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Battle for 2023-2025 WT licenses

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Ricco'

Ricco'

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Israel is a 2nd tier pro conti team with a good aposentation scheme.

Apart from Israelis, I can't see what reasons they gave for a fan to have them as a favorite team. No remarkable features. Even DSM, with all them problems, as some appeal with their strategy to go after young talent. 2017 Sunweb with Dumoulin, Matthews and Barguil and 2020 with SKA, Hirschi, Hindley, etc. had a distinct appeal.

They were lucky Katyusha folded and even then picked up a decaying team to step up.
 
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Samamba

Samamba

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They'll still get that guaranteed WC if Teuns keeps performing and a guy like Woods rides decent in the Italian classics. Nizzolo can sprint to some top 5's., Strong has been in really good form too. Total isn't riding enough races and their advantage (taking easier points in France) is also gone with there being strong competition in every .1 race now. They basically need a good Sagan and I don't think we'll be seeing that.
 
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Eddy Evenepoel

Eddy Evenepoel

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yaco said:
It's funny that some pot ISN who've had an ordinary year but forget Astana who have 4 wins this year with 2 being Kazakhstan National titles.
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Astana been really bad this year, But atleast they have been somewhat competitive/visible in the Grand Tours GC with 4th in both Giro and Vuelta. For some people that kind of hide, to a certain degree, the complete lack of wins.
 
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tobydawq

tobydawq

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Eddy Evenepoel said:
Astana been really bad this year, But atleast they have been somewhat competitive/visible in the Grand Tours GC with 4th in both Giro and Vuelta. For some people that kind of hide, to a certain degree, the complete lack of wins.
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If you add the lowest placings in the three Grand Tours for each team, Astana get the second-lowest score and have ergo been the second-best team of the year after Ineos.
 
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Bonimenier

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tobydawq said:
If you add the lowest placings in the thrwe Grand Tours for each team, Astana get the second-lowest score and have ergo been the second-best team of the year after Ineos.
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If you count Lutsenko as 9th in the Tour, Bora is ahead. If you count Lutsenko as 8th in the Tour, Bora is still ahead because of first tiebreaker: best placed rider in a single GT.
 
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staubsauger

staubsauger

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Samamba said:
They'll still get that guaranteed WC if Teuns keeps performing and a guy like Woods rides decent in the Italian classics. Nizzolo can sprint to some top 5's., Strong has been in really good form too. Total isn't riding enough races and their advantage (taking easier points in France) is also gone with there being strong competition in every .1 race now. They basically need a good Sagan and I don't think we'll be seeing that.
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Turgis could win Paris-Tours actually. I wouldn't completely rule out that Total manages to stay ahead.
 
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SHAD0W93

SHAD0W93

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tobydawq said:
Are you guys seriously suggesting that Astana are not even a top 3 team of 2022???
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No, just saying they were fourth best GT GC team ;)

And depending on how you got to top 3, Jumbo, UAE, Quickstep, Ineos, Bahrain, and Bora all had better season. So no I don’t think it’s crazy for someone to say they weren’t a top 5 team this year. Just like it’s crazy to suggest it was one of the worst.
 
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tobydawq

tobydawq

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SHAD0W93 said:
No, just saying they were fourth best GT GC team ;)

And depending on how you got to top 3, Jumbo, UAE, Quickstep, Ineos, Bahrain, and Bora all had better season. So no I don’t think it’s crazy for someone to say they weren’t a top 5 team this year. Just like it’s crazy to suggest it was one of the worst.
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Top 3 with Ineos and Bora because of the stat I posted before.

In seriousness, I definitely do think they were the worst team by far.

Three very anonymous top 10s in Grand Tours is the only thing they have to show for their season who has otherwise been absolutely embarrassing.
 
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tobydawq

tobydawq

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tobydawq said:
Top 3 with Ineos and Bora because of the stat I posted before.

In seriousness, I definitely do think they were the worst team by far.

Three very anonymous top 10s in Grand Tours is the only thing they have to show for their season who has otherwise been absolutely embarrassing.
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While they have been able to place riders decently in stage races, their one-day race results are absolutely shocking. Apart from national championships, they have a grand total of four - FOUR - top 10 placings the entire season, and not a single one of those has been on the WorldTour o_O
 
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Lexman

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DNP-Old said:
Week of truth approaching for Lotto. De Lie and Ewan will be doing 5 races between now and September 21st, while Thomas Benjamin just dropped a dud in Luxembourg. If all goes well, they could be within striking distance in a few days. BEX not far off either, but I'd imagine Groenewegen will be snorting points this weekend too.
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I fear Cofidis and EF will gather still a lot of points in the italian races...
 
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Samamba

Samamba

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With De Lie crashing yesterday after a great race, Ewan and De Buyst being sick the battle really is done and dusted. They needed to half the gap this weekend and it didn't work out (due to bad luck sadly). Still 600+ behind BEX en 700+ to Cofidis. That's impossible. I honestly think they didn't do anything wrong since May. They rode what they needed to ride, performed excellent in most of the races apart from the GTs. The whole team crashing in Hamburg, Benelux being cancelled, Cras crashing out of the Vuelta and Wellens/Kron not being fit for Canada really took away any chances of catching any team. Mistakes were made, particularly at the end of last year when they didn't ride enough compared to Cofidis and Arkea, but the 2nd part of this season they did what they could.

I hope Lotto is smart enough to not send a whole team to Langkawi to race in hot and humid weather when it's not worth it anymore.
 
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Ricco'

Ricco'

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Samamba said:
With De Lie crashing yesterday after a great race, Ewan and De Buyst being sick the battle really is done and dusted. They needed to half the gap this weekend and it didn't work out (due to bad luck sadly). Still 600+ behind BEX en 700+ to Cofidis. That's impossible. I honestly think they didn't do anything wrong since May. They rode what they needed to ride, performed excellent in most of the races apart from the GTs. The whole team crashing in Hamburg, Benelux being cancelled, Cras crashing out of the Vuelta and Wellens/Kron not being fit for Canada really took away any chances of catching any team. Mistakes were made, particularly at the end of last year when they didn't ride enough compared to Cofidis and Arkea, but the 2nd part of this season they did what they could.

I hope Lotto is smart enough to not send a whole team to Langkawi to race in hot and humid weather when it's not worth it anymore.
Click to expand...

The problems with Lotto come from 2020 and 2021. In a ranking that runs for 30 months (not counting off-season), they worried about it for like 25% of the time or so (and so did several other teams).

This year they are 14th in the UCI ranking with almost 2000 points advantage to the 19th team. Compare it with a 19th to 2021 and a 17th to 2020.

It's like a reverse Astana (7th-13th-21st) or DSM (5th-21st-18th), who are safe due to earlier years where they had stronger teams.

Which nonetheless makes me think that a 3 year period is too large for a current indicator of a team's value.
 
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Samamba

Samamba

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Ricco' said:
The problems with Lotto come from 2020 and 2021. In a ranking that runs for 30 months (not counting off-season), they worried about it for like 25% of the time or so (and so did several other teams).

This year they are 14th in the UCI ranking with almost 2000 points advantage to the 19th team. Compare it with a 19th to 2021 and a 17th to 2020.

It's like a reverse Astana (7th-13th-21st) or DSM (5th-21st-18th), who are safe due to earlier years where they had stronger teams.

Which nonetheless makes me think that a 3 year period is too large for a current indicator of a team's value.
Click to expand...

Well in 2020 it was impossible for WT teams to ride smaller races with a decent team cause they were obligated to ride all WT races in a span of 3 months.
I agree about 2021. Just like other team they focussed on WT races and kind of neglected the smaller Belgian races by sending a C team to them. They did have a decent year WT point wise (with a 2nd place in MSR and Roubaix), but didn't get a lot of points in .1 and .Pro races. A mistake afterwards but in the end it isn't weird that a WT team focusses on WT races. The mainly stopped their year too fast. Should've ridden more races at the end of last year. Both Arkea and Cofidis won 1000 points on them in the last 2 months of 2021.

In the end they had 18 WT wins in 3 years time, 8 of them being in GTs. That's pretty good. There's teams that will be WT next year that did way worse.

Anyways not the end of the world for them. They'll have one of the biggest classic talents in the world, the winner of the Peace Race & 2nd plance in the Baby Giro and the EC u23 TT (& maybe medalist on WC too) in their team for the upcoming years. That's something to build on. Sponsors would be quite stupid to pull out with that.
 
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