Tour Down Under 10h

[team fl]

New Year, new luck! Starting with the first highlight in Down Under.

Team FL starts with the following line-up:

x1 Nathaniel Biedermann, GK-Leader for this tour
x2 Fred Colon, the gentleman
x3 Tim Hamberger, German discipline!(!)
x4 Niels Hörnö, the team dentist
x5 Wesley Lichtenkiesel, the monster
x6 Hugo Marxer, GK-Co-Leader for this tour
x7 Pit Schlechter, could be worse
x8 Cédric Schmarotz, the tour sprinter

Favorite check will follow. Goal for Team FL: Top10 GK and a stage or more.

[GUDE LAUNE]

Team GUDE LAUNE starts with a strong and expensive team:

1. Max Krug, the German Climber! (Captain for the Tour)
2. Dave Supertramp, without a nation and without a plan still waiting for his second win. (Co-Captain)
3. Gerry Rocket, normally the brave guy for great attacks but this tour he will have to work for the Captains
4. Moritz Ditzler, the guy for the last kilometers
5. Uwe Uhrmacher and
6. Claus Falk, the austrian guys helping the sprinters on flat stages
7. Marcus Zabel and
8. Marcus Kittel teacher and pupil looking for some good stage results

Goal: At least one stage win and Podium

[Radunion]

After a typical sprinter stage today we present our line-up.

It is a very opportunistic team with no clear leader in most of the stages.

1 George Stokes, he is waiting desperately for his first victory 2012
2 Leopold Fejér, the man without sprint and downhill, see him in late attacks
3 Francis Bashforth, maybe his last chance to shine in an important race before retirement
4 Guiseppe Vitaly, the loyal helper for George, will he get a rare chance to shine himself?
5 Karl Weierstraß, another strongman looking for his chance
and finally the three youngsters (all 23) preparing their future
6 Stanislaw Mazur
7 Athur Milgram
8 Burton Wendorff

[team fl]

Favorite check presented by Team FL:

General classement:

***** Max Krug (GUDE LAUNE) -> better team, more experienced manager, probably better form than Evans
**** Jenson Evans (tuscany)
*** Josef Abraham (Medvedi)Donato Loreno (Atletico Sinks)
** Tom Leuwers (Eifel-Power)
* another classic rider with 70+ mountain

Points classement:

*** Cédric Schmarotz (Team FL)
** David Lelay (Team ABC-Polsat)
* another sprinter

Mountain classement:

*** Shawn Kemp
** Another rider
* A suprise rider

Youth classement:

*** Jakub Lewandowski (Team ABC-Polsat)
** ---
* A suprise rider (perhaps with an escape)

Team classement:

""" GUDE LAUNE
"" Radunion
" Team ABC-Polsat

[team fl]

Stage 1 was as expected a sprinter stage. Surprisingly, only two teams with two riders each tried an early escape. In the end, it was more the fight about the mountain jersey than the try for the stage win. In the end, the same amount of teams with the same amount of riders tried a late attempt, but also not successful. Very happily, Schmarotz won the sprint and is now wearing green and yellow, making the start of the tour very promising. Hopefully we are able to keep at least one of the jerseys until stage 4.

Tomorrow will be a sprinter stage too, generally. But Radunion and GUDE LAUNE may have other plans, to make it not a sprint royale but a splitted sprint for their sprinters that are stronger at the mountain. Or maybe the double-3 finish or the kms before lead to a early or late group win? We will know it after the stage tomorrow. Anyway, it will be interesting. So far, the 10h-TDU-family seems to be a small but a nice one, although it could be a bit more talkative. There is potential with BMG and others

[team fl]

The second stage was interesting as expected. Krug got some bonus seconds in the intermediary sprints and is now the clear favorite for the GC. The question then was, will there be a sprint royale or will a late attack of classic riders be successful. The attack started on the last climb before the final Kms and in the end Leuwers could put on the yellow jersey as the winner of the stage, beeing now 9 seconds in front of Schmarotz but 21 in front of Krug. For Team FL it was a bit hard to see Schmarotz winning the sprint again in the peloton but seeing 7 riders in front of it. At least, with Nate and Hugo, two of them were Team FL riders and Nate now beeing 15 seconds behind Leuwer in a good position for a decent GC-Place. And Schmarotz kept the green jersey of the leader of the points classement. The mountain classement is open again with Stanislaw Mazur joining the fight against Kemp, both also fighting for the youth classement. Anyway, the GC now looks like this, pointed out the main favorits for a top10 placement:

00:00 Tom Leuwers (Eifel-Power)
00:10 Francois Beashforth (Radunion)
00:15 Nathaniel Biedermann (Team FL)
00:21 Max Krug (GUDE LAUNE)
00:23 Dave Supertramp (GUDE LAUNE)
00:23 Hugo Marxer (Team FL)
00:23 Leopold Fejèr (Radunion)
00:24 HangSan Allrad (BMG-Allstars)
00:29 Jenson Evans (Tuscany)
00:29 Donato Loreno (Atletico Sinks)
00:29 Josef Abraham (Medvedi)
00:29 Jakub Lewandowski (Team ABC-Polsat)

[GUDE LAUNE]

Probleme mit der Technik bei Team GUDE LAUNE:

Der Manager vom Team GUDE LAUNE stieg heute wutentbrannt aus dem Teamfahrzeug. Daraufhin schnappte er sich den vom Finish noch völlig erschöpften Supertramp und lies seine Aggressionen an ihm aus. Es stellte sich jedoch später heraus, dass Dave nicht willentlich die Funksprüche ignoriert hatte, sondern einfach nicht fähig war, diese zu empfangen. Der Teamchef stellte die Situation anschließend folgendermaßen dar:
"Ich habe die letzten 2km nur noch gebrüllt: bleib bei Tom, bleib bei Tom! Aber anscheinend konnte er diese Funksprüche nicht empfangen. Natürlich bin ich mir nicht 100% sicher, dass er mitgekommen wäre, aber wenn man sieht wer es sonst noch geschafft hat, denke ich schon dass er hier mit der Gruppe das Ziel erreicht und dann wohl auch im Sprint den Sack zugemacht hätte"
Auf die Frage, was ihn denn nun am meisten ärgere stellte er überraschender Weise heraus, dass es weder der Tagessieg noch das Gelbe ist, sondern eher dass Leuwers nun 21 anstelle von 11 Sekunden Vorsprung auf Krug hat:
"Das hat heute mit Krug wunderbar geklappt und Dave sollte sich auf die Schlussatacken nur einlässen, wenn er die letzten Steigungen wirklich 100% fit erreicht... hätte er den Vogel abgeschossen, wären wir taktisch in der perfekten Situation, so ist Leuwers wieder ein ernst zu nehmender Gegner..."
Morgen soll auf ein neuse Funksystem zurückgegriffen werden, wollen wir hoffen, dass derartige technische Deffekte in Zukunft nicht mehr den Rennausgang beeinflussen!

[GUDE LAUNE]

Sorry, forgot that we have an international Race-Report. So in english shortly the real storry: Actualisation of the race was very slow, i have been in the tactics Menu, tried 3times to click tom, but the names disappeared while i was scrolling down... nearly destroyed my notebook
but now everything is fine again

[Robyklebt]

You should have had those problems in a TT when sitting a month ago....

[team fl]

You should have had those problems in a TT when sitting a month ago....

that would have been GUDE LAUNE for Fahrny then?

[team fl]

Stage 3 brought the expected sprint royale, but a surprise winner: Strokes, with a sprint value of 84, could take advantage of the favorites watching each other and therefore missing the crucial attempt by the later winner. GC nothing really changed but BMG-Allstars captain HangSan Allrad getting some bonus seconds at intermediary sprints and a good chance for Strokes to put on the yellow jersey, at least for one day. For Team FL, a 5th place is not what Schmarotz wants, of course. Anyway, still in green, he is eager to defend the jersey or a least to win it for the overall points classement in the end.

[Radunion]

This was welcomed surprise for our team. The riders had a very loud but also very short celebration - the next 2 days are very important for the team. Also it looks like a once in a lifetime chance Stokes was remembering his first career victory back in July, at the Tour of Austria. Back then it was a similar scenario, 4 or 5 top sprinter that sprinted form 50m and a very lucky George taking the victory - and whoever takes George's wheel will loose if another top sprinter is in his wheel ...

Tomorrow, 25 hard km against the very strong sprinter teams. I hope that the gc teams will have to do a fair share of the work.