Schrödinger's Dogs: A&D

[flockmastoR]

Tesla in RSF leader jersey

An event that doesn't occur too often, and even if its just for a day, we need to celebrate it. Nikola Tesla took over the lead in the RSF rider statistics and is wearing the (ugly) RSF leader jersey today. He finished 6th at La Flèche Wallonne yesterday and overtook Melville with currently 4,607 points. He is the 2nd A&D rider (Boaz Trakhtenbrot) and the 3rd rider of the manager we can remember (Erwin Schrödinger) to wear the RSF leader jersey.

[flockmastoR]

April 2023

The team reached 14,880 points (second highest score for A&D) which was just enough for rank 4 in Division 1. The team took part in 30 races and could win 8 races (4x Iwachnenko, 2x Tesla, 1x Prachar, 1x Châu). The stage races were very successfull. Tesla could win a stage at Pais Vasco and finish on the podium in GC (rank 3), he could win the GC, a stage and the green jersey at the Giro di Sicilia, additionally Châu could get the 2nd place in GC and win the youth classement. In the last days, Volta finished 3rd in GC at the Tour de Romandie, where Iwachnenko won 2 stages and the green jersey. Unfortunately, the manager missed the HC finish, where Volta would have had the chance for a stage win. The classics and monuments were disappointing after all. No classic win in April. Fahrenheit could finish 2nd at RVV, but never had a chance for the win and finished 4th at PR. Tesla finished 3rd at AGR after a almost perfet A&D race. The final +2 he just hung on the wrong guy. At LBL Tesla finished 4th after beeing isolated rather early due to hard attacks far from the goal. Tesla also surprisingly was our best at La Fleche Wallonne with a place 6, where Volta failed to follow Goodyear to fight for place 3 and ended up on place 25 behind deCoulomb (from a very nice escape) and Heuser. All in all it was a good month with 8,949 points in April, A&D starts on place 2 in Division 1, about 700 points behind free team.

Rider of the month
It was very close this month between Tesla and Iwachnenko. Iwachnenko with most wins, also more important ones and the more important green jersey at Romandie, Tesla with the first stage race win since Volta's win at Tour of Atlas (15.01.2023), and collecting many points, also leading the riders ranking and wearing the RSF leader jersey for several days. Our rider of the month is Oleksij Iwachnenko!

Transfers
Yesterday, the team could sign a contract with the - now - 21 year old Rolf Sievert. He will be trained as a classic rider and has good potential. Let's hope for a good training.

Rolf Sievert, 20y
Bought: 56-74-69-67-56-65,3-39
Goal: 72-80 with 56 sprint

[flockmastoR]

Iwachnenko joins 10 wins club

Oleksij Iwachnenko could win todays GIRO preparation race in Las Vegas and achieve his 10th win at the age of 26 after 57 races. He is therefore breaking 2 records at once, beeing the youngest and fastest rider to win 10 races at A&D. Let's see if the team can handle the jetlag and start at the GIRO tomorrow, which is still unsure. Oleksij is the future!

10 wins club

Oleksij Iwachnenko, 26 years, 57 races
Franz Schwackhöfer, 27 years, 83 races
Boaz Trakhtenbrot, 28 years, 81 races
Nikola Tesla, 28 years, 123 races
August Oetker, 30 years, 105 races
Geoffrey Hinton, 33 years, 232 races
Alexandros Karatzoglou, 33 years, 247 races

[flockmastoR]

Volta joins 10k with GC win at the GIRO

Alessandro Volta wins the Giro and is now our youngest and fastest rider to join the 10k club. It was his career goal from the start but the team nearly didn't start at the GIRO. Good we decided to give it a try and ride for the favorite. All in all with the GC win of the most important race (Afternoon Giro) his career is already a success. We already doubted his quality, as he failed to beat Frost/Payot/Velasco at the big cat 4 stage races. He even managed to win a stage at the Giro with the mountain ITT.

10k club

Alessandro Volta, 29y, 96r
Boaz Trakhtenbrot, 32y, 129r
Nikola Tesla, 33y, 205r
Franz Schwackhöfer, 34y, 126r

[flockmastoR]

Iwachnenko joins 5k club

With the win of the Ciclamino at the GIRO, Oleksij Iwachnenko joins the 5k club, he was able to win 2 stages in Italy and is the second youngest and third fastest rider to join the club.

5k Club
Franz Schwackhöfer (26y, 71r)
Oleksij Iwachnenko (26y, 95r)
Boaz Trakhtenbrot (28y, 75r)
Nikola Tesla (30y, 153r)
Jacob Wolfowitz (31y, 183r)
Alexandros Karatzoglou (31y, 195r)
Akos Detreköi (33y, 203r)
Helmut Heuser (33y, 185r)
Geoffrey Hinton (34y, 239)
Warren McCulloch (36y, 156r)
Max Simmer (36y, 204r)

[flockmastoR]

150k Eternal Points

Alive And Dead could reach the next milestone of 150k eternal points at todays HC mountain one day race. It is tradition at A&D that such a Milestone is reached with a win (50k Karatzoglou won Agostoni, Nikola Tesla winning to reach 100k). But this time Volta could finish just second in a sprint beating Payot for place 2.

Eternal Points: 150.098
Races: 966 (+248)
Wins: 188 (+60)
Wins in Classics: 9 (+3)
Stage Race Wins: 19 (+4)
Stage Race Podiums: 18 (+6)
Points Classifications: 21 (+8)
Mountain Classifications: 3 (+1)
Youth Rider Classifications: 6 (+2)
Team Classifications: 10 (+2)

(+ compared to last milestone of 100k points)

[flockmastoR]

May 2023

A&D back on top of Division 1, with 18,604 points in 29 races, the team could win it's 5th Division 1 title overall and the first one this year/season. Additionally, the team could achieve a new points record (15,334 in May 2022, 15,336 in August 2012 with Equipe Mathematique) and win the Division 1 title with nearly 2.000 points difference. It is the 14th best point score in RSF history and the highest since June 2020. We are starting with 9,664 points and place 1 into June.

May was dominated by the GIRO victory of Alessandro Volta. It was a back to back afternoon GC win with the same kind of classement rider. The climber opponents were stronger this year, but the stages favored a TT strong climber more than last year and therefore, Volta could win with over a minute on Payot and Perisic. Additionally, we could win 4 stages (2x Oleksij Iwachnenko, 1x Nikola Tesla, 1x Alessandro Volta) and Iwachnenko won the Ciclamino for the best sprint performance. It was the best GT performance of the team so far. Iwachnenko could also win 2 pre GIRO one day races (cat 4 Eschborn-Frankfurt and Las Vegas Cycling Cup). Nevertheless, Alessandro Volta is our rider of the month May winning his home GT.

Transfers

Cousin Moustapha Faye retired yesterday at the age of 39. In 210 races he scored 2,435 eternal points and could win 4 races, his biggest success was a 2nd place at Dwars Door Vlaanderen and he is Cyclocross World Champion. Most of the time we used him in our sprint trains for Hinton, Tesla and Iwachnenko.

Moustapha Faye, 39, 210 races, 4 wins
bought: 50-73-59-50-66-67,6 36reg
peak: 50-87 with 71 sprint

2 young riders join the team beginning of June, the Austrian flat rider Tunç Hamarat and the German money sprinter Ingo Dachwitz.

Tunç Hamarat, 21
Bought: 48-73-77-53-61-64,9 35 reg
Goal: 55-86

Ingo Dachwitz, 21
Bought: 46-67-67-59-66-64-35 reg
Goal: 46-75 with 78 sprint

[flockmastoR]

National Championships

Our riders were quite active at this years national championships and two of them could win the title.

Rolf Sievert, our youngster classic rider went in a km 0 (or 1) attack. His only co-escaper was Niels Holgersonfrom CircleCycle. They rode to a gap of about 10 min together and stopped as nobody chased them. Later on Folke Holmstrom from UC TREMBLADE escaped and wanted to catch up with the group. But Rolf kept him away and rode some km alone to compensate his better sprint skill. In the end Nils and Rolf rode together and Rolf won the sprint for the Sweden National Championship. He will wear the jersey for the next months.

Nikola Tesla, our oldstar classic sprinter won the Croation championship. Just Bright active first, who escaped with Petter Maljevic early. But the terrain was pretty hilly and Tesla could catch him back easisly. After some attemps to attack Nikola in the flat parts, Bright gave up. A sieb later on and getting a gap of 4min won Tesla the Croation National Championship even with being offline at the end. VC Team Multi went online too late with his 2 riders in the very small peloton.

Appart from the wins, NgoBao Chau lost the jersey by being offline in the morning. It would have been a very easy win with noone active. The luck decided that jersey. Heuser also lost his Austrian jersey and retired today. In a very active group, 4 AAD riders (Loschmidt, Hamarat, Heuser, Prachar) did put quite some effort to make it a race. An early escape with Hamarat and Loschmidt, together with Karl Mayr (CircleCycle) and 2 riders from another team (cannot remember) was formed, but EMAG controlled the race with a very small gap of not over 4 min. EMAG had many flat riders and sprinters in the race, probably it would have been better for him to join the group. Last NC he also controlled but there he had much better chances. Anyway, on one of the steep parts with a close gap, Heuser decided to sieb and catch up with the group, dropping the whole EMAG team and keep them back with weakish Hamarat for some more km. After that try the winning escape with Prachar and Loschmidt. Looked good, Schartner Bombe followed Prachar with Andrea Kiabcosky. Which was a perfect match. After that escapes from a EMAG flat rider, Heuser hanging there and 2 riders of another team (cannot remember was a 66-75 guy and 85 flat riders with some mountain). Perfect situation, we rode with Loschmidt in front until being caught by the followers who brought back Heuser on the second last Große Kripp passage. After that we went out, which was the big error. Getting some more time in green with Loschmidt would have been better. In the back Ansach woke up just in time and chased hard with his strong flat riders. Loschmidt in immediately and trying to find cooperation options. In the end Prachar rode the last Große Kripp passage alone dropping anybody but Heuser and Kiabcosky. Good cooperation with Schartner Bombe who demanded a none sprint. Heuser in at some point, he had topform but still just 69 flat. Ansach was strong enough to get close with his climber and lucky that the better climbers (waerl and others) stayed inactive. On the last climb he attacked over the classics group and Prachar just got second, winning the coin flip for place 2.

Germany was also fun. Gabriel Fahrenheit and Ingo Dachwitz escaped with Marc Hesslein from r TAKA. Ingo was the puller and the other two rode together pretty well with a no sprint deal. In the back the big sprint teams could not find a way to cooperate, very funny stuff, two teams with 2 sprinters and many flat riders. In front Gabriel and Marc went through the finish line with nearly 10min gap and Marco won the coind flip.

Some more escapes with AAD riders included were done in France (deCoulomb, escape went through but not winning) and in Great Britain (Watt and Faraday, but group was caught).

[flockmastoR]

Iwachnenko joins 15 Wins Club

Oleksij Iwachnenko won today's one day fantasy race in a strong hill sprinter group and joined the 15 Wins Club. He is our youngest and fastest rider to win 15 races.

15 Wins Club
Oleksij Iwachnenko, 27 years, 89 races
Boaz Trakhtenbrot, 30 years, 107 races
Nikola Tesla, 30 years, 162 races
Franz Schwackhöfer, 33 years, 124 races
Geoffrey Hinton, 34 years, 245 races
Alexandros Karatzoglou, 35 years, 292 races

[flockmastoR]

June 2023

The team did a break and just some selected one day races. In 13 races we could win 4 races and 2 NC. We ended up on rank 4 in Division 1 with 10,622. With a regular season and riding Dauphine as planned first, the fight for the crown would have been tight against stevens, who won his first Division 1 title. No highlights really.

Rider of the month is Nikola Tesla who, thanks to the NC, continued his winning strike (12 consecutive months with at least 1 win). He could improve his A&D internal record and tie up with Erwin Schrödinger, who could achieve 12 for EM in 2010/2011).

Transfers
Helmut Heuser retired on the 23.06.2023. He did 207 races collecting 6,001 eternal points and 9 wins. His biggest achievments were a stage win at the Vuelta, a second place at Giro Emilia and emotianally the biggest win was the NC in Austria. He was a great help for the 2 consecutive GIRO wins of the team, leading Trakhtenbrot and Volta to win the Rosa jersey. He was one of our best helpers in the last 1,5 years and even managed to win 9 races, which is quite a lot in his team role. Mouhamed Fall retired on 03.07.2023, he was a flat strong 70 sprinter and one key for many sprint wins in the past. He raced 227 races without being able to win a race himself, he was responsible for many sprint wins of Hinton.

Helmut Heuser, 37, 207 races, 9 wins
bought: 55-74-78-54-57 69,2 45 reg
peak: 73-79-79 58sprint

Mouhamed Fall, 37, 227 races
bought: 47-72-77-52-65-66 42reg
peak: 50-88 with 66 sprint

Today the 21 year old French helper Yann LeCun joined A&D. He has some reg and should train for hilly terrain. We hope he has similar mountain training as Jacob Uexküll

Yann LeCun, 21 years (03.07.2023)
bought: 49-68-76-48-53-61,7-50
goal: 65-75-76

[flockmastoR]

Karl wins Österreich Radrundfahrt

Home victory for Karl Prachar at the Austria Tour. The tour was very successfull and our team could win 3 stages (2x Prachar, 1x Chau) and the team classement. Prachar winning the GC is the 5th rider at A&D with a stage race vitory. Ceslius finished on place 3 in GC and Prachar could also win the points classement. It is the continuation of very successfull participation at our home tour. Earlier teams (Equipe Mathematique, Dead And Alive) could also win the team classification (2012), 3 stage wins (2x Röntgen 2015, 1x Turing 2015), 2 sprint jerseys (Röntgen 2015, Szolem Mandelbrojt 2012), 1 mountain jersey (Friedrich Hund 2015) and another GC win in 2012 by Szolem Mandelbrojt.

Unfortunately, Oleksij Iwachnenko was not looking happy in Austria, as the team decided to better bet on the good form of Prachar than on Chau against Goodyear. Therefore, we decided to kill the hill sprint chance on stage 2 and see if bergwerk kicks his own climber out of the GC. The bergwerkers attacked and opened the chance for Celsius and Prachar to win time and Prachar a first stage. Luckily, Wild's form was not too good and Prachar could keep and even enlarge his gap on the following stages.

[flockmastoR]

Tesla opens 25 wins club

The team is hanging around in the side program, winning a lot of races so far in July (So many that we missed to celebrate team win #200). Today was a small comeback for Tesla. After he skipped the Austria Tour where the team rode for Prachar/Chau/Iwachnenko and after a race where Nikola had to do a lot of tempo for an Iwachnenko victory in Sardinia, yesterday was the day the team once again rode for Tesla. In a small late evening field, the team did a great work and Nikola Tesla won his 25th race in race #263. He is now A&D rider with the most wins (Boaz 24, Schwackhöfer 18) and the rider with the 3rd most wins of the manager (Jeff Joker 27 for EM).

25 Wins Club
Nikola Tesla, 36 years, 263 races

[flockmastoR]

1.000 races for Alive & Dead

Today was the day, 1000th race was celebrated in A&D headquarter. The riders were not allowed to join the party. They were sent to play some Monopoli. Unfortunately, there were also uninvited guests in the race. Our strongest riders for hilly terrain tried to fight against the sprinters, but unfortunately, our early team form is now making troubles. Many flat strong riders could stay in front and so the plan to ride for Iwachnenko was dropped. Plan B included to ride for Prachar/Celsius and try to win in a small classics/flat riders group. But the attack of the flat riders didn't happen and therefore we just tried on the last +5. Unfortunately, Prachar ended up a second behind Celsius and a newcommer team blocked the +5. The team manager himself had some celebration cake in the mouth at the next km as the flat riders attacked and just overtook our 2 classics. They were too confused to follow and the cake ended up on the floor when the team manager shouted: "7u5t F*l!0W". No win, just a 7th and 8th place but the sprinters were still beaten making the tactic not completely useless.

Team stats at 1000 races
Race wins: 208
Classic wins: 9
Stage Race wins: 21
Stage Race podiums: 19
Sprint Jerseys: 22
Mountain Jerseys: 3
Youth Jerseys: 6
Team Classifications: 12
Eternal Points: 154,659
Points/Race: 154.7
Win Ratio: 20.8%

Monuments: 2x Milan Sanremo (Tesla 2023, Hinton 2022), 1x Paris-Roubaix (Nöbauer 20022)
Giro: 2x Rosa (Volta 2023, Trakhtenbrot 2022), 1x Ciclamino (Iwachnenko 2023), 4 Stage wins (2x Iwachnenko, Volta, Tesla)
Tour: 1x Youth (Trakhtenbrot 2021), 3 Stage wins (2x Schwackhöfer, Wolfowitz)
Vuelta: 2x Mountain (McCulloch, Srivastav), 4 Stage wins (McCulloch, Heuser, Srivastav, Tesla)

Division 1 Victories: 5

[flockmastoR]

July 2023

With 28 races and 5,823 points the team finished and survived in Division 1 after a more or less inactive July and without riding the Tour de France. 16 wins in the side program was the result, ridiculously high number of wins but some of the races really were contested. Without riding the GT, our highlight was our home stage race Tour of Austria, where our Austrian classic Karl Prachar could win the GC, the points classification and 2 stages. Celsius on GC place 3 and Chau winning the Großglockner stage round off the result. Additionally, A&D could win the team classification. Just Oleksij was a bit sad, as he was suposed to be the stage hunter, but the plans where changed trying to open up the fight against a strong looking bergwerk team on all terrain. The team then also rode the stage races Torres Vedras (Volta winning GC, 1x Volta, 1x Tesla, 1x Prachar, team classification) and Vuelta Castilla (Celsius 3rd in GC, Sievert mountain classification).All in all the stage wins were collected throughout the whole month (5x Tesla, 3x Prachar, 3x Iwachnenko, 3x Chau, 2x Volta).

Rider of the month is Karl Prachar, winning the most competed stage race and a home win. Tesla was close with setting the record for most wins for A&D and equalizing with Jeff Joker in stage wins for a flockmastoR team. Tesla also equalized the record of most wins of a Croatian rider (Kristijan Durasek - chaingang) but the Croation record for most points (Fran Peterlin - Team FL - 16,332) seems out of reach.

Transfers
The young Hungarian rider Rudolf Kalman joins our team today. He will help us in the flat and should survive some hills. He will be the 2024 version of deCoulomb/Schötensack.

Rudolf Kálmán, 20 years
bought: 50-73-75-56-53-68,2-45
goal: 55-87

[flockmastoR]

Iwachnenko joins 20 wins club

Oleksij Iwachnenko joins the 20 wins club after today's stage win at the Vuelta a Espana. It his his 3rd GT stage win and his second big success this month (after winning Hamburg). He is only the 3rd rider in the club and he is the youngest and fastest member to join it.

20 wins club

Oleksij Iwachnenko, 29y, 118r
Nikola Tesla, 32y, 198r
Boaz Trakhtenbrot, 32y, 151r

[flockmastoR]

August 2023

31 races, place 12 in Division 1 with 9,076 points, starting in September with 4,220 points (rank 7). 7 wins in August is a good month once again. The month started with one day races all over the place, A&D was not able to participate at Pologne/Burgos/Norway. Ngo BaoChau won 3 fantasy one day races. First highlight was the sprint win of Iwachnenko at Hamburg (cat 5), it was a race dominated by the hill sprinters in the afternoon and A&D could surprise its opponents by a short but strong Prachar-Iwachnenko train. The team started at the Vuelta again after quitting it last year, this year Volta gets a second chance for a GT win but the opponents are quite strong. A&D could win the TTT and 2 more stages (Volta, Iwachnenko) and is wearing the leader and points jersey until now. Let's see if Volta is still good enough to fight for the GC win.

Iwachnenko is our rider of the month August with a GT win at the Vuelta and a classic win in Hamburg, the decision was not difficult.

Transfers
Yesterday the 20 year old László Babai from Budapest joined our team. He will be our sprint leader in 2024.

László Babai, 20 years
bought: 49-56-55-54-81-54.2 41reg
goal: 50-70 with 89 sprint

[flockmastoR]

Volta joins 15k points club (18.09.2023)

With winning the Vuelta a Espana, Alessandro Volta reached 15,313 eternal points. He is just the second rider to reach the 15k club. He was 6 days older than Boaz when he reached it, but it took him just 125 races.

15k Club
Boaz Trakhtenbrot, 33y, 152r
Alessandro Volta, 33y, 125r

Volta joins 5 GC win club

Volta could also join the elite club of riders with 5 GC wins. He is the second youngest (by some days) and tied second fastest to join the club.

5 GC wins club
Boaz Trakhtenbrot, 29 years, 95 races
Alessandro Volta, 33 years, 125 races
Franz Schwackhöfer, 33 years, 125 races

[flockmastoR]

September 2023

The team participated in 26 races in September and reached rank 5 in Division 1 with 11,145 points. First part of the month was dominated by the second part of the Vuelta a Espana, which was a success at all levels. Volta could win the GC and a total of 3 stages (2 in September), he could also finish on the podium for the points and mountain classification and get a lot of 2nd and 3rd places in stages as well. Iwachnenko could also win 2 stages (1 in September) but had no chance in the points classification due to the high number of mountain stages. The team could make a profit of ~1.6 Mio during the 23 days of the Vuelta. It was Volta's 5th stage race win and his 2nd GT win in 2023. The second half of the month was not too successfull. Josef Loschmidt could win his first race in a nice long breakaway and NgoBau Cau could win a classic at Giro dell Emilia, which had 2 strong climbers from Team FL and Kreatief as opponents to the A&D double climber combi. Our tactic turned out perfectly. First a sieb at the Monte Nonascoso by our team with the goal to weaken the strong classics of Team FL a bit and finally the Volta attack at the +6 with both climbers following gave Chau the needed energy advantage. Unfortunately for Volta, he ended up as a helper again. After he brought Tesla to the win last year, this year he kept it together for the Chau win and a back-to-back A&D Emilia win. This time Volta could finish 3rd himself. Totally 5 wins, but good ones.

Rider of the month: Alessandro Volta, winning his 2nd GT made it a clear voting. Winning 2 GT stages also helped.

Transfers
Robert Oppenheimer from the USA joined our team early to day. The negotiations took very long but finally during the night both sides agreed on a contract. He is planned as a classic rider, with his reg he will be a good support in the next season. For the first time in our team and manager history, we are now having a 20 rider squad.

Robert Oppenheimer, 20y
starting: 56-74-68-48-56-68.9 56reg
goal: 73-80

[flockmastoR]

Prachar joins 5k Club

With place 13 at Il Lombardia, Karl Prachar joined our 5k Club at the age of 32 after 136 races. It is the 5th classic to join the club.

5k Club
Franz Schwackhöfer (26y, 71r)
Oleksij Iwachnenko (26y, 95r)
Boaz Trakhtenbrot (28y, 75r)
Nikola Tesla (30y, 153r)
Jacob Wolfowitz (31y, 183r)
Alexandros Karatzoglou (31y, 195r)
Karl Prachar (32y, 136r)
Akos Detreköi (33y, 203r)
Helmut Heuser (33y, 185r)
Geoffrey Hinton (34y, 239)
Warren McCulloch (36y, 156r)
Max Simmer (36y, 204r)

[flockmastoR]

Iwachnenko joins 25 wins club

Last real stage race of the season and Oleksij Iwachnenko is showing a tremendous shape. He won 4 stages and the points classification at Tour of Guangxi. His win on the final stage made him reach the 25 wins club to join lonely Nikola. Iwachnenko is the younges and fastest to join the club at the age of 31 after 144 races. He is on a good path to become our biggest stage hunter!

25 Wins Club

Oleksij Iwachnenko, 31 years, 144 races
Nikola Tesla, 36 years, 263 races

[flockmastoR]

Chau joins 10 wins club

NgoBao Chau is the 8th rider to join the 10 wins club. After winning his second Vietnamese National Champions title in a one vs. one with against a sprinter from Pokemonogatari. He is our second climber to reach the 10 wins mark. He is the second fastest rider to reach the club with just 67 races.

10 wins club

Oleksij Iwachnenko, 26 years, 57 races
Franz Schwackhöfer, 27 years, 83 races
Boaz Trakhtenbrot, 28 years, 81 races
Nikola Tesla, 28 years, 123 races
NgôBao Châu, 29 years, 67 races
August Oetker, 30 years, 105 races
Geoffrey Hinton, 33 years, 232 races
Alexandros Karatzoglou, 33 years, 247 races

[flockmastoR]

Tesla opens 30 wins club

It feels a bit like cheating to get the long waited 30th win for Nikola Tesla in NC with no other active manager, but we will just take it. Nikola Tesla is now the first and only rider to get to 30 wins for the A&D manager. Jeff Joker finished his carreer with 32 wins but 4 of them were collected when he was active in Wizards Cycling. Our next best stage hunter is the still active Oleksij Iwachnenko with 25. Nikola needed to become 39 years for his 30th win in his 289 races and retired the day after.

30 Wins Club

Nikola Tesla, 39y, 289r

[flockmastoR]

October 2023

The team finished on place 6 of Division 1 with 11,928 points and 7 wins (5x Iwachnenko, 1x Faraday, 1x Prachar) in 27 races and additional 3 NC titles. The month started with a good win by Prachar at Tre Valli, the team wanted to ride for Tesla who won his sprint in the second group and missing just 1s. Rest of the classics were fails with a place 15 for Prachar at Gran Piemonte, a 6th place for Volta at Il Lombardia, and a 5th place of Dachwitz at Paris - Tours. Tour of Guangxi as last real stage race of the year finally was a big success. Oleksij Iwachnenko could win all 4 sprints (3x MS, 1x HS) and the points classification. Additionally, Chau finished 2nd in GC and Prachar 3rd and the team could win the team classification. The NC were a success too. Tesla could win back the Croatian jersey, Chau won back his Vietnamese jersey and Sievert defended his Swedish jersey. The team started motivated into the Tour de Paves but bad decisions first and unavailability of the team manager during at least 3 stages made it a fail. At least Faraday could win one stage, but the bad decisions on the last stage returned. At least no money was wasted and a financial plus was achieved.

With 5 wins and a sprint jersey Oleksik Iwachnenko made the race for rider of the month. He also is our best ranked stage hunter of the 2023 World Tour with 12 World Tour stage wins (Overall #2 behind Velasco).

Transfers
Nikola Tesla ends his career at A&D at the age of 39 after 289 races winning 14,491 eternal points. He came as an, old school, classic sprinter and had good helpers around him and a very good training. He achieved 30 wins. The career highlight was his win at Milano-Sanremo, other classics where not that successfull. He could get a podium at Amstel (3rd), Gent-Wevelgem (3rd), 5th at Harelbeke, but he could win the Giro dell Emilia in 2022. He won stages at the Giro and Vuelta, Pais Vasco and Tirreno Adriatico. He won 5 points classifications (Tirreno Adriatico, Down Under) and he could win one stage race and was on the podium at Pais Vasco. He carried the RSF leader jersey and set the record for most stage wins for A&D and most stage wins of a Croation rider at RSF.

Nikola Tesla, 39y, 289r, 14,491 points, 30 wins
bought: 56-71-75-52-64-64.4 36reg
peak: 75-72 with 73 sprint

3 more riders retired with Tesla, the Swedish trainings king Anders Celsius (270 races, 3807 points, 2x stage race podium) , the German 60-80 Georg Ohm (195 races, 1050 points, 1 win) and the French flat rider Augustin deCoulomb (255 races, 1200 points, 1 win).

Anders Celsius, 37y, 270r
bought: 56-72-52-48-54 63,9 39 reg
peak: 71-85

Augustin deCoulomb, 35y, 255r, 1 win
bought: 56-72-52-48-54 63,9 39 reg
peak: 71-85

Georg Ohm, 36y, 195r, 1 win
bought: 49-70-75-60-48-62,8 36 reg
peak: 65-82

The team could sign the Hungarian super talent Ferenc Krausz as a 2024 captain. He reminds me on the young Boaz the team manager said after meeting him the first time. His goal is not less than win the afternoon Giro in 2024.

Ferenc Krausz, 20y
bought: 73-56-71-54-49-62.6 53reg
goal: 87-56-71 with 57TT

[flockmastoR]

November 2023

A&D with 25 races in November finishing 9th in Division 1 with 6,851 points. Selling about 500 points Volta still had retiring. Ok month but in December we will fight against the relegation. 4 wins (Oppenheimer, Faraday, Dachwitz, Babai) 3 of them winning their first race and Faraday winning his second pave race. Additionally, Watt was 3rd in GC at the flat pave tour in Namibia. Best win was Oppenheimers Winter Classic win at Agadir out of a km0 attack. Dachwitz won his race while the manager was already sleeping in a late night visit at 23h. No real highlights, Prachar totally failed at San Francisco classic finishing 9th but the group around some other 6x sprinter classics was just beaten by 1s, and the race was very exciting and open with lots of early action.

Rider of the month is young gun Robert Oppenheimer with winning Grand Prix de Agadir. Congrtulations!

Transfers

Alessandro Volta retiered at the age of 35, after 131 races winning Giro 2023 and Vuelta 2023. Additionally he won 4 GT stages (1x Giro, 3x Vuelta). Appart from that, his early carreer was exciting winning December Tour (against Blind, Velasco, Cippola) and January Tour (again against Blind). But the cat 4 stage races were not successfull at all (Just a 3rd GC place at Romandie). At that time mostly Robert Frost, Alejandro Velasco and Guillaume Payot made it hard for Alessandro. But with the teams' confidence at the Giro, the success came back and Volta could beat some very good climbers in Italy (Perisic, Payot, Hill, Clévenot, Horejsi). After a longer break during the TDF the team decided to once again focus on a GT with Volta. In a very strong group, Volta could win and beat riders like Baer, Hill and Steiner. He is the first A&D rider winning 2 GTs and the rider with the best points/race ratio (121.9) and he just missed the eternal points record of Boaz Trakhtenbrot by 634 points.

Alessandro Volta, 35y, 131 races, 2GT wins, 9 wins
Start: 73-56-77-54-52 41reg
Peak: 87-56-77-59-52

2 young riders from Austria and Germany joined the team at the 01.12. Ilija Balinow comes as a futer first men in tempo, Arnold Sommerfeld will become a cheap flat rider with no side skill.

Ilija Balinow, 21y
bought: 48-68-77-54-49-62.6 57reg
goal: 50-80-80

Arnold Sommerfeld, 21y
bought: 46-74-49-56-46-67.1 36reg
goal: 50-87

[flockmastoR]

December 2023

The team could participate in 26 races in December and finish on rank 10 in Division 1 with 5,020 points (3,015 points in Decembre, rank 10). The month wasn't very successfull, but we were able to win 3 races (1x Watt, 1x Hamarat, 1x Loschmidt). Best win was Watt winning the winter classic Dolisie - Point Noire against superior free team after the team held back some of its helpers attacking in the right moment with Watt and Sievert. One day races otherwise were pretty unsuccessfull. So was the highlight of the month, the December tour. Here we were close to winning a stage with 6 second places. And we failed winning the GC for the first time at December tour since 2020 (we started with McCulloch as leader). Nevertheless, Ferenc Krausz could reach a podium (3rd GC) and win the white jersey.

Rider of the month: A stage win at a winter classic is worth more than a podium at the December tour. So James Watt is our rider of the month December.

Transfers
Johann Loschmidt retired before Christmas. He was an important helper for the 2023 stage race squad, being first or second in tempo to control for Volta. He could also win 2 races out of early escapes. In total he did 303 races collecting 479 points (3rd least points of a retired A&D rider).

Johann Loschmidt, 36, 303 races, 2 wins
Start: 47-67-77-48-51
Peak: 53-81-77-48-51

A new classic rider from Austria signed a contract at A&D, Anton Rella will help our 2024 team in hilly and mountainous terrain.

Anton Rella, 21y
Start: 56-72-73-48-58-66.3-35
Goal: 72-80