14

[Vos]

stage 2 Dauphiné ;
1º  Samsonov  --> victory ! 
6º  Beck ( free role )
WOW ! Very impressive and unexpected results. Both could not challenge the favorites.
The risky s1 tactics were good, and Miorlin did great by launching Samsonov into the s4 break away group of 5 isolated teamcaptains.

Samsonov after this stage victory :"This was a good revanche for the Giro where I just finished 10º GC,
what gave me a bitter aftertaste because I should have competed for Giro victory.
With this Dauphiné stage victory I made very clear that out of the many Giro contenders with a bitter aftertaste, I'm the best !"   

[Sjiz]

Good race Vos. Just make sure you dont have too many of them

Here my risk with Cook didnt pay off. Ablett did finish in group one so thats fine.

[Vos]

Good race Vos. Just make sure you dont have too many of them

Thanks, and I guess Miorlin disagreed with your advice.

stage 3 Dauphiné ;
3º  Miorlin
20º  Samsonov ( free role )

Miorlin keeps on surprising me ; even without TC bonus this silver climber achieves an excellent result.

SPORTLIFE comes closer to the nr 1 position in 1A ; now 166 points behind TeamRHB, who has an 1 point lead over CaptainOrange.
I guess it is up to Jørgensen ( transfered to TeamRHB, grrrr^^ ) to defend that enormous gap of 1 point.
What for sure is also interesting to me ; at the moment my team has a good gap of 1.026 points towards the nr 4.

[Sjiz]

The fight seems to be for the win in the division. With that in kind i had a bad stage. Ablett lost a lot of time. Hopefully he can gain some places in the last 2 stages.

I foresee a difficult suisse as well so we need to survive to keep our chances high.

[Sjiz]

This tour is not going too well unfortunately. We are in damage control mode. I cant wait for this one to end

[Vos]

stage 4 Dauphiné ;
18º  Szarvas
Not a good tactical race, but this very cheap new bought cyclist scored a few points, what is good enough.
I see that Samsonov maybe can score a few unexpected GC points despite finishing as 138º on 3:39" in this stage 4.
At the moment he is 18º GC, so my team has a goal to battle for in the final hillsprint stage.

[Vos]

stage 5 Dauphiné ;
34º  Samsonov  on 0:48"

s1 ; good help.
s2 ; despite being isolated, still in the front.
s3 ; an unexpected drop out of the front peleton that increased in numbers here.
s4 ; still in the 2nd group on now 0:23" together with helper Beck.
s5 ; a "disaster", he finished as 1st of the big 3rd group of 43.
Even helper Beck, with lower GV and no energy left, finished in the 3rd group. And Samsonov used 5 EP in s5.

Well, this weird and unlucky time loss of 28 seconds costed just 1 place in the final GC.
Final result ; Samsonov 15º GC.
I did not expect he could score a few GC points, he even had free roles in 3 out of the 5 stages.

Despite these extra points, the 2 main rival teams in 1A scored more GC points in this Dauphiné.
CaptainOrange takes the lead again in 1A after the 3º GC place of Hilton. And TeamRHB had 2 cyclists in the top 20 GC ; 10º and 18º.
SPORTLIFE is now 423 and 309 points behind these 2 teams. I assume that the battle will continue in the Tour de Suisse.

[Sjiz]

2 good stages, 2 bad stages and a really good stage. Unfortunately that didnt result in many places, still hot one that was needed for my sponsor. We have given Captain his first place back, for now, and will proceed with another difficult tour.

In other news: last night our team foight hard in the cup and new arrival Zars took the win. We are through to the semi finals and have to fight a pure hill stage against Azerit. It will be a battle between Aguado and Verbeek. Lets see if we can reach the finals.

[Vos]

   selection SPORTLIFE

In this season 14 calendar it is obvious that the mountain competition will be huge and fully prepared in this TdS and the upcoming TdF.
Also SPORTLIFE is one of the many teams that tries to compete in the mountain stages.

Basov gets the backnumber that ends on 1 because he has climbTT as extra,
and maybe he can surprise by scoring a few GC points despite he cannot sprint and has a very low hills skill.
Basov has a good palmares in the Tour de Suisse, and he even has 2 CFF records of TdS stages, including the climbTT in stage 3.
But I assume there are many better specialists for stage 3 by now.
Also in the normal mountain stages the competition is much better than in the past.
For example Basov cannot challenge the favorites of stage 1, although this is not something new, also in the past this was often the case.

The young Nyheim is the best climber of my team, but most likely I will go for Basov as teamcaptain. Nyheim gets his chances in the TdF.

Smith is the nr 1 climbTT specialist of this game, but with his very low downhill he is not so suited for this climbTT stage ( Basov is better ).
But I expect that Smith can score a nice amount of points in this only mountain time trial of season 14, probably even outside the top10.
Also next season he is not lucky with just 2 climbTT stages in little tours ( he is not suited for the TdF HFFMM TTstage ),
but that is already much better than this season 14. And those 2 stages have no downhill section in it, so he should be 1st favorite twice.
Hopefully there will be for the 1st time a climbTT as world championship TT in season 16. But perhaps a climbTT will never happen as WC TT.

This TdS selection was not complete, so at the last moment good old Miorlin is added as extra helper in the first mountain sections.

The maybe difficult goal in this Tour de Suisse = score more points than 1A rival teams CaptainOrange and TeamRHB. 

021 Basov ( 31 ), climb + climbTT
022 Nyheim ( 25 ), climb
023 Smith ( 27 ), climbTT
024 Kristóf ( 32 ), climbhills
025 Miorlin ( 32 ), climb

Good luck everyone ! 

[Vos]

stage 1 Suisse ;
6º  Nyheim
9º  Basov ( free role )
Too many tactical doubts/too many changes of tactics often results in a tactical bad race, also the case in this windy stage 1.
Probably also a wrong strategic choice to make a last minute change of teamcaptain, because Nyheim could not follow helper Miorlin in s2.
And there were many more tactical issues/failures. But despite a very bad race, the results are not bad and a good amount of points.

[Sjiz]

Logins had a terrible moment for a breakdown in s4. That cost him a top 10 place for sure. Loinaz and Jobet stayed together the entire race but i fear that Loinaz is not good enough for his tour.

[Vos]

stage 2 Suisse ;
7º  Miorlin ( free role )
25º  Basov  on 0:45"
26º  Nyheim ( free role )

It seems I'm making the wrong strategic decisions in this Tour de Suisse.
Probably Basov could finish on 0:00" with Miorlin as helper.
And in stage 1 probably Basov could have finished 26 seconds sooner if he would have been the teamcaptain.
With the right strategic decisions Basov could have been split 2ºGC on 0:06" right now ( instead of 11ºGC on already 1:17" ).

Basov can win time in the time trial, so perhaps this is a missed opportunity for a good amount of GC points.
But also a possibillity that he loses a few minutes too much in the climbhills stage, and these strategic failures do not matter much.

Anyway, Miorlin surprised me again with a very good stage result, and SPORTLIFE comes a little closer to the nrs 1 and 2 in 1A.
Although, without GC points in this Tour de Suisse, battling for the 1A championship seems out of reach.
Maybe out of reach anyway, because in the Tour de France my team has no GC contender.
And CaptainOrange has Palmer ( TC = TdS + TdF ) and Hilton ( TC = Vuelta ), the silver and golden bike winners of previous season.
( their TC periods are just my suspicions )

But in CFF there is always something to battle for ; 
finishing on the final 1A podium would already be great, and beating TeamRHB in the battle for the 2nd place would be even more great.^^
But for now ; the top 3 in 1A is really close, ( in theory ) it is a fierce battle for the 1A championship right now.
If Basov does great in the upcoming 2 stages, SPORTLIFE can take the temporary lead in 1A. Just to make the rival teams sweat.

[Sjiz]

It is very close right now. It hasnt been this close in 1s between the top 3 teams at this stage in the season for a long time. All 3 of us can win, we all have some good races to look forward to.

Loinaz did well, I changed his tactic and that ensured him a place in the first group. Unfortunately, Cook didnt do as well and lost contact from the start.

In Suisse there may be more possibilities for Loinaz then i thought. He is currently only 28 seconds removed from 4th place and most riders in front of him dont have a tt or hill icon. We will see tonight. Another big battle in the mountains is scheduled.

[Sjiz]

finishing on the final 1A podium would already be great, and beating TeamRHB in the battle for the 2nd place would be even more great.^^

 

For me the goal is the same: i want to finish top 3. Of course i will go for the win if theres a chance but i guess that wont change how i race. I need to do everything just to make the top 3 and maybe thats good enough for the win. We will see. Right now i think Captain is still favourite. His two stars have their main goals in front of them. For me i know a lot more once the Tour is over. I have no idea if Skogstad will be good enough in the mountains. For the mountainclassics, BBT, Vuelta, WC TT and road i have a lot better idea how i can perform.

The good thing is: we can still win everything. We are in the semi-finals of the cup, close to the lead in 1a and have a rider on top of the individual standings (although i think that Pires will win that one, but hey. So far, so good).

[Vos]

I agree with your text, Sjiz.
And for sure my main goal is to finish top 3, after last season where my team missed out a podiumplace by just 32 ( ! ) points.

At the moment it seems to look very good, only one team can be a podium rival and no other teams :
My team has a big gap of 1.024 points towards Valderend. And Valderend has a big gap of 1.020 points towards the nr 5.
But that good rival team is also doing great this season and the situation can change.

For now that gap is big enough to be focussed on trying to beat the current numbers 1 and 2.
That will not be easy, for example Verbeek likes a rainy Lisbon.
But first things first, let's hope there will be a good TdS mountain stage 3 in a few minutes.
Every point can be worthfull, that is the leason I learned from previous season.