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Afternoon Vuelta!

Who is in? We already heard some famous cancellations.

A&D will participate. Ferenc Krausz wants his 2nd GT, Drinfeld wants another GT stage. Lineup not fixed but will probably look like this:

#1 Ferenc Krausz, GIRO winner wants to follow in the footsteps of Volta winning his second GT
#2 Wolodymyr Drinfeld, super-domestique and hunting a GT stage
#3 Robert Oppenheimer, classic
#4 LeCun/Rella/Quickley, not decided yet, the recent training favors Quickley, LeCun has reg hm
#5 Rudolf Kalman, nearly 60-80 guy
#6 Weinzierl/Fanta/Sommerfeld, no clue, we have too many spots, Weinzierl as cheap loader or Fanta with some sprint hm
#7 Seweryn Obst, helper with reg
#8 David Schimmelpfennig, helper with reg
#9 Ilija Balinow, helper with reg

We are cheaply in:

#xx1 Jaroslawa Mahutschich - Young Mountain rider, maybe 3. Place in the youth jersey and Top 15 GK
#xx2 Dmytro Pidrutschnyj - A little bit Mountain, a little bit TT and a little bit Sprint Skills. A little bit rider
#xx3 Vanessa Voigt - Classic without sprint and reg
#xx4 Elisa Seidel - Young Classic without training motivation
#xx5 Julija Lewtschenko - TdF Stage Winner
#xx6 Moritz Morgenstern - Cheap
#xx7 Jana Belomoina - Cheap
#xx8 Salome Kruschelnytska - Cheap
#xx9 Julija Birjukowa - Cheap

Very expansive 406k salary for a cheap Team. Will will see what happens here.

My team:

1) Jacques Thadieu (White candidate)
2) Thopp McMell (Escapes)
3) Flopp Malloy (Escapes)
4) Gize Mules (Securing 2 stagewins)
5) Hancao Guichao (Helper +DH)
6) Benno Goody (Helper)
7) Gilles Mologne (Sprinter)
8) Flowyn Clouds (Classic)
9) Fong Mao (Shadow Captain)

Rolled the dice today!

Goals:
1) White
2) 2+ Stagewins
3) Breaking even
4) Top 3 spot (Fong)
5) top 10 spot (Jacques)
Extra) Top 3 mntn jersey

Favorite Check

Let's make it short, Ferenc Krausz by far the best rider concerning the GC. He is the best climber with very good TT value, he already won some time to the other climbers with TT in the first TT stage. He is supposed to win time on most of the HC mountain stages. Drinfeld and Oppenheimer are good enough helpers, though the second climber is missing. Best opponent seems Jacinto Pinto at the moment, mainly because of the monster team No Name Team brought here, 85 with 59TT, Luna (85-57-72), Meireles (79-59-53), Santos (74-78-68), Bronca (73-77-75), even Gaspar (64-86). This in fact looks like a GC contending team. Besides Pinto, Fong Mao (Bright) looks like the next best rider. Bright with a second young rider Thadieu (82-57-75) and Clouds (74-78) has a good team and already showed that he is fighting for a podium place with Mao getting the first Bonus seconds. Horsky (celteam) is the second best climber with 86-56 but also has little TT (49), little reg (42) no good supporting team and celteam as a manager who was not active yet. But he might get a stage here or there.

GC (red jersey)
***** Ferenc Krausz
*** Jacinto Pinto, Fong Mao
** Ondra Horsky
* Another climber

Green is hard to predict, from the start of the tour, I would say that Ferenc has a chance there too. But with no sprinter teams and with a lot of points on the IS, I guess a rider like Clouds or Pidrutschnyj (Drinfeld) might have good chances as well. If Krausz manages to get a lot of stage wins in the mountains, he is the favorite but it depends on how those hilly non mountain top stages and the multi mountain stages are ridden.

Mountain jersey will most likely be won by a climber, Krausz here with best cards in the final climbs, but someone who wants it with early actions will score a lot of points too.

Young riders is a triell between Mahutschich, Thadieu and Meireles. While Mahutschich is the clear leader within Schappy's team, Thadieu looks like #2 for Bright and Meireles even #3 for NNT. Thadieu with the advantage of +3 climbing skill and the only one with good reg still looks like the favorite.

So first rest day coming tomorrow. Time for a little recap.

Ridiculously successful Vuelta for our team so far. Just 8 teams and many inactive as well. cromolus not active at all, celteam was just here for some km today and I think he was active during the first half of the first HC mountain stage. LJ CyclingTeam was active for the first stages but offline during the last days. NNT and Lula part time online, Lula not there for sprint stages or he missed the decisive end to block for his sprinter, today Lula was active and tried for his classics (not a bad move after all). So it is mostly AAD, Bright and Schappy being on. Not really exciting GT.

Krausz in red since the first HC mountain stage. He did gain a minute there without any problems. 3 stage wins for Krausz, 2 stage wins for Oppenheimer, 1 stage win for Kalman. Krausz now also in green and looks like the clear favorite for green as well. Flopp Malloy wears the mountain jersey being in the escape nearly every day. Young riders classification probably the most interesting fight. Team classement could still be for NNT but currently we are leading there comfortably as well. Next weeks offers some chances for the classics and some more mountain top finishes.

Its a little bit 3 and 2 half Teams here. So very very hard Vuelta. Flocke has the best Team of the three full guys, so an easy Vuelta for you. For us its to hope for some stages in not Mountain stages and then its will be over.

Interesting is only the white Jersey but, Bright will win it. In the last Mountain stages, he switched his Captain to get this Jersey. So for me its only money here to take. Hopefully i can get an additional Stage, but Bright should win three too. Then everybody can be happe. 3 for me and Bright, 15 for AAD...

Next rest day tomorrow. Time for a quick recap.

3 mountain top finishes, all won by Krausz, 3 hilly stages with different outcomes. First one was won by Mahutschich who took advantage of a chaotic final. He followed the right attack in the downhill and Voigt jumped into his group later to pull her to the finish line. Next similar hilly race was also won by Schappy. Pidrutschnyj did attack with a team mate before the Intermediate sprint and was able to keep enough time gap to the better climbers to survive the last mountain/come back later and winning with a last km attack. The 3rd hilly stage was finally won by an early escape. It was a weird final mountain, very long but not steep at all. With just 2 +6, many +5 and +4 it was hard to predict. NNT woke up too late to ride for Santos and he also did ride quite strange uphill, instead of using one of his climbers, he rode with his second classic the whole mountain. Rest of the stage favos (Bright, Atletico Lula) were in the escape as well. In the end, Flopp Malloy (Bright) could win the stage.

GC standing after 15/21 stages
1 Ferenc Krausz (Alive And Dead) 0'00''
2 Jacinto Pinto (No Name Team) 3'16''
3 Fong Mao (Bright) 4'36''
4 Ondra Horsky (celteam) 5'03''
5 Jacques Thadieu (Bright) 5'33''
6 Jaroslawa Mahutschich (Schappy) 5'46''
7 Wolodymyr Drinfeld (Alive And Dead) 7'07''
8 Alessandro Luna (No Name Team) 7'20''
9 Vanessa Voigt (Schappy) 9'03''
10 Robert Oppenheimer (Alive And Dead) 9'39''

More than 3 minutes, goal of Krausz was mainly to secure stage wins in the last HC stages and not to increase the GC gap. Now Pinto with form, a bit closer but not much to worry about yet. White is still a close fight between Thadieu and Mahutschich with the advantage for Thadieu.

Points Classification
255 Krausz
203 Pinto
203 Pirdutschnyj

Krausz looks like the expected winner for the points classification with all those mountain top finishes coming. Now Pinto looks like the harder opponent while Pidrutschnyj was kind of dangerous getting a lot of points in hilly stages and at IS before the last mountain.

Mountain Classification
112 Malloy
75 Krausz
46 McMell

Malloy now the favorite for the mountain jersey. He lost all challengers for it from early escapes. They now just hang there to be pulled and maybe get a shot on the stage win. Good news for him and also that the group went through on that one hilly stage with the flatish mountain finish. HC HC 1 (+1) Not sure about the numbers, but with the 3 remaining hilltop finishes, Krausz can get 55 points there, meaning that Malloy needs to get 18 points more than Krausz on earlier mountains, which is kind of logic he will get them.

Team Classification
Alive And Dead 0'00''
No Name Team 2'32''
Bright 3'35''

Pretty close still. NNT maybe a small advantage now. With 2.5 climbers he gains a lot of time in the steep mountain top finishes but still a lot of things can happen.

Stage wins:
9x Alive And Team (6x Krausz, 2x Oppenheimer, Kalman)
4x Schappy (2x Pidrutschnyj, Mahutschich, Lewtschenko)
2x Bright (Malloy, Mules)

El Fin

The Vuelta is over. Krausz won. Not really surprising after all. Some facts made the last stages more interesting. Pinto training 2 times mountain during the Vuelta is such a thing. Luckily for Ferenc, he still couldn't find a way to beat him in the 2 last mountain stages with 87 mountain and form setting. First stage he tried with the early Luna attack, Ferenc made 1 km tempo then attacked on the 11, Pinto failed to follow there. Krausz with form 100 there, Pinto with form 99, maybe the deciding factor. The next day, with 100 form, Pinto could follow on the first attack (+8) while he failed to follow on the next (last) km (+9) and Krausz won his 10th stage there. The race was a bit blocked by offline tempo of Bright, but NNT found a spot to ride against my 55+ guys, but the try fizzled out as no harder action on the second last climb followed.

All in all a very disappointing Vuelta route. Also disappointing participation rates. The escapes never had the goal to reach the goal, maybe also because some teams always hung 2 guys on Malloy and were offline most of the time.

GC was never in danger. Krausz never had to worry and our team was ready to defend each attack, fact is no attack happened. The good reg values of most of our helper team made the situation even more relaxing, being able to ride for the stage win chance not only at the 9 HC mountain stages but also on much more open stages. We were the only team riding in the peloton, despite one day where NNT was riding hard to chase the group and one day where celteam dropped my weaker helpers early. No tempo by Lula for his sprinter in the early phase where a sprint seemed possible, also no try for Clouds, Santos or Pidrutschnyj. Bright winning team classement with one escape win where nobody rode, also winning white and mountain, makes him a big winner finally. A&D with 13 stage wins, red and green of course a big winner as well. Final stage will be won by Bright's Mules which will end this year's afternoon Vuelta

Stage wins:
13x Alive And Dead (10x Krausz, 2x Oppenheimer, Kalman)
4x Bright (2x Mules, Malloy, Thopp McMell)
4x Schappy (2x Pidrutschnyj, Mahutschich, Lewtschenko)