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Giro 12: 2. Herning - Herning

First sprint stage and the expected winner with Hechelheim from Franconia. Luiz finished 2nd which is a very good result for him.
The stage was not very interesting. A little fight for the only mountain price. Then the group stopped and Franco had no problem to finish the race with his final win.

Giro 12: 3. Horsens - Horsens (WW Special)

Second sprint stage and the pressure went away when our sitter Alkworld made the right sprint settings so that Luiz Laezqueira won the final sprint which means that we by now won stages in all 3 GT's. After the Giro 2010 where we finished over 10x on the podium and the podium yesterday we are very happy that the team finally managed to win a stage at the Giro. Now we can have a very relaxing Giro and will try to win some more stages with Luiz and Sala.

1. Luiz Lazequeira
2. Michael Hechelheim
3. Niklas Karabatic
4. Hien Kanh
5. Francisco Guaranies
6. Magnus Brattsveen
7. Rene Snel
8. Marcelo Lima
9. Ngok Nhank
10. Michael Obstler
...
27. Ignacio Salazar
40. Manuel Sosa

Giro 12: 5. Modena - Fano

It's Luiz again. This time we controlled the team by ourself and it worked again for Luiz Lazequeira. Some help short before the mountain and right after the mountain by our team helped Franco to keep nearly all sprinters in a second group. In the final sprint on an slightly increasing road the sprinters waited very long so that finally Luiz played out his strength in hilly sprints (ok, it was just +1) and won again against Michael Hechelheim. Therefore he also defends his red jersey which he took over from Hechelheim when the team was much stronger in the TTT the day before. Now he is 5 points in front.
A perfect first Giro-week goes on with a stage for classic riders tomorrow. Then on the weekend the tour really begins with the first mountain stages where Salazar wants to do it like Luiz and win a Giro stage.

Giro 12: 6. Urbino - Porto S. Elpidio

If it works good, it becomes only better it seems.

Since Luiz won the first Giro stage in our history, the team rides like it is unbeatable at all. Yesterday Luiz with the clear win against Franco in a sprint. Today a very hard beginning of the race made the stage hard for everybody and due to that the team didn'zt have to ride at the beginning of the stage. After the cat. 2 mountain the remaining riders made some tempo to control a undangerous group of 3 riders in front. Still no big effort for the team which was already very tired by the hard race. Our luck that really nobody tried an attack. We wouldn't have been able to counter a serious meant attack for the stage.
Because of that it came to the situation that Sala and Lima followed an attack of Santana from Sport so that in the group of Luiz we could stop working, but because there were also some dangerous guys in the group other teams kept Luiz in distance while we could rest in front as well and only rode some seconds behind the Luiz group. Finally Marcelo Lima followed the last attack of a MBak rider and won the sprint. Luiz finished 4th finally, which now gives him a gap of 17 points to Hechelheim in the fight for red.

Giro 12: Lago Laceno stage

After the first stages were just brilliant without any doubt our luck ended yesterday suddenly when the stage developed to be a perfect one for Salazar with a steep mountain short before the end and then some flat kms until the finish. A very strong Sirli Kuusik, the classic rider of Franconia was able to come back on the flat part and his attack was followed by Sala and in his wheel Vuong from Walbeck who had 5 sprint less but made no tempo while Sala attacked 1 km before and made 1 km tempo. This was enough for Vuong to outsprint Sala from 50 by just some centimeters.
Somehow very frustrating because Sala as the leader of the team in this tour is still without stage win which is our last goal for the tour after this perfect first week. It would have been perfect if he would have won this stage, but nevertheless he will still have some chances left to win a stage. We can't complain after already 3 stage wins by Lazequeira and Lima.

Today it's about to defend the red jersey and not to lose that much points on Hechelheim...

Giro 12: 17. Falzes - Cortina d'Ampezzo

Finally Sala got his stage win as well.

With a great attack at the Duran climb from Pachenco and Sala we opened a gap of nearly 3 minutes until the beginning of the Passo Giau.
Then at this last mountain the favorites started with their GT fights but they were not able to reach Sala who continued his way alone. On the following downhill the climbers decreased the gap to 25 seconds until the finish.
A great stage for the team as we now lead the team classement and Sala is now 5th in the GC with good chances to end this tour into Top 10!

Comeback?

After the team manager found the old keys for his office he got the idea to buy some riders.

So with our shitty team and a new licence we will probably ride the Vuelta.

el Galactico wrote:Comeback?

Like, Welcome back

Vuelta de Espana 2013 - Review

Our first tour after the comeback and also the reason for the comeback was this Vuelta de Espana and looking back to this 21 stages in and around Spain were a good and entertaining tour which brought back the fun we lost over one year ago.

At the end we won 4 stages, got a surprising 3rd place in the General Classement with our leader Rodrigo Bonfim and a 2nd place in the mountain classement.
There were 2 very close stage wins when Sergio Moreno, the most agressive rider of this tour won stage 5 just by seconds in front of the chasing group and also just 1 kilometer before he would have been out of power and when Rodrigo Bonfim attacked early on stage 10. At the end he stayed in front by just 1 second on the last mountain. Then there were 2 escapes which ended by wins of our chilean connection Ignacio Espinoza with a long solo and again Sergio Moreno by wining the mountain stage to Alto Naranco on stage 19. With an income of about 2 millions we are very happy with the financial aspect of this tour as well and are currently waiting for something interesting on the market. It could become a strong classic rider, a mountain youngster or a sprinter as well. Just has to come something good.

welcome back gala

Los Galacticos was the most fighting team in La Vuelta 16:00. Very nice have you there

Transfer news

After the team made a lot of money in this months Vuelta, the manager decided to set up the way into the future. Therefore we announce that with Trevor McLeod, Marco Sperrazzoni and Alison Silva have left us three riders who had to create financial space to buy young talents for the future. These 2 were scouted in our home country Chile and back in Brazil for a visit we also found a young classic rider who will come to our head office in Santiago de Chile to join the team in october.

Thiago Fuser (55-73-76-58-51)

Alejandro Salazar (73-56-69-54-54)

Hope for luck in training...

Transfer news

Today our Vuelta stage winner and leader Rodrigo Bonfim had to leave the team. After a long talk we decided to give him the chance to find another team which is able to participate in more mountain tours than our team. Also Rodrigo was a bit disappointed about the transfer of the talented mountain rider Alejandro Salazar who joined the team by today.
Furthermore just a few hours later we set the next step in creating the future team for the next year by contracting the sprint talent Pedro Javier Diaz (49-55-72-55-81) from Chile who will be - with good training - play a big role in the future of this team by hopefully being the leader of our sprint squad we like to build up in the next days and months.
Therefore the team is still searching for talented young flat riders and of course a sprint support riders for Pedro Javier which will have to come in the moment we have enough money.

Transfer news

In the meanwhile our team changed quite a lot. Our old flat rider Ben Merinckx surprisingly retired and was replaced by 22-year old sprint support and flat rider Miguel Irrarazaval from Chile.
Also as a surprise we can today announce that rider number 10 is on his way to join the team at the beginning of november. Eduardo Sandoval with his actual skills of 51-72-72-55-54 is supposed to become the next part of our sprint squad and furthermore he hopefully will be able to replace Sergio Moreno when it is about long attacks.

Moreno and 2 championships

Two more than successful days are going to an end. It all began yesterday when Sergio Moreno could win the Penang Cycling Cup with an late attack out of the peloton. Four kilometers before the end he launched the sprint and finally could rescue 5 seconds on the upcoming bunch which lost a lot of energy before by fighting against hot temperatures, the sun and some nice teams who again and again used the hills on the way to seperate the sprinters from the leading group.

Today then our team particiated in four different championships.

Serbia

Ivan Curkovic escaped right in the beginning of the race and was acompanied by a guy with afterwards went offline. Around 20 kms before the end of the race we were 5 minutes in front when team Tulpengeneral came online and attacked with Nestor El Maestro. Ivan then attacked in the downhill and arrived at the top of the last hill with about 1 minute in front of the classic rider El Maestro who then gave up, so that finally Ivan could celebrate his first win as a professional and our first national title in 2013.

Chile

Today's main goal. Chilean championship. We attacked with Sala,Irrarazaval, Moreno and Espinzoa, our only enemy was RV Zahna with 1 rider in the group so that we finally could decide who wins the race. Young climber Salazar decided to attack and get his first professional win while Irrarazaval, Moreno and Espinoza went in as 2nd,3rd and 5th. Easy! Second title!

Brazil

2011 and 2012 we dominated this country and nearly always won the title. This time just with Thiago Fuser and Adriano Carioca in his second race for the team. Again we attacked early and were joined by 1 Alkworld rider and 4 riders of Sport. It became a real race between us three on the last 20 kilometers with several attacks from all of the riders. But finally all arrived together. Thiago ended up 7th in the sprint while Adriano Carioca looked good until 100 meters before the finish line when he started to sprint and couldnt get Alkworld rider Veloso who finally made himself the champion.

Columbia

We didnt start here.

Little update

Two days ago Miguel Irarrazaval could win his first race for us when he and Sergio Moreno were able to follow an attack on the last kilometer and could win the sprint afterwards. Quite surprising but due to an attack from Sergio Moreno about 10 kilometers before the finish the last flat riders of the sprinter teams Allagen and so on had to go in tempo early.

Also we can announce that Ignacio Espinoza was replaced by Benoit Vaugrenard to have a bit more strength in classic races.

Atlastour 2013

3 days in the hot Atlas mountain range together with nice teams like Bergwerk, Kaju and some others. Bergwerk with the strongest team you can imagine. Kaju with 2 very strong classic riders. No chance for white it seemed before.
And then came stage 1. Thiago Fuser went in the escape to get the red jersey which he finally was able to wear for 2 days. After that it already begun with the fight for the tour win. Bergwerk "siebed" and suddenly was in front with a big bunch of riders while others already lost a lot of them. Several mistakes by Bergwerk lead to the fact that Alejandro could follow the deciding attack, which surprisingly already decided the fight for white as the other young climber lost over one minute. At the end Kaju rode into yellow with an attack at the last kilometer while Alejandro finished 2nd.
On stage 2 it was a boring race without any action until the last kilometer. Alejandro made the mistake to attack and not to follow superclassic Camarinha from Bergwerk who then could win the stage while we finished on P5. Being 2nd in GC before the last stage Alejandro had little hopes to win the tour somehow.
Stage 3 then became the worst one as Thiago Fuser wasn't able to defend the red jersey, which he finally lost by 2 points against a classic rider with 76 mountain.
Furthermore at the end Bergwerk siebed the classic riders from Kaju and it looked good for Alejandro. We hoped that he can follow the attack of the classic riders once again as they already made so tempo but on the most flat kilometer short before the finish he unfortunately was not able to follow and had to ride the last kilometers alone without any help so that Kaju catched him in the last moment. Luckily Alejandro then could win the sprint for place 3 and so remained on the podium of this tour as 3rd place in GC.

Finally we won the white jersey and finished in 3rd place. Thiago Fuser rounds up the tour with a unfortunate 2nd place in the mountain classement and a 3rd one in the youth rider classement. Furthermore Vaugrenard, Fuser and Moreno ended up on places 12,19 and 24 in GC.

Rasht -Ziabar

Just one day after his 3rd place in the GC and the last stage of the Atlastour it was again our young climber Alejandro Salazar who could win something for our team. The one-day-race Rasht Ziabar with 2 hard mountains in the middle and a flat part at the end was predestinated for an early attack which finally came from Speedy with his classic rider and world champion Zizi Wang Peng. Only Salazar followed and collaborated good with Peng until the end. In the back nobody wanted to ride for the classic sprinters so that after a lot of attacks it was sure that the attack will be a success. In the final sprint Alejandro then was able to defend his position with good form.

With just 22 years it is already his seconds stage win after the championship of Chile. Furthermore he already has won 2 white jerseys.

He did it again - Filipinas Tour 2013

Right on the first day all candidates for the win of the General Classement slept over when Kaju attacked with his classic rider Luanto and easily got a few bonus seconds so that the fight for the tour win already turned strongly in one direction. PJ Diaz finished 7th and 9th in the mass sprints on the first 2 days without having big chances to win. 2 times it was an easy win by sprinter team Moscow. One the third day then the sprinters were not able to come back after a few little mountains and Flanders won the stage with an late attack on the last kilometer. Alejandro meanwhile won 2 bonus seconds in the fight for the white jersey and finished 6th on stage 3. Then the last stage came with a short but difficult mountain stage with some flat kilometers at the end. Thiago Fuser and Alejandro Salazar both had to give up their hopes for the mountain jersey which they both weared in this tour. The strong climbers then attacked on the last long climb while Alejandro stayed in the wheel of GC favorite and leader Luanto from Kaju who held us two in the race with his helpers. The last steep km was then used by Alejandro to make a "sieb" so that only he and Luanto stayed in front to chase after the 3 mountain riders which were still in front with about 30 seconds. As Luanto had to fight for his yellow jersey Alejandro could relax in his wheel meanwhile Luanto catched up with the 3 climbers in front. On the last 2 kilometers Luanto then attacked and only Salazar was able to follow him because he could save energy before. The final sprint in this tour then was an easy one for Alejandro who could win the stage and was also able to finish the tour as 2nd in the General Classement. His third white jersey with only 22 years was the nice i-dot on a good tour, which was basically boring except of the last and deciding mountain stage.

Meanwhile nearly the whole team was riding the Filipinas tour our manager was also able to contract our rider number 11 after the comeback. With Steve Monterey joined us a rider which will mainly support PJ Diaz in mass sprints as the last one of the sprint train with Irrarazaval.

Casimiro de Abreu - Nova Friburgo

Yesterday we bought him and today he already was in action for our team. Our new italian classic rider Constante Girardengo made a perfect debut by wining the classic race Casimiro de Abreu - Nova Friburgo out of a 3-men-group just by a few inches. The already 30 years old men from Neapel will be our leader for the next 3 or 4 months and for sure the best helper for our young talent Alejandro Salazar in tours like the upcoming December Tour in Sulawesi.
The management is now looking for either another talent in classical races or a strong flat rider with a good regeneration skill.

Short before race numer 1000 we now have 140 wins.

Circuito de Villalpando

Just one day after the success of Constante Girardengo another rider was able to win his first race for our team. The 22 years old sprinter PJ Diaz surprisingly won the Circuito de Villalpando in Spain. While the favorites waited to long his sprint train with Irrarazaval and Monterey brought him in a perfect situation which he perfectly used to win his first race.

Now in December we will start at the December Tour in Sulawesi with a team around Salazar, Girardengo and Diaz.

Tour of Sulawesi - 1000th race and another win

Yesterday our team rode RACE NUMBER 1000 in the history of Los Galacticos. Unfortunately it was a team time trial, so we were obviously not able to win even if we did really good and just lost 25 seconds to winner petit singe and ended up 4th. The best of the rest so to say as in front there were only the 3 favorite teams petit singe, FL and Alkworld.
Today in race number 1001 we then got ourself a late present when Thiago Fuser and new rider Paul Watson attacked on the first kilometer together with one from Lavella and one from Black-Stars. As in the bunch nobody wanted to move a finger to get us back - everybody was fighting with the weather, the length of the stage and the 2 hard stages from yesterday - we had no problem to make a gap of max. 12 minutes. Paul Watson then brought Thiago in a very good position so that he not just took over the red and white jersey. No, he also won the stage from the wheel of the only rival left.
Besides the present for our 1000th race we now also can relax more in this tour as we already reached our minimum goal. The tour now becomes interesting as there is not only the fight between the mountain riders. The favorites have to work together early to eliminate the gap of about 15 minutes between them and the current leader from Team Lavella. Thiago is our best rider with over 5 minutes behind this guy and will try to defend his red and white jersey as long as possible.

6 years after - Los Galacticos are back!

Nearly 6 years after our last race the Galacticos are back in business.

We had to start from ZERO with a budget of just 15 millions but were fortunately able to make a contract with Adam deCrolles - a now 35 years old classic rider with his strenght in sprints.
In now 49 races since our comeback he won 4 stages for us - 2 of them in the December tour and recently the last stage of the Windwards tour.

Behind him we were able to sign a few young studs who will hopefully lead our team to a bright future in the upcoming season.

Marco de Luca from Italy is our new guy for the mountains. At age 21 he already won his first race and was then able to finish the December tour on the podium while also winning the white jersey.
Our leaders for classic races will be the chilean duo of Daniel Castillo and Cristobal Yanez.

For 2020 we are still on the search for some more young talent to raise the number of team member to 10 or 11. The team manager is still undecided wether to invest in another mountain or classic rider or a sprinter. He might just take the best one who is available at the end of this month.

So how is the comeback working now that February finally is coming to an end and the real cycling season is starting to heat up?

Finances

The 5th month is coming to an end soon. Until now we made a plus 8.689.545 which in 103 races is an average margin of 84.000 per race. That is okay.
The December was a team record when we made 3,6 millions in a single month - we never came close to that amount before.

Race results
February is terrible. Like for real terrible! Our last win in a normal race is now more than a month ago. Bad luck, but mostly bad riding are preventing me from winning anything else than National championships this month.
13 normal stage wins in 103 races which means we win roughly every 8th race. This is actually now worse than before our comeback. All in all we win about every 7th race throughout our history.
At least we were able to win 3 National Championships this month. Two of which you could even say took more than just being online at the right time. Though one of these 2 wins was courtesy of Mr. Donkey.

Training
Marco as our leader couldn't do better. 14 out of 15 mountain trainings so far. With 24 years he is already an elite climber - though the evening tours are always very strong climber-wise (Cheers to Sjur, Kingo and Fontaine).
The rest is probably bit early to really talk about luck or bad luck. Yanez took 3 times flat with each time 10% or lower chance. The 62% mountain he refuses now 3 times in a row though.
For my other 3 classic riders flat is the big problem. At the end of 22 you are supposed to take about 45% of your flat trainings. They so far took 1 out of 10 - or 3 out of 14 if you want to include Yanez as well.

Team structure
The team is developing. The good money income provides chances every month so far. With already 11 riders there is quite a good mix of riders but with one big gap to be filled very soon (hopefully). No 60-80's in the team. These guys are missing a lot and we will try to invest in one asap.
Marco with this training made himself easily the leader of the team.
After him follow 4 young classic riders - training will show if one can take up a spot as team leader besides of Marco
Same counts for the sprinter Alejandro Betancur. He will have to show good training in order to be recognized in this team. Until then it is hard work to earn his spot in the roster.

And the most important part? Are we having fun?

Well, mostly. Small groups are very different to what we were used to. RSF (especially the evening I think) is now dominated by very strong teams like Lorient and Poke. They don't give much air to breathe and not much chances to win or at least try to form the race the way you want it. The gap between their teams and a comebacker or newbie is huge. February was no fun at all so far, but considering that winning is always much more fun a big part of the current disappointment at the moment is hopefully due to the drought we are going through.

I think you will get your wins very soon again. When your classics grow up you have very good helpers for Marco and you can be more aggresive against strong teams. Now Marco is sometimes isolated earlier than others and this might be the little thing what makes the difference.
You really need the power of one or two 60-80. This will improve your team very much. For stage races and as a strong helper for Betancour. I hope you will find good ones on the market.

Galacticos News February

Retirement
Remy Laporte left the team and will probably end his career at the end of this month. He won one race in Germany back in October.

New team member
With Alberto Urrutia from San Sebastian in Spain our team was able to buy a new rider who will join the team in March and will instantly be our new Pavé leader.
His starting values: 53-74-79-46-47 - 73.4 pavé and 36 reg.

Finance update February
+ 1.241.337 - with one race left this will be our worst month so far since the comeback.

Race results
Not much on the positive side this month.
- Betancur, de Luca and Castillo crown themselves national champions
- de Luca wins white Jersey at the Tour de Provence
- de Luca wins Boucles de la Vallee Heureuse
- 6th overall at Comunitat Valenciana
- 4th overall Tour de Provence
- 7th overall Ruta del Sol

Rider of the month - February
Winning one stage and the national championship is enough this month.
The winner is Marco de Luca.