Wizards Cycling public relations

[Lizard]

Thank you. But the peloton is too weak + lack of sprinter cooperation. But it´s the main tour for this month^^

[Lizard]

The four times bomber with points´ classement

Manuel Clausen also won the last hilly stage of ENECO Tour. It is a bit sad, because the team was fully riding for Eickendreyer today. Due to weird attacks in the finale we were not sure if Dick would win the sprint, but in the end went different than expected. So we got a double victory today with Manu 1st and Dick 2nd, a great result as a finale for this tour. ENECO will be as successful as Austria this year, we expect over a million credits to be earned.

[flockmastoR]

krasse einnahmen, glückwunsch zu den siegen Lizard

[Lizard]

Dankeschön! Freut mich, überhaupt mal wieder einen Kommentar von dir lesen zu können

[Lizard]

ENECO Tour

The homeland tour for the Wizards went out to be a huge success for the team and we are very happy to already won 6 stages, one general classement and one points classement in this month. 4 stages only were won at ENECO, all by Manuel Clausen. We planned a victory for stage 1 with Manuel and the tour started good. After that we were more pushing in the finales and opened chances for other teams because for the points classement we had to hope for help by other teams. Luckily there was - to shorten this - no big competition for Clausen. He was the strongest classic rider of this tour by far, even in bad shape he would´ve made a well performance here. We are also very happy for the 6th position in general classement by Manuel, aswell as the 8th position for Eickendreyer. The young gun had barely chances to show his talent this tour, but he´ll be back on pavés this winter. Also in financial terms this tour was the greatest success for the team EVER: 1.239.680 credits were earned in the last 8 days, it looks like a record.

General classement:
6th: Manuel Clausen
8th: Dick Eickendreyer
Points´ classement: Manuel Clausen

Stages:
1st: Manuel Clausen (4x)
2nd: Dick Eickendreyer

Finances:
1.239.680 Credits

[Recien Nacido]

1.2 mille gewinn ? Wie wäre es wenn du mir davon was abgibst? GW zu den 4 Siegen und Clausen ist verdammt stark gewurden kein Branco aber gw zu dem Fahrer.

[Lizard]

Abgeben wird schwer - ich muss ja die teure kommende Generation kaufen, hab nur uralte Klassiker im Team.

Danke für die Glückwünsche - in den nächsten 4 bis 5 Monaten könnte Clausen Branco aber noch einholen, ich werd zumindest mein bestes geben
Aber bei Eneco hab ich hauptsächlich von der schwachen Konkurrenz allein aufgrund Clausens Werten profitiert...

[Lizard]

DICK2010: Time to reign

After huge financial bonifications because of ENECO, the greatest dutch talent for the coming month has signed a deal with Wizards Cycling. His name? It´s Victor Overbos, youth friend of Dick Eickendreyer and aswell pavé hero. Skills? Too good to just show them.

Personal information:

Name: Victor Overbos
Age: 20
Place of birth: Middelburg
Nationality: Dutch

[Lizard]

Rider of the month: August

And the nominees are:

Manuel Clausen (100%):
3rd Vattenfall Cyclassics, Cat. 5
Points´ classement ENECO Tour, Cat. 3
Stage 1 ENECO Tour, Cat. 3
Stage 3 ENECO Tour, Cat. 3
Stage 5 ENECO Tour, Cat. 3
Stage 6 ENECO Tour, Cat. 3
General classement L´ain, Cat. 2
Stage 4 Tour de L´ain, Cat. 2
Stage 5 Tour de L´ain, Cat. 2
2286 points

And the winner is:
Obvious.

April training

Samuel Albany: -
Tom van Amstel: +4 Climb, +4 Flat
Joost Berkefeldt: +2 Flat
Manuel Clausen: +1 Climb
Dick Eickendreyer: +1 Climb, +4 Flat
Mark Enkeeevelaert: +1 Sprint
André Katchono: -
Ndale Mbeki: -1 Time Trial
Robbin Peppermayer: +2 Flat
Alfons Ulminger: -
John vandenVaalken: -1 Downhill
Kato Wolfsong: +1 Sprint

[Lizard]

New month, new surprises

The first stage of the Western Canada Tour already made any thought for the overall unnecessary. A group containing 5 riders (including Ndale Mbeki and Victor Overbos) was let away over 25 minutes, a situation that never occured to our team in 4 years. Mbeki had an easy attack on the last 4% and could win the stage aswell as the general classement for now. If I will be able to be online for the last 4 days Mbeki has this classement quite sure with 10 minutes to the peloton yesterday.

[Lizard]

Mark the Gun makes the Wizards Show perfect: 2nd stage on 4th day

Today the Wizards were going to give something back for the safe victory. We did not have any pressure in our necks, so we thought let´s go for a bunch sprint. Fortunately Mark the Gun was able to really win this bunch sprint from 450 metres almost alone. We are totally happy that Mark could win the stage, this makes the tour perfect! After Tour de Suisse stage 3 this was Mark´s 2nd professional victory.

[Lizard]

Western Canada Tour

In Canada the Wizards came to ride perhaps the only tour for the team in this month. Luckily, we could be successful in sporting and financial terms again this month. Ndale Mbeki was able to win his first tour and also take the points classement with him. The team also won the team classement due to Ndale´s and Victor´s escape on the first day. We also took two stages, one by Ndale and one by Mark. This tour was a huge sign after a month filled by Clausen wins that the other riders are dangerous aswell (even though the peloton really did everything to help us on stage 1). Nevertheless, the run keeps going and now three months in a row we could make 1 million credits with only one tour.

General classement:
1st: Ndale Mbeki
5th: Victor Overbos
Points´ classement: Ndale Mbeki
Team classement: Wizards Cycling

Stages:
1st: Mark Enkeevelaert, Ndale Mbeki
3rd: Mark Enkeevelaert

Finances:
1.049.745 Credits

[NoPikouze]

Why does this never happen to me

Congrats

[Lizard]

Thank you! I dumped around over three years before this happened to me aswell. So believe

[Lizard]

Back in business

After the holidays at the family´s in Croatia the Wizards Cycling squad is back in business. Probably the next race could be Franco Belge.

[Lizard]

Lombardia Kato´s last race

Kato Wolfsong today announced that the great Giro di Lombardia is going to be his last career race.

[Lizard]

Mbeki with first win after the holidays and in the new month

India, almost 40°C! It was hard to keep anyone close to 1000 energy, and the finish was not the perfect one for Clausen. So we thought if there is a chance on the first steep part in the race we give Mbeki and Wolfsong a try. Mbeki with his downhill skills seemed to be the better rider to be the protected one in the group, so Kato again made a great helper job, this time for his young compatriot. A group including Adrien Dalcin (Aixteam), Drew Bezanson (Team Bearclaw) and Septimiu Berlogea (Petit Singe) was formed and seemed to work together quite well. In the end it might have been the shape of Ndale that made the difference between him and Dalcin in the final sprint, 7 seconds before the next group containing Clausen who could win the sprint there aswell. A great race and a good comeback for us. We are glad for Mbeki´s 4th stage and to have ridden on this afternoon with many many well-known managers in a great peloton today.

[Lizard]

Mark in teams' focus

With Mark Enkeevelaert the Wizards squad did a try to grow up an own sprinter. After Andris Nauduzs, who came from Cerro Torre RT Mark is the second personnel for flat stages. Training success and victories keep rare, but some many 2nd places were achieved. Now the team management put him in the focus. His contract ends during this month and he will have to fight to stay in the team. Either a good training result or an important victory that we hoped for with his engagement might keep him a place in our squad. Else the team might aswell look for an alternative for him.

[Lizard]

Paris-Bourges for Mark the Gun!

It seems like our announcement early this morning was the right thing to do. Enkeevelaert, the teams' sprinter, took it for serious and was able to win the bunch sprint at Paris-Bourges (Cat. 3) today. After a cooperation with Team Franconia, were the other sprinters were seperated from the first group he could beat Cordero. After the race Mark said: "It always levels between us two. We will probably meet again at Milano-Torino and after the good race today the manager announced to bring a strong line-up for this oldest italian classic race. I'm looking forward for another interesting competition!"

[Lizard]

Young swiss rider to join next month

After some thoughts of buying a former Lizard (Jan Vermaart) finally the management decided to go for a new helper. It is planned to buy a new classic leader next month probably, so the team was not sure what to do now. Finally it was decided to go for a cheap helper first and afterwards look for a new hero. The new rider is going to be a good helper for sprints aswell as an option for breakaways due to the lack of regeneration in the squad (which is for many helpers not even 50). A swiss talent was found that will join the squad in November. Here is some basic information about him:

Name: Ignaz Ockbühli
Age: 20
Place of birth: Pfeffikon
Nationality: Swiss
Skills: 49-73-63-50-49, 46 Reg

[Lizard]

Holidays - plenty issues unmentioned

During the holidays many subjects concerning the squad have got lost. Now it might be time to capture all in one news article. We might just begin with the still not honored Rider of the month: September.

And the nominees are:

Mark Enkeevelaert (6%):
Stage 4 Western Canada Tour, Cat. 1
256 points

Ndale Mbeki (94%):
General Classement Western Canada Tour, Cat. 1
Stage 1 Western Canada Tour, Cat. 1

And the winner is:

Ndale Mbeki! With a huge gap in the votes between him and Mark Ndale could make it. After he stopped training with 25 years the team wasn't sure if he'll ever be able to compete with the elite. By accident Ndale's and Victor's group on stage 1 of the Canadian tour got a gap of over 20 minutes to the peloton. None of the favourites willing to work, Ndale had an easy job to win aswell the stage as the preliminary decision of who is able to win the tour. And it came like this in the end: Mbeki could win his first tour, Mark achieved the 2nd stage victory and we could get the team classement aswell. By this Mbeki could proove that no one should let him stay alone since he is able to start brilliant maneuvers - as he aswell prooved this month in India again. Congrats, Ndale!

Next up:

September training

Samuel Albany: -
Tom van Amstel: +4 Climb, +1 Flat
Joost Berkefeldt: -
Manuel Clausen: -
Dick Eickendreyer: +3 Flat
Mark Enkeeevelaert: +3 Climb
André Katchono: -1 Time Trial
Ndale Mbeki: -
Victor Overbos: +2 Climb, +4 Flat
Robbin Peppermayer: -
Alfons Ulminger: +1 Sprint
John vandenVaalken: +2 Climb
Kato Wolfsong: -1 Sprint

Breaking news on Kato Wolfsong: "I'm gonna ride one more."

Kato Wolfsong declared the Giro di Lombardia would probably be his last race. Since the day after will be date of the national championships Kato keeps open the possibility to ride this race aswell: "Well, Lombardia will be the last time I can proove my strengths in the world elite together with Manuel, Ndale and the young guns. But yesterday I was talking to André and we both are kind of hot for this national championship. Maybe we can figure out something and get back that title I onced earned in my career. I'm gonna ride one more!"

DICK2010: Time to reign. deRoemer interviewed by star reporter Tobias Feder

Feder: Good afternoon Mr. deRoemer, it is a pleasure to have you here.
deRoemer: Thank you, I appreciate this chance to talk about the squad's future.
Feder: So, with the engagement of Dick Eickendreyer the Wizards Cycling mentality seemed to have changed and a totally new project was formed being called DICK2010. What exactly is DICK2010?
deRoemer: DICK2010 is a project derived from the team's specialization. As most people know our squad defined itself with the great victories of Adam Wollfinger. He gave us the shape we have now: a classic team, going for wins at the big one day races. DICK is also an abbreviation for "Distinct Internalisation of Classic race Keenness". It is all about shaping the riders into a totally individual way of riding. Since most classics riders have almost the same strengths and weaknesses we wanted to start a project with untypical riders, all having barely known strengths and obvious weak spots no other manager would like to support. A rider like Dick Eickendreyer is the perfect example, because he is a strong classic rider but has absolutely no chance in winning else than solo. This makes strategy tough so we need a perfectly balanced team to field those weak spots and slip in, though makes racing much more amusing for us. Got it?
Feder: So the management wants to supply niche riders?
deRoemer: This is a consequence of our thoughts. If you want to support such individual rider types you need to have two things: team balance and find unused options. It is not interesting if a captain has the perfect team of five 70-80s to win any classic race he wants to. It is though interesting for the race if the strong captain has less help than needed to open the chances for everyone. And vice-versa, it is more interesting if a team of non-captains is able to win against the huge favourites. We want to support both ideas and in any way be something that is outstanding.
Feder: With Eickendreyer, Overbos or vanAmstel we already see new riders in the squad. Which are going to follow? More pavés riders, sprinters, climbers or usual classic riders?
deRoemer: In any case no usual riders will be bought. There is a slight chance that we might buy a pavés rider again, but the probability for a classic rider or sprinter is right now higher. Maybe even a climber is an option. Also, a new talent has signed a deal for next month. His name is Ignaz Ockbühli (49-73-63-50-49, 46 Reg, SUI) and he will be a cheap helper aswell as sprint primer. There are right now negotiations with two other riders, but we will not talk about this in public right now.
Feder: Last question: What is the goal for 2011?
deRoemer: To win Vlaanderen's Mooiste.
Feder: Thank you for this informative interview and good luck for the rest of 2010!
deRoemer: It was a pleasure, nice meeting you.

[Lizard]

Clausen writes history: Victory at Giro di Lombardia!

It is unbelievable. It is totally unbelievable. Who would've thought of this? Yes, we thought of it. And we had the team: Clausen - Sneijder - Wolfsong. And what did we do? We sold Sneijder, god dammit! The most important helper for the Giro di Lombardia sold because of a financial lack. Before the monumental race we thought to buy a Lombardia helper / Giro aspirant but had to focus on the pavés department. So in the end Clausen and Wolfsong join the race without a huge help and we were scared like hell if it could ever work out like this. Today, 17:58 after watching the 15h race we first saw our peloton and were astonished by the amount of classic riders and the huge lack of climbers. Larin, Breitenbach, and all in all that was it. There actually was a chance for Clausen now, if the armada of Team Australia and Wookie could be torn. It came out that our squad, in terms of mass, was absolutely no comparison to theirs. Nevertheless the race began at Km 253 at the last climb on the road to Como and Australia with Zepeda in tempo attacked with the 73-84 aswell as with Larin. Clausen works from the first kilometre uphill and even gets time on the -5% downhill passage. Lindelöf's attack was no competition to Clausen. On Wolfsong's wheel in the end he won with ease against his competitors.
Thank you Manuel for this great career! From this day it is sure he is going to be the 3rd rider in the Wizards Cycling Hall of Fame winning Gent-Wevelgem, Clasica San Sebastian and Giro di Lombardia! Thank you also PeterMeter, you gave this rider the opportunity to join a new squad after you became quite inactive in this game. We did our best to honor this rider in a way that Petim could accept, since he was an insipration from the beginning of the Malbranque-Era to us. I can't write more right now, I need to drink many many beers tonight! Have a great evening everyone!

[Lizard]

Kato retires: Thank you for 14 months of victories and support!

Monday 19th of October, it is time now for one of the rare old guys in this team to leave. Now that Kato retires only his fellow André Katchono is known for riding together with great Adam Wollfinger, and this shows that an old generation is truly getting too old to participate here any longer. André made clear he is going to ride some more months, though Kato's big last aim, the Giro di Lombardia is over. He did not come to win the race himself, bu he was the one that ensured the teams' win by a 100% guarantee for pulling Manuel in his wheel and letting him win. It is just one example of what Kato made possible for several team members in his 14 month long contract period in this team. He is an absolute training champion, focussed on getting better and better all the time, but he is right, it's time to leave now. Kato, though the 3rd guy next to Basil Broucek and Adam Wollfinger in the off-season 2009/10, was later for Manuel Clausen what Broucek was to Wollfinger. Who is going to pull the captain 25kms per stage? It is Kato. Who will pull the sprint? Kato. Who will block the 5%? Kato. He was the wall and the stairs, and sometimes even he could put effort in a heartful attack and win some stages. Like it happened on Paris-Nîmes stage 8, when he actually won out of a late breakaway. Incredible he even could do that. A great victory that made the tour a full success with Mbeki also winning the King of the mountain classification. He also got to the honor in an interesting national championship to once get the opportunity to ride 4 months in his national colors green, red and yellow. Also at the Österreich-Rundfahrt it is Kato that is going for the general classement, nevermind if regeneration or time trial skills occur problems. He wins a stage and ends up 4th! And also, finally, our team missed a big chance to give him a great victory we surely can take, after Joeri Dewreede attacked at the Giro del Piemonte. We let him work too much and were to scared to do much of poker games in the finale and Kato ended 3rd, which still is a great result. We are sorry Kato, that we couldn't give you more chances to win races by your own and also sorry that the tries we started were too rarely good. I hope he liked his career at our squad, he surely became one of the most important riders for the team and one of the favourites aswell. Kato Wolfsong, voted internally to the coolest Wizards Cycling rider name (fo shizzle), being one of the fittest riders, good in shape everytime, he will never be forgotten for his engagement in this team. Thank you Kato, it was a pleasure!

Name: Kato Wolfsong
Nickname: Kato
Contract period: 01.09.2009 - 19.10.2010
Place of birth: Ebolowa
Nationality: Cameroon
Top Skills: 76-78-51-47-57, 37 Reg (71.7 Pavé)
Reached Points: 4868
Stage victories: 3
Stage race victories: 0
Stage race podiums: 0
Young riders' classements: 0
Points' classements: 0
Climbers' classements: 0
Races for Wizards Cycling: 247

[Lizard]

Tour des Pavés

The Tour des Pavés was the 3rd important race this month. After Lombardia and Piemonte we wanted to be successul at this RSF fantasy classic race. We've been close to win something, but in the end did not. Dick ends up 3rd and takes the young riders' classement, the minimum goal we wanted to get. All in all we just did not do a good job, in terms of sportsmanship aswell as strategy. Only on our favourite stages 3 and 4, where at least some hilly parts have been to be ridden, we could show a little of our tactical knowledge but suffered too much from a weird constellation of incidents which obviously was driving the manager a little crazy. Now it's sunday, I will relax a little and then come back into business with more ease.

General classement:
3rd: Dick Eickendreyer
Young riders' classement: Dick Eickendreyer

Stages:
2nd: Manuel Clausen, Dick Eickendreyer
3rd: Dick Eickendreyer

Finances:
399.385 Credits

[Quick]

Didn't understand why you were hanging on Aix at the last stage? Hanging on Aix= no chance to win the stage, he will be better in GK than dick and he is not faster than dick...so no 88 flat. Why dont attack with dick and try getting the stage? GC wasn't nearly possible against lord cryer.