Lesser known races results 2015

[ppanther92]

Re:

The race is no longer four flat sprint stages. There are hilly stages this year as well as the prologue.

Not many big names this year. Former winners Roelandts and de Busschere are here, as well as van Asbroeck, Hofland, de Gendt, Ligthart, Haller, Braendle, Haussler, Napolitano, Leukemans, Wallays, Bos, Ciolek, Pauwels, and Vachon.

Haller should do well based on the WC road race.

 

[TMP402]

Alexis Gougeard is still in 1st after favourite Matthias Braendle fails to overhaul him. Tough prologue with a climb at the finish.

 

[TMP402]

Alexis Gougeard wins the prologue.

 

[TMP402]

 

[Domulec]

Excellent year for Gougeard, developing very well and an exciting prospect for the spring classics maybe?

 

[BigMac]

Good prologue. Nice race.

Sadly had to watch it muted.

 

[Dazed and Confused]

Alexis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[TMP402]

de Busschere wins Stage 1 of the Tour de l'Eurométropole, ahead of R Kreder, Dupont, Trusov, Roelandts, McLay, Verhelst, van Genechten, Selig and Curvers.

 

[TMP402]

That top 10 only highlights the disappointing startlist. I would think good sprinters who are low on wins this season, like Viviani or Kittel, would absolutely clean up here.

 

[TMP402]

Jonas van Genechten wins stage 2. Gougeard still the leader.

 

[Brullnux]

Lutsenko wins Almaty, Aru second.

 

[TMP402]

Theuns won stage 3 and Ahlstrand won stage 4. Gougeard retains the overall. A race won in the prologue is a bit of a bummer.

 

[TMP402]

Laporte wins Tour de Vendee.

 

[Dazed and Confused]

Re:

Laporte wins Tour de Vendee.

Good stuff.
I expect more from this kid moving forward.

 

[Alexandre B.]

Ramon Sinkeldam wins Binche-Chimay-Binche ahead of Ligthart and Van Asbroeck.

Roelandts made the wrong move, imo. Should've wait for the sprint.

 

[classicomano]

Nice last kilometer power attack from Sinkeldam, blew everyone off his wheel.

 

[Martin]

Re:

Ramon Sinkeldam wins Binche-Chimay-Binche ahead of Ligthart and Van Asbroeck.

Roelandts made the wrong move, imo. Should've wait for the sprint.

On the other side, how disastrous race this was for Etixx! Looking at the results, they had a strong team, and best of them was terpstra, way down the the classification. Styby DNF. And it was also bad race for Tinkoff- Saxo. 3 guys in the front group, all finished in the back of it.

 

[TMP402]

Can anyone explain why the Tour of China is so weird? We're only up to stage 4 so far and there have been two rest days already. there are two Tours of China, I and II. There is only one day between the end of I and the beginning of II...

China already has Tours of Qinghai Lake, Hainan, Guangzhou Nansha, Taihu Lake, Fuzhou, and the particularly catchy Yancheng Coastal Wetlands. Why not have the Tours of China parts I & II stick to one place, like the other Chinese races?

 

[TMP402]

Anyway the winners so far:

Stage 1: Armands Becis (Rietumu-Delfin)
Stage 2 (3.1km "ITT"): Niel van der Ploeg (Avanti Racing Team)
Stage 3: Johim Ariesen (Metec-TKH Cycling Team p/b Mantel)
Stage 4: Daniele Colli (Nippo-Vini Fantini)

 

[Bye Bye Bicycle]

There's also the 11-day Tour of Poyang Lake, which attracted quite a nice field in September (won by Thomas Rabou in front of John Ebsen) but which wasn't an UCI event.

Chinese racing scene is indeed quite mysterious, probably due to lack of english-language coverage. They have a dozen of continental teams which never have any remarkable results. Sometimes they consist mainly of obscure Mongolian or Uzbekh riders, sometimes they sign 40-year-old Colombians just for one or two races.

 

[tweak37]

Re:

Can anyone explain why the Tour of China is so weird? We're only up to stage 4 so far and there have been two rest days already. there are two Tours of China, I and II. There is only one day between the end of I and the beginning of II...

The "rest days" are there because of the big transfers they have to do between stages: after the first two stages in and around Tianjin (China's 4th city with a population of 15,000,000) they took a plane to Huangshi (a small provincial town of 2,500,000 souls 1000 kilometers to the south of Tianjin). Yesterday, they traveled by bus from Wuhan (pop. 10,000,000) 1000 km westwards to Bazhong (pop. 3,200,000). After today's stage (which was won by Meiying Wang by the way), they will travel again about 500 km to Leshan where the first part of Tour ends.
The second part is pretty much the same story. They split the race up in 2012, I presume because of UCI regulations which officially limits continental stage races to 5 days, so they already need an exception for the 8 days each part takes up now. About 17 days for a 2.1 would be a bit too much I guess.

 

[TMP402]

Meiyin Wang wins stage 5, Sam Bennett wins Paris-Bourges and Eduard Prades wins Coppa Sabatini.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

NIce win for Bennett, in front of Bouhanni and Nizzolo.

 

[Domulec]

Re: Re:

Ramon Sinkeldam wins Binche-Chimay-Binche ahead of Ligthart and Van Asbroeck.

Roelandts made the wrong move, imo. Should've wait for the sprint.

On the other side, how disastrous race this was for Etixx! Looking at the results, they had a strong team, and best of them was terpstra, way down the the classification. Styby DNF. And it was also bad race for Tinkoff- Saxo. 3 guys in the front group, all finished in the back of it.

Terpstra went solo with 50k to go and was only reeled in a few kilometres before the end, so he showed some nice form actually.

 

[DNP-Old]

http://www.gsemilia.it

Here's a live ticker for Giro dell'Emilia, although the race has lost a lot of it's charm, which saddens me a lot. The race has such a big history, but even Italian powerhouses like Nibali and Aru rather go racing somewhere in the desert.