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Teams & Riders EF Pro Cycling

Page 32 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
I hadn't realised until you pointed it out that only Mullen and Skujins rode their ITT nats. Now that I think of it, I don't remember even Bevin riding his one early in the year and he was defending champion. I would have thought that, at least where it doesn't interfere with Tour preparation, it would be good practice to have most of those who might ever have to do a meaningful ITT or TTT do it for experience of competitive time trialling.
 
Re: Cannondale-Drapac

Ahh, now we know why Brown didn't ride USA nationals- he will ride TdF!

That would be not a bad roster for TTT, but there's no TTT in this race. On the other hand, there is a TTT in Vuelta where they will perhaps send much more guys who can't TTT.
 
Re: Cannondale-Drapac

Anderis said:
Ahh, now we know why Brown didn't ride USA nationals- he will ride TdF!

That would be not a bad roster for TTT, but there's no TTT in this race. On the other hand, there is a TTT in Vuelta where they will perhaps send much more guys who can't TTT.
They might want a good flat-terrain train to set up Rolland and/or Uran for a good run at stage 3 or 5. In 2015 they came to the front to try and set Martin up for the Mur de Huy, but got swamped by QS, Movistar and Sky almost immediately because they just didn't have the horsepower.
 
Re:

Anderis said:
I thought that Cannondale's roster for this year's TdF is rather experienced by their standards, but they still have the lowest average age among all teams starting.

Cannondale made the horrible decision this off season to spend all their money on Phinney and his celebrity rather than acquire some sturdy vet riders. They desperately need a road captain super domestique. I expect the first time their are splits in the peloton due to tactics like echelons formed from wind, cannondale will miss the front split.
 
I don't think they spent that much money on Phinney and definetely not all. I would bet that Vanmarcke is certainly on a higher contract.

Koren is an excellent rider on echelons, I don't think there's that much Cannondale can do about being good on echelons. Their main focus with their limited budget is on hilly races and to do well on echelons you need a whole dedicated team, not just one road captain super domestique. Losing a race on a stage with echelons is such a rare occurance anyway that I don't find it worth to spend their limited budget to prevent such an outcome IMO.

Btw. just two days ago Cannondale bossed the peloton on an echelon stage in Austria.
 
Re: Cannondale-Drapac

Btw. early days of transfers rumours but Formolo, Villella and Koren have already been linked to other teams. I would think that Cannondale is also at risk of losing at least one of Van Baarle/Bettiol duo (with Vanmarcke and Langeveld still in the team, they cannot be all oferred leadership in northern classics so maybe they'll leave for a bigger paycheck or clear leadership elsewhere). With Uran's contract also running out at the end of the year, it will be a crucial transfer period for the team and they will need to attract some talent otherwise the quality of the team will suffer.

The last 2 transfer periods for the team were actually better than I expected so I hope this one will not disappoint as well.
 
Re:

Anderis said:
I don't think they spent that much money on Phinney and definetely not all. I would bet that Vanmarcke is certainly on a higher contract.

Koren is an excellent rider on echelons, I don't think there's that much Cannondale can do about being good on echelons. Their main focus with their limited budget is on hilly races and to do well on echelons you need a whole dedicated team, not just one road captain super domestique. Losing a race on a stage with echelons is such a rare occurance anyway that I don't find it worth to spend their limited budget to prevent such an outcome IMO.

Btw. just two days ago Cannondale bossed the peloton on an echelon stage in Austria.

Agreed, particularly on Phinney's contract.

On echelons in Austria, they do actually have enough powerful big lumps to do well in those circumstances - in Austria they have Vanmarcke, Koren, Mullen, Howes etc - but I don't see why they would add more riders like that to their Tour squad. VanBaarle, Phinney, Bevin should be enough of an insurance policy for a team that's trying to hunt for stages and pick up a top 10.
 
I wouldn't count Howes as a big lump. He is only 61kg. He is definetely more a puncheur/punchy climber than a rouleur.

Uran strong, Talansky unfortunately about as strong as I expected after Dauphine- not enough for a top10 GC. All in all it looks much more promising than last year. Well, two top10 (including one top5) stage places and keeping polka-dot jersey for 3 days is I think already better than last year. :p
 
4 riders in the top40 today. Refreshing after horrible TdF last year.

Talansky was aparently ill before TdF. Maybe he will come good in 3rd week eventually. Today he was clearly lacking a bit and couldn't follow some of the other breakaway riders. I also had the impression that Clarke was working too much and therefore easily dropped on the final climb.

And what a shame that Vanmarcke didn't manage to win anything in the last 2 weeks.
 
Re:

Anderis said:
I don't think they spent that much money on Phinney and definetely not all. I would bet that Vanmarcke is certainly on a higher contract.

Koren is an excellent rider on echelons, I don't think there's that much Cannondale can do about being good on echelons. Their main focus with their limited budget is on hilly races and to do well on echelons you need a whole dedicated team, not just one road captain super domestique. Losing a race on a stage with echelons is such a rare occurance anyway that I don't find it worth to spend their limited budget to prevent such an outcome IMO.

Btw. just two days ago Cannondale bossed the peloton on an echelon stage in Austria.

I was told 1 million+ for the year.
 
Re: Cannondale-Drapac

Davesta said:
If that's true, it's very interesting, as it means other marquee riders such as Vanmarcke, Phinney, Rolland etc must be on relatively low salaries...
It isn't surprising.

Vanmarcke is a rider with limited skillset and can basically shine only in cobbled classics (unlike riders like Sagan or Van Avermaet that are more likely to take decent wins all year), but he hasn't won any significant one since 2012 Omloop, so he can't demand the money that better all-rounders or riders with big wins can demand.

Phinney is an obvious case. Due to his injury he has not delivered the promise he was giving early in his career and is not that likely to ever deliver that TBH.

Rolland's market value has definetely dropped since other French hopes like Bardet and Pinot stepped up. He is considered now just 3rd or 4th best French climber and not really a podium GC material in GTs, so he is just forced to find his niche and can't demand to be paid like a next big thing.

This is just what Vaughters is forced to do with his budget. Try to glue together a WT-worthy team out of riders who haven't done enough in recent years to demand big contracts from other teams. I guess that is not an easy task and the results and performances that Cannondale has delivered this year deserve some respect considering the circumstances of "running on the ragged thin edge of really being able to carry on as a WorldTour team".
 
It's incredible how early Rolland and Talansky were dropped today. I think Rolland was one of the first 30 riders to get dropped. What happened to them? On the previous days they were both not great, but at least climbed better than most of the peloton.

Bettiol, on the other hard, was amazing. He is more of a punchy sprinter and classics rider than a climber. To be there with 25 best guys on a TdF mountain stage is impressive.
 
Re:

Anderis said:
It's incredible how early Rolland and Talansky were dropped today. I think Rolland was one of the first 30 riders to get dropped. What happened to them? On the previous days they were both not great, but at least climbed better than most of the peloton.

Bettiol, on the other hard, was amazing. He is more of a punchy sprinter and classics rider than a climber. To be there with 25 best guys on a TdF mountain stage is impressive.
A few guys in the platoon have a stomach bug so maybe those two caught it too?
 
Possibly.

Today things looked better. Rolland finished with Quintana and Talansky was in the leader's jersey reduced group at the top of the first big climb. Bettiol awesome again. Unlucky that circumstances aren't better to go stage-hunting for him. Might be one of more underrated riders in the peloton. Not a single person picked him for stage 3 in procyclingstats game.
 

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