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Will start here, stage hunter mode :

Mayardos
Batagelj
Ernestovskis
Szabo
Gylling
Treimanis
And 3 free spots (between Hnik, Myogy, Katrasnik, vanWyngarden, Krasivoulos, Staponkus and Sonik)

EDIT : and finally Van Wyngarden, Staponkus and Sonik for the last spots)

I still not sure if I ride here or at 14h, it's a bit early for me 9h...

Rename it with 14H...

Probably i will join with the following line-up:

-Massimo Croce
-Mirko Tedesco
-Darko Tomic
-Matias Delgado....

...and so on...i have only 11 riders for the moment so not so many choices for me.

Goal: winning a stage ... maybe a climber;s classification... hard to have higher goals with this team.

4 stages so far, 4 different winners (Flanders Flyers, Bugatti, Mercatone and me)

Valdis in yellow, but not for a long time.

GC favos : Croce, Mc Cann, Steffen and Uerduk
Green favos : very open... don't know
Mountain favos : for those who wants it
White favos : van Wyngarden

The field is good, good managers here, but a lot are also unexperienced as GC contender, so we can have a lot of surprises later...

Helge Thomsen He only want to win Races with more than Cat. 5. I think we will see him again as a winner of a Race at this Vuelta.

Today we maybe will have a MS if Kazi Blocks will work and someone (maybe me) will block the end But there are much more Stages for SM Team and we will see him often on the Podium with that nice Team!

Massimo wins... and Liquigas without any work.
Now Massimo will be the biggest tourfavo and he is still the best climber so Liquigas has to work on every mountainstage.

Tomorrow a day for Massimo and the climbers if the team will work for him.

The tour started very nice, SM and Bugatti are riding only when I send guys in escapes ...even weak guys but never ride against Flanders, Fratello and all others. They really thik i am the biggest favo only because Massimo has 1 more mountain point than the other rivals...but they never look to TT skill.,,
This is ok for me because I dont have such an expensive team for Vuelta and they lose more money than I am losing letting the escapes to win

@ Bugatti: maybe I will work if somebody else shares the work with me otherwise i have no other choice but to let even a good Classic or a mountain guy to take big advantage in the GC.

Today I worked a lot, let s see tomorrow and next days what happens, in any case maybe i am here to win 2-3 stages but for GC i have very few chances with only 49 TT. My GC goal is top 5 ...achieveble riding or not.

P.S.I still believe SM has a very good chance to win the GC because Bugatti, Flanders, Fratello and the others dont give a shit on GC and let today an 82 climber to take even 6 min to Peloton.

Hello,

11 days left and Massimo is 2nd in GC, 1st in Points and Mountains classification and won 3 stages... these are reasons to be happy with team performance until now,

But there are also 2 bad things that happened :
-Massimo could not follow Mark and lost abt 40 seconds last week.
-and Nestor abandoned today ...poor old man , this stage exhausted him but he will continue with team Liquigas-CND also next month.

I have to say i am not o confident that Massimo can win the GC but 95 % will be in top 5 as planned.

Let's return back to stage wins, 3 stage for Valdis until now, but for GC even if I have a lot of classics, it won't be enough at all to fight for it, even a top 5 would be a big achievement

Km: 137, Gradient: 1
Gorazd Batagelj (SM Team) attacks
Valdis Ernestovskis (SM Team) attacks
Marcel Kerff (Flanders Flyers) follows
Roman Stollberg (EierkuchenGang) follows
Darko Tomic (Liquigas-CND) follows
Albert Ritserveldt (Flanders Flyers) follows
Silouanos Mayardos (SM Team) follows

3. Chained Attacks.
More than 2 riders of a team, who, through attacking or following, escape out of a group.
This rule is deactivated if more than 10 riders from at least.4 teams are represented or if the original group has less than 15 riders.
This rule is deactivated too, in the last 20km of a race and if the road rises 4% and more.

Maybe someone should think about that...
Thanks to Tulpengeneral!

I expect SM to drop his riders during last stage and lose 33 sec

Liquigas-CND wrote:I expect SM to drop his riders during last stage and lose 33 sec

I thought, that you don't care

After 14 stages team Liquigas-CND already achieved and even exceeded the goals and expectations.

Today Massimo Croce got his 4th stage win, is 1st in GC, 1st in Mountain Cassification and 1st in Points classification.
GC goal (top 5) is almost achieved but i still consider i have only 5 % chances to win the GC.

Next stages i expect Bugatti to block...otherwise it will be bad for him.

I don't think we will have a clear winner after the TT, I expect a lot of moves on the last 4 stages

Very nice sieb from SM(Furpach) today i didn't thought that this pavekm can sieb coca-cola. After that sieb good work from Liquigas and Eierkuchen!
Liquigas won the stage and Mark McCann is back in Yellow (RED)!!!
Tomorrow we maybe see a SM-Show. Buti will follow each SM guy and hope i will keep the GC the last two day's!

Well, today was the most insane stage: SM(Furpach) siebed Coca for you and I rode today like a crazy man for your GC.

You will try to follow SM guys but let s if you can ...