Schrödinger's Dogs: A&D

[flockmastoR]

For one-day races, yes, I know where to find the racelogs.

But for tours? Where do you find the race logs from all the individual stages?

Click on calender -> race editions -> select your starting time and click on the tour (Overview of tour with profiles, etc) -> click on the far right column (as in one day races).

All in all you just have to be able to read txt files and search for specific patterns in it. Problematic part is of course the data. I chose Python because I like the data visualisation packages and I needed a little project to improve my Python programming.

Looks like we need to create a topic where we can talk about such things.

OK, thanks for that. It seems I have some work to do in order to improve the Gipfelstuermer statistics!

But now back to topic.... when does Max "the parasite" Simmer retire? So annoying a guy like him... Most km, most races, but only 33 attacks! This guy is a real parasite hiding in pelotonI At least now I know why I voted for Noah! Much more active rider!

You really think he attacked once? Thats all just following, come on he is a parasite
No need to sell him, but he already rides less races. He can still be used in sprint trains and he is cheap.

He was pretty usefull for the restart but he will not play a big role in 2021. Everybody likes Noah more for sure.

[flockmastoR]

Statistics 2020

Welcome back to the 2020 statistics series. The topic of today are calender heatmaps. With this figures we want to show you the activity of our team in the year 2020. First we want to introduce the calender plot as follows:

calender_plot.png (188.33 KiB) Viewed 6496 times

Legend:
Each cell on the grid represents one day of the year 2020, it consists of 7 rows (Monday - Sunday) and 53 columns (for each week of the calender). The transparent cells on this rectangular grid are days from 2019 and 2021. The label here corresponds to the day within the month and the gray scale alternates for each month change.

We will use this calender plot as a basis to show you the activity of our team in 2020 since our restart in July. Our first figure illustrates the starts of our team.

race_type.png (89.97 KiB) Viewed 6496 times

Legend:
Blue ... One day race [label always 1]
Green ... Stage in Stage race[label is stage number]
Transparent ... No start

Next we will take a look at the result of the best A&D rider in each race.

best_result.png (120.88 KiB) Viewed 6496 times

Legend: [Label shows best rider result]
Gold: Race Win
Bronze: Podium
Green: Top 10
Blue: Top 20
Violette: Other
Transparent: No start OR no rider finished

Our next figure shows the preference of the team manager regarding starting times. We can see a major preference for 15h.

starting_time.png (108.93 KiB) Viewed 6496 times

Legend: [label shows starting hour in 24h format, color code varies for different times]

Finally we take a look at the race cathegory our team participated in.

race_cathegory.png (85.16 KiB) Viewed 6496 times

Legend: [label shows race cathegory and color code varies for different cathegories]

[flockmastoR]

Statistics 2020

Welcome back to the third part of the 2020 statistics series. Our next and final (for a while) topic are so-called rider spider figures. We can easily use these polar plots to compare different riders concerning various parameters and we can explorate different rider types by characteristics on these rider spiders. To give a small overview in each of the following rider spiders, we compared two of our riders from the same or similar "type", namely

Captains of our transition team

Simmer-McCulloch.png (136.43 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

Sprinter

Sprinter.png (117.9 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

Bajramovic brothers

Bajramovic-Bros.png (127.32 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

Young 70-80 style riders

Youngsters.png (120.55 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

Cheap helpers

Weak-Helpers.png (117.81 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

60-80 style riders

Escaper.png (134.02 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

Legend:
The data behind the graphics has already been shown in part 1 of our statistics series or is derived from that data
Points = Points/Races
Tour Boni = Tour Boni / Tours
Stage Boni = Stage Boni / Races
Road Boni = Road Boni / Races
Activity = Number of successfull attacks+following / Races
Distance = Total number of km
The data has been scaled to fit in a [0, 1] intervall for each parameter. The spider net shows the values of 1 (Team intern maximum), 0.5 (Team intern mean), and 0 (team intern minimum) for each parameter

[flockmastoR]

January 2021

First month in Division 1 and first time we have to relegate to Division 2 again. With 4.751 points we scored our lowest points value since August 2020. Not enough to survive in Division 1. With just 1 race win out of a 2 teams afternoon group the month is even more disappointing. San Juan was a silver lining on the horizon. Not that the team could win a stage there in a small group (4 teams). But with CT-P O H U I offline on the first sprint stage Alexandros could get into the favorite position for the sprint jersey. He had to fight long and even had to follow attacks to defend it against Berlin Bären RCs riders (Alex Clavadetscher and Lars van Aubel). With two second places, a third place and even a 5th place on the mountain stage he could win it in the end without a sprint win. On the other side Arthur showed that he can fight for podium places in tours like San Juan, he won the white jersey and got 4th in the GC, unfortanetely he lost the podium on the mountain stage.

Overview rider statistics

rider_overview.PNG (28.47 KiB) Viewed 6459 times

We want to highlight Andreas Kreutzer, he was not riding as much as other cheap helpers in 2020 but has become an important cheap helper in January.

Arthur vs. Alexandros

leaders_2021_01.png (129.23 KiB) Viewed 6459 times

Rider of the month
Based on the numbers and the only (not really counting) race win, our rider of the month 2021-01 is Alexandros Karatzoglou.

Transfers
Franz Schwackhöfer joins the team, he has already been presented and will be one of our leaders in 2021. Welcome Franz

[flockmastoR]

Alexandros joins 3 wins club

February will be the first months since October were our team can win more than just one race. And there are more chances ahead of us. Alexandros could win his first real race at Besseges. It was a good afternoon hill sprinter group with Sandra Leone (RideforMoney), Davide Celestino (T-Mobile-Austria), Bastien Boulanger (Gipfelstürmer) and also the good flat sprinter WeeZhun Lim (CircleCycle). It was our luck, that noone hung on Alexandros and we did our own train. Simmer and Harrison managed to bring Alexandros in the winning position. Unfortunately he had no chance to win Green at Besseges.

Today Alexandros could win the first stage of the tour Provence and take over the leaders jersey for one day. The morning group lack of good sprinters and sprint teams and Salzgeber (Jäger-LeCultre) attacked close to the finish beeing second best sprinter. Togehter with team Rasmussen and some help of Palasteam and Ciccio Sport early we could hold it together in the end. The riders from SV Furpack focused on a dangerous train but the tour favorite Reutimann covered that train giving our own train the best chances in the end. Hirschmoser and Schöning launched the sprint for Alexandros who went early from 250. Alam (SV Furpach) couldn't get the wheel and so it was clear Alexandros wins the race.

With his 3rd win he reaches the top riders of the team (Simmer 3x, McCulloch 3x, Harrison 3x) and starts to get some attention withing the squad. Now his goal is to fight for the green jersey at Provence and another race win.

[flockmastoR]

Final stage win and winner of the sprint classement for Alexandros

Alexandros Karatzoglou could win the final stage at the tour in Provence and managed to win the sprint classification with 2 wins and a 3rd place during the flat and medium hilly stages. We had to give all that we got to controll the field and achive a mass sprint. After a battle about the young riders classement at the first IS and a battle about the climbers jersey early, a 4 man group with one leader survived in front and got 7mins. At that stage we already feared to not be able to catch the group alone. The last days were pretty exhausting and the HC stage was used to secure the sprint jersey at the IS sprints so the helpers were tired and with just Schöning (85) fit for the end we were vulnerable for late escapes. But the group quit and it gave Jäger LeCulture the chance to start a 4 man group for red (and more) again. Luckily Rasmussen helped to controll in the last 3rd of the race and the group was managed good. In the end a very dangerous attack from Romoc already made us sweat. We had to bring Schöning early exposing us to an attack from Donald Thomas. Luckily he decided to go in tempo first and try the attack for the win on the last km. Romocs rider was caught back on the last km, Thomas attack was blocked and our train was clearly the strongest ending in the 4th race win of Karatzoglou. He is now leading the team statistics with his 4th stage and 2nd sprint jersey.

[flockmastoR]

Good luck with Jacob. I really like his skills. Hopefully he will do great at the Ronde and Omloop for example!

So you predicted it Omloop: check

[Bear]

Ha, congrats. Now also the Ronde

[flockmastoR]

February 2021

Back in Division 2 the team started to win races again. Alexandros Karatzoglou managed to win 1 stage at Besseges and 2 stages and the green jersey at Provence. The start of the season in Belgium was a big success for Jacob Wolfowitz winning the season opener Omloop Het Nieuwsblad followed by a win the next day at Kuurne - Brüssel - Kuurne. All in all we managed to win 5 races out of 28 which is a highly overperforming months. In the end Jacob Wolfowitz could win the race for rider of the year!

Overview rider statistics

overview.PNG (27.23 KiB) Viewed 6340 times

In pure numbers Alexandros is dominating his teammates this month in nearly all cathegories.

Wolfowitz vs. Karatzoglou

leaders_2021_02.png (130.45 KiB) Viewed 6340 times

Transfers
A young Austrian helper, Wilfried Nöbauer, signed a life long contract at A&D. He will complete our TTT squad and should become a good helper for medium hilly stages. Starting values: 52-73-46-60-47 73.3 40reg.

[Robyklebt]

Alexandros vs Karatzoglou?
More than statistics that sounds like philosophy! The internal struggles of a greek sprinter in an Austrian team!

[flockmastoR]

Alexandros vs Karatzoglou?
More than statistics that sounds like philosophy! The internal struggles of a greek sprinter in an Austrian team!

Haha ! Thx. Too much switching between Alexandros and Karatzoglou confused me. Was a test if you know my riders names
But no Alexandros is now a leader too. Wasn't planned but I believe in him

[Weezel]

Of course Alexandros is a leader - and he even has potential to develope.
He is only lacking helpers like my Tivalainen or former Mercado - but if you ride at 14h, you have somebody for this

[Robyklebt]

He could always just wait for Messerli too.

[flockmastoR]

Transfer news

Yesterday Friedrich Hund walked into our team center. There, already waiting for him, Detrekői Ákos was sitting on the bench right in front of his office. Friedrich couldn't be more surprised as Ákos told him he is ready to give his best for A&D. Friedrich checked the safe emptied to the last Herner coin. The deal was already done, the cat was out of the bag as we say in German.

Ákos Detrekői, 54-74-78-53-60 65,3 pave, 61reg
The Hungarian will strengthen our team in hilly terrain. His reg will help us in hard tours riding for Franz.

[Weezel]

Really a nice rider who has everything you need to be succesfull. Similar to my Hofbauer.
Althought the reg will make him a little bit expensive.

[flockmastoR]

March 2021

Back again in Division 1 and hard fight to stay there for the first time. The month did not start very well. The only stage race Paris Nimes we had to go to the evening and we missed a lot of stages there. Franz Schwackhöfer started his first stage race and finished at GC 26 in a strong group. He missed a stage win at the TT by 4 seconds at stage 3 but was able to take over his first leader jersey. Apart from that PN was a disaster for the team. The important one day races were also not a big success. At strade bianche McCulloch finished on place 10 with 6seconds behind the winner Eiffel. At MilanoSanremo Karatzoglou finished also at place 10 and he finished 12th at de Panne. Uwe Schöning finished 5th at Harelbeke in a 5 participants edition. Wolfowitz could not be better than place 8 at Gent Wevelgem losing his myth of a Belgian specialist. The last classic of the month Dwars Door Vlaanderen was the only big success of the month. Wilfired Nöbauer and Sebastian Hirschmoser escaped at the first km. Willi brought Sebastian into a position were he could win solo. But Sebastion lost the connection to the team car. He had no information on his gap and he was not riding hard tempo for a long time, thinking he already made it. As the connection was reastablished he pushed harder and was able to save about 1:30min in front of the big sprint group. It is Sebastians first win at the age of 35 in his 172th total race.
Apart from the important races Warren McCulloch could win in a 2 participants race against the Donkeys in France as Uwe Schöning did some days after that hanging on the right guy from RideForMoney. Warren now has 4 stage wins as much as Alexandros Karatzoglou.

Overview rider statistics

overview.PNG (21.57 KiB) Viewed 6126 times

Alexandros again dominating the statistics, as our only sprinter he does a lot of races, most of the time beeing leader of the team. In this months spider diagram we want to compare the performance of the 2 first time winners in the team Sebastian Hirschmoser and Uwe Schöning.

Sebastian Hirschmoser vs. Uwe Schöning

leaders_2021_03.png (125.28 KiB) Viewed 6128 times

Transfers
Akos Detreköi will join the team in April, he was already presented in an earlier post.

[flockmastoR]

Pais Vasco

Schrödinger's dogs started in spain. The terrain was not perfect for our medium hill specialised team. Very steep mountains made it impossible for our riders to fight for the stage race win. But we wanted to hunt stages and give Franz Schwackhöfer the chance to prove himself in such races. All in all it was a successfull tour. Franz could win the first stage, a very hilly time trial and he could show that he can beat riders like Tim Eiffel there. So he wore a leaders jersey for one day. The days after our team was more in the spectator mode as the climbers took over. Our goal was to stay somewhere in the top 15 with McCulloch and Schwackhöfer. After 2 stage wins of fantasticos leader, we went in an escape with Esad Bajramovic in his 200th race. The group went trough and Esad got third in the end. Jacob Wolfowitz could follow the later tour winner and improved his GC position. The second last stage was pretty open, more likely an escape or late escape will to it, or CC riding for Balam. We thought about checking the situation and try to hang on the right guys. Berlin Bären pushed hard the whole race and so the chance for an early escape dropped dramatically. In the end CC also helped and Bären attacked on the wrong km with Doug in tempo too. Warren helped on the +3 as now our chances in a bunch sprint grew drastically. McCulloch launched the sprint for Schwackhöfer and after him 36 year old Max Simmer launched the final 150m getting his 4th win and the first win since September 2020. The last stage was a hard one, attacks from the start for red with strong classics and climbers, hard chase and early siebs, fights between Big Donkey, CircleCycle and fantasticos for GC and our guys just sitting and hoping for chances to do something. On the last hill McCulloch finally could ride to improve his stage and GC situation after Apicella pulled Fayee up the mountain and Warren was in front of Fayee. In the end the ranks 11,14, and 16 by Jacob Wolfowitz, Warren McCulloch and Franz Schwackhöfer were good and more than we expected.

Our team started pretty expensive but with the wins and Esad's third place we still were able to make some money and also some points.

Race wins A&D:
5, Alexandros Karatzoglou
4, Max Simmer
4, Warren McCulloch
3, Noah Harrison
2, Jacob Wolfowitz
2, Esad Bajramovic
1, Sebastian Hirschmoser
1, Franz Schwackhöfer
1, Uwe Schöning
1, Michel Loève

Chasing 5.000 eternal points:
4.929 Max Simmer (36y, 198 races)
4.668 Warren McCulloch (35y, 145 races)
3.253 Alexandros Karatzoglou (27y, 126 races)

[flockmastoR]

Simmer opens 5.000 points club

Max Simmer is the first Alive & Dead rider to reach 5.000 eternal points. He achieved this milestone at La fleche wallonne finishing 19th place. It took him 204 races to get there and he reached it at the age of 36. Simmer long time was the captain in the restart phase. He rode many races in the first half year and he was leader in many races. In spite of his limited skills (68-75 68 sprint as best values) he could win 4 races including a stage at Pais Vasco and GP de Fourmies.

[flockmastoR]

April 2021

Short summary here, main goal was to stay in Division 1. Failed that goal by about 200 pts (didn't check in the end). Classics and Monuments were a big fail too. Not a single podium. Schöning finished 4th at Paris Roubaix which was a big surprise, Warren was 9th at Wallonne, Doyenne was missed by beeing offline but no chance there too. The cat 4 stage races were a bit more successfull race win wise. 2 wins at Pais Vasco (Schwackhöfer and Simmer) and 2 wins at Tour de Romandie (2x Schwackhöfer), Romandie still running and at least a chance for Schwackhöfer in the final TT. One day race wins by Uwe Schöning and Alexandros Karatzoglou make it a good month with 4452 points, still too less to hold Div 1 with 7819 Points.

Overview rider statistics

overview.PNG (22.59 KiB) Viewed 5898 times

Schwackhöfer really joins the game now winning 3 high cat stages at Pais Vasco and Romandie even one real stage with his sprint. He is by far our rider of the Month April 2021.
Wolfowitz lost his flow but is still one of our leaders.

Franz Schwackhöfer vs. Jacob Wolfowitz

leaders_2021_04.png (134.26 KiB) Viewed 5898 times

No new rider for this month, we will hope to buy a climber within the next month.

[flockmastoR]

McCulloch joins 5k points club

Warren McCulloch joins the 5.000 eternal points club. He won a stage and the mountain jersey at the Vuelta 2020 and achived his 5k points after 156 races at the age of 36. He is still our strongest classic in the mountains, and best climber (a sad side note).

5k Club
Warren McCulloch, USA, 36 years, 156 races
Max Simmer, GER, 36 years, 204 races

[flockmastoR]

Transfer News

While our team is riding the Giro d'Italia we have to announce the retirement of two major parts of our 2021/21 team. Warren McCulloch and Esad Bajramovic. Esad was bought on the very first day of our team comeback in 2020. With 220 races he did most races for the new team so far and was able to win 2 races out of early escapes. His main job was helping the captains in the team and attack when he was not needed. The Austrian was bought at the age of 27 from the transfer market. Warren McCulloch replaced the sprinter George Davies right before the Vuelta Espana 2020 where he could win a stage and the mountain jersey. He could win 4 races and 5067 eternal points and was the fastest till now to get to 5k.


Warren McCulloch, 13.08.2020-12.05.2021
Bought: 27y, 66-76-78-49-58
Best: 30y, 72-76-78-49-58

Esad Bajramovic, 12.05.2020-12.05.2021
Bought: 27y, 47-80-70-47-55
Best: 30y, 52-80-70-47-55

The team also announces two new riders for June, a helper and flat rider Otto Schötensack from Germany and Boaz Trakhtenbrot, a climber from Israel.

Otto Schötensack
Bought: 21y, 46-72-77-52-52-66,6 40reg
Goal: 50-86-77

Boaz Trakhtenbrot
Bought: 21y, 71-54-76-54-53-55,2 48reg
Goal: 84-60-76

[flockmastoR]

May 2021

May started good with another stage win of Franz Schwackhöfer at Tour de Romandie and the win of the points classement for him there too. After that not much happening till start of Giro in the afternoon. Goal was to be in an interessting group rather than be bored to hell AND unsuccessfull in the side program with just 2-4 teams around. Better be excited AND unsuccessfull. Profil looked like nothing at all, but we thought to just waste some money bringing Schwackhöfer (2x TT + 1-2 medium mountain stages with little chances), Wolfowitz (Montalcino stage) and Rinderknech (bringing Schwackhöfer back, TT and GC guy) and also a load of 60-80 + Karatzoglou for really nothing. Karatzoglou was the only one winning a stage and prevented A&D from a total disaster. Schwackhöfer wore the Maglia Rosa for one day, which is good for his statistic. He wanted to wear all GT leader jerseys and win a stage at each of them, last goal already gone after the GIRO.

Overview rider statistics

overview.PNG (22.47 KiB) Viewed 5646 times

Schwackhöfer dominating in pure numbers, still the GIRO win of Karatzoglou has more importance and makes him rider of the month for May. If all the Romandie stages were in May Franz would have had a chance.

Franz Schwackhöfer vs. Alexandros Karatzoglou

key_riders_2021_05.png (134.79 KiB) Viewed 5646 times

Transfers
Already presented new climber and flat rider for June.

[flockmastoR]

Transfer News

Today, Emir Bajramovic, an old veteran left the team. He couldn't win a race or get another palmares entry, but he enabled many others to win in early escapes and was an important helper for the comeback. He was riding 222 races (most so far for the new team, 68% of all races by the team) and reached 373 points. Thx Emir for the great support.

Emir Bajramovic, 23.07.2020-29.06.2021
Bought: 28y, 48-78-79-52-47
Best: 32y, 50-78-79-52-47

[flockmastoR]

Transfer News

Today 2 veterans Max Simmer (38) and Andreas Kreutzer (35) left the team. Max was the leader of the comeback team for a long time and could win 4 races (incl. GP de Fourmies and a Pais Vasco stage). He collected 5.096 points in 219 races. Andreas could just win his first race (his 199th) and got 219 points in 204 races. He was a good helper with low reg, he could just escape in his last races.

Max Simmer, 23.07.2020-30.06.2021
Nicknames: Max Power, Magic Max
Best: 68-74-73-47-64-70,1 39 reg

Andreas Kreutzer, 23.07.2020-30.06.2021
Best: 47-81-47-49-53-71,4 41 reg

[flockmastoR]

Transfer News

Yesterday our new superstar signed a contract with Alive And Dead. The German August Oetker will try to become our next stage hunter. His values are pretty good, just the struggle in downhill will become a problem from time to time.

August Oetker
Bought: 21y, 73-56-54-51-57-54,2 38reg
Goal: 80-70 with 57 sprint