Season 14

[Vos]

stage 3 Suisse ;
3º  Basov
12º  Nyheim ( free role )
Not a perfect race, but I'm satisfied with these very good results.

Now it is up to Basov in stage 4 to close the current small gap of 66 points towards TeamRHB.
Basov is even ranked as 2nd favorite, what is much better than I was hoping for.
Smith will score points too. Perhaps my predicted temporary 1A lead is possible, because CaptainOrange is just 118 points ahead.

[Sjiz]

Loinaz got a nice lightbulb next to his name. Unfortunately he was the lead of a large group with a bunch of GC guys. Tomorrow is the Tt and hillclimb. Lets see if and how much he can climb in the GC.

[Sjiz]

Is this tour over already?

[Vos]

stage 4 Suisse ;
2º  Basov
8º  Smith
Just 0:04" behind the much better Gabriele Tiblias ( 27, OphiukoCT ) who even finished with a mechanical breakdown, and in a CFF record.
Congrats with this well deserved stage victory, Ophiuko ! 

Excellent results of both SPORTLIFE cyclists, and now 2nd in 1A ; 130 points ahead of TeamRHB, and 44 points behind CaptainOrange.
It's extreme close in the top 3.

At the moment Basov is 3º GC on 0:33"
I really regret my strategic/tactical mistakes what very most likely costed 1:11" unnecessary time loss.
And maybe even added with the 0:07" of stage 3, because finishing on 0:00" was possible with perfect tactics.
Despite Basov is very bad in the final climbhills stage, it is already certain that these mistakes will cause missing out a lot of GC points.

[Sjiz]

A brilliant finish for Loinaz. I did not think it would be this good. But another great race of Loinaz. after 4 seasons i finally understand how to race him His second light bulb this tour. I think this is the best i could do with him. A good 7th place in the stage and a big jump to 7th in the GC as well. With that we are now well ahead of Vos in the standings. I dont see how he can be a threat anymore . This has also turned out to not be a terrible tour but one where we could minimise the damage. Captain has opened a gap again. Now we will see how Skogstad will do in the Tour.

[Vos]

Hahaha, my team is totally defeated now and an enormous big gap between our teams, I can forget about beating TeamRHB.
But without kidding, really well done with "Lightbulb Loinaz" in this Tour de Suisse, Sjiz.

stage 5 Suisse ;
114º  Basov  on 2:17"
Not a good race ( but maybe he could not do better ), what causes a drop to 9º GC. ( without mistakes he would have been 4º GC  )
Free role Kristóf was very dissapointing in this stage, he did not even score points.
And in retrospective it was a  mistake to give Nyheim a helper's role.
He was not good enough to help in s3, and in a free role he would have scored 40 (or 30) GC points instead of now zero points.

Without this last mistake my team would have been 2nd in 1A, now 3rd again with a gap of 12 points towards TeamRHB.
As expected, CaptainOrange has a big gap again due to his current silver bike winner.
And he even has the current golden bike winner in reserve for the Vuelta. I guess my main target is TeamRHB.
Unfortunately I have no GC contender in the Tour de France, so my team has to score many, many, many stage points.
But I'm already happy if I make much less mistakes than in this Tour de Suisse.

[Vos]

   selection SPORTLIFE

No GC ambition in this big tour. And even a 23yo climb talent had to be selected to complete my Tour de France team.
Hopefully a few good stage results and enough points to keep on battling for a 2nd place in 1A.

021 Basov ( 31 ), climb
022 Nyheim ( 25 ), climb
023 Majoros ( 32 ), flat-sprint
024 VanGroningen ( 32 ), cobble-sprint
025 Macannazi ( 23 ), climb

Good luck everyone ! 

[kirin]

Le Tour is about to start, and on azerite we hope we archieve a better result than in the last Giro. I think with that we will archieve the goal of staying another season in first division.
For doing so, we have selected this riders:

241: David Manuel Piñeiro     25     Leader
242: Roberto Carlos Nieto     28     Climb helper
243: Reinhardt Kahn     32     Cobblehill helper
244: Rene Kaspers     27     Sprint helper
245: Ilga Biba     25     Climb helper

Piñeiro has a great chance to archieve at least a podium spot on here. However, there are a lot of strong rivals like Pires and Palmer that will fiercely battle for the maillot jaune.

[Vos]

stage 1 TdF ;
2º  Basov
26º  Nyheim ( free role )

Exellent start of the Tour de France ! 
Because my climbers cannot challenge any favorites in this TdF, for example Basov is the nr 223 in the golden climb ranking.
The just 23yo Macannazi did a great helper's job by returning to the front peleton of 40 in dh-section 4.
A bit dissapointing that Nyheim could no do that, but probably logical due to his free role, low flat, low xp and the many excellent rival climbers.

[kirin]

Well i put Piñeiro as a domestique on the first stage, great start 

[ophiuko]

Just 0:04" behind the much better Gabriele Tiblias ( 27, OphiukoCT ) who even finished with a mechanical breakdown, and in a CFF record.
Congrats with this well deserved stage victory, Ophiuko ! 

Thanks Vos, Tiblias has 80 in downhill skill, so that made him perfect for this stage, which included a downhill section.

[Vos]

Basov was 2nd favorite, and he could not even challenge 1st favorite Tiblias in the climb time trial of the Tour de Suisse.
It shows the big difference in GV. Basov has climb TT as extra and he is not a real specialist with a TT skill of 79.
Good news for Tiblias ; it seems that he has no rivals in this specific climb TT stage with 1 dh section in it.
Maybe he does have rivals, but it is almost sure they are not riding in 1A because this was the only climb TT of the season.

[Vos]

stage 2 TdF ;
3º  Basov
The experimental and risky helper's tactic of Nyheim did not work. So it was up to the 23yo back up helper Macannazi.
And he showed he learned climbing from the best ( = the today sold Miorlin ), because he did an amazing helper's job.
He brought Basov even in the s3 break away group of just 4, what looked pretty cool ;
section 3 = 1x a too fast helper, 1x 1st favorite/later in the race the stage winner, and 2x SPORTLIFE, including a 23yo.

Basov finished solo as 3º, what is again a more than excellent result.
Hopefully also such a good result in the next well known mountain stage. And well known because Miorlin has the CFF record.

[Sjiz]

After 3 stages its clear that in the mountains Skogstad rides for a top20 place. He has been constant so far en the results have been decent. Right now he only lost 40 seconds on Palmer in the GC, 12 on Pires and 3 on Pineiro. So, its very close still. It will be very interesting to see who is the least worst on cobbles and sprint. Pineiro seems to be good on cobbles but not on sprint and Palmer, Pires and Skogstad look to be good on sprint, but not on cobbles. Then we have Menke who looks to be the 5th GC guy at 1:40 from Palmer. Right now i feel optimistic to be able to fight for the tour podium and maybe the win.

On the transferfront i made a massive error. I have no clue what happened but on thursdaynight i received money before the transfers which is strange to me. But that led to the purchase of VanVliet. Still a usefull rider, but after buying Lacroix i would have liked a different type of rider Lets hope that doesnt make a negative difference in the end.

[Vos]

stage 3 TdF ;
3º  Basov
26º  Macannazi ( helper )

What is clear after 3 stages ;
Basov is doing more than great, 2nd helper Macannazi is doing much better as expected,
and "best" helper Nyheim is really underachieving for an inexplicable reason. Again Nyheim was of no use in this stage 3.

To my surprise Basov was isolated in the s2 front group of 19, what of course was not the tactical plan.
Also to my surprise Macannazi (instead of Nyheim) came to the resque in s3. So in s3 Basov had a helper in the front group of now 17.
And again surprising, Macannazi could close the gap from s2 to s3, but with the same +2 compared to his teamcaptain,
Macannazi dropped in s4. Also Nyheim his tactics were based on helping in s4, but he was far behind, what makes not much sense to me.

I guess surprising, puzzling, unexplicable things happen in the mountains of the Tour de France.^^

Anyway, Macannazi launched his teamcaptain hard into s4,
where Basov was isolated in the 1st chasing group of 3, 0:09" behind the 2 race leaders ánd favorites who were battling for victory.
The Miro-helper was also in this 1st chasing group, and as expected, he could not follow the high pace on the final climb.
So, it was a sprint for the 3º place versus Markhus, that was won by Basov.
Again, Miro ( Rekutxuteam ) won this stage, what makes it 3 victories in a row for Miro. Very impressive !

Let's see what surprising things will happen in the next brutal mountain stage to Sestriere, one of the 2 queens stages in this Tour de France.
The other one is stage 10 to Val-Louron, including legendary climbs on the Aubisque and on the Tourmalet.