Giro 24 - Morning edition

[Tukhtahuaev]

After spending so much time designing the thing, I can't miss out on this, even if I'm not entirely sure about my schedule. Because of that not the most expensive lineup. If nothing changes we will line up like this:

#1 Vladislav Tarabesh, GC leader hoping to get on the podium
#2 Beksultan Babakhanov, classic helper with decent reg
#3 Magomed Bakayev, classic with good sprint
#4 Botond Becze, support for slightly hilly terrain
#5 Shodiyor Gafurbekov, no real role, but too good to keep at home
#6 Reuben Kemp, sprint captain that can also follow some attacks
#7 Ilya Pashkevich, rather cheap with good reg
#8 Nurdaulet Rakhimzhanov, more support for slightly hilly terrain
#9 Vsevolod Skorko, cheap helper for flat stages

Target is to win at least 2 stages. Everything else depends on the field and my availability

[Schnuggeritos]

The team had several meetings within the last days and we discussed multiple times about the lineup and our gc chances. Three options were on the table and two are left by now.

Pakal Ixpiyacoc (retired)
Luca Cippola
Delvin Cayetano
Mitsuo Yamaguchi
Clive Bixby
Xmucane Canek
Marco Soria
Wilfred Elrington
Jemaine Clement
Jacob Fryxelius
Thimothée Pariseau
Daniel Frecherer
Martin Halm
Yoji Matsuda

03.05.2024: Marco Soria and Mitsuo Yamaguchi are fighing for the last spot.

[Alkworld]

Team Alkworld will be there as well. 11 riders are currently in the training camp, (almost) safe starters will be
- Golding - captain #1
- Shaw - captain #2
- Soldi - classic
- Botero - will ride a lot
- Bunuel - will ride much
- Chocano - rarely rides
- Alfonzo - rides for the first time

The remaining two spots will be filled with two out of
- Hawthorne - stage hunter
- Gama - allrounder
- Ondetti - another classic
- Escalona - cheap and fast

[Chemnitz Pro Cycling Team]

Chemnitz will represent in the morning as well.

#1 Kurzig - captain (and the last dance?)
#2 Frantz - main helper
#3 Pavlovic - here as a helper in hilly terrain
#4 Kim - managers favorite and maybe with an escape chance
#5 Eberhart - young gun
#6 Stoll - helper with good reg
#7 Kundera - flat helper with even better reg
#8 K. Hummel - cheap flattie
#9 G. Hummel - here for the TTs

[zizou]

This Giro will decide about the future of our Team.

Is Florencio the GC leader we can trust? Or will we focus again on stages and sprints? We give him the best support for his GT debut we can.

#1 - Florencio Sànchez - GC Leader
#2 - Marius Draculea - Helper
#3 - Luis Lacalle - Helper
#4 - Tabaré Mujica - Classic
#5 - Hirving Ochoa - Sprinter
#6 - Edson Romo - Classic
#7 - Vlad Ticleanu - Helper
#8 - Dumitru Tsepeneag - Mountain Helper
#9 - Gerardo Vásquez - Helper

Kolone Takataka could replace Ochoa to safe some salary, but to many possible sprints and hard to leave Hirving at home. He is a big reason why our team was growing fast after our comeback.

[Schartner Bombe]

The divided group of Schartner Bombs will use the Giro as therapy. The team constellation alone is a kind of family constellation that visualizes the network of relationships between the individual Schartners - with this systemic therapy method we hope to come out of the Giro with stronger bank accounts. The family lineup currently looks like this:

#1 - Bill Reid - is going for Youth Jersey and Tourwin
#2 - Russell Bowie - is going for Youth Jersey and long term solo wins
#3 - Eli Cohen - is going for Sprint Jersey
#4 - Walter "Roman" Tisch - is going for all others
#5 - Aaron Stern - is advertising vor Nik P.
#6 - Leonard Cohen - first here because Alk loves him so much, second is going for Youth Jersey
#7 - Neomi Segev - is going for Youth Jersey
#8 - Hyman Buller - is going for the beers, he is a kind of waiter for the Schartners
#9 - Srul Glick - he is the "nomen est omen" of the Schartners, he also will go for Youth Jersey

That's the idea so far, but maybe we also want to go for 2nd and 3rd place in the GC then Grimseth and van den Berg will be nominated tomorrow, as helpers.

[zizou]

This Giro will decide about the future of our Team.

Is Florencio the GC leader we can trust? Or will we focus again on stages and sprints? We give him the best support for his GT debut we can.

#1 - Florencio Sànchez - GC Leader
#2 - Marius Draculea - Helper
#3 - Luis Lacalle - Helper
#4 - Tabaré Mujica - Classic
#5 - Hirving Ochoa - Sprinter
#6 - Edson Romo - Classic
#7 - Vlad Ticleanu - Helper
#8 - Dumitru Tsepeneag - Mountain Helper
#9 - Gerardo Vásquez - Helper

Kolone Takataka could replace Ochoa to safe some salary, but to many possible sprints and hard to leave Hirving at home. He is a big reason why our team was growing fast after our comeback.

Ochoa and Vásquez out. We decided to give Sànchez the maximum support and add Nathan Wengungo and Luis Arrazola to our team and the Giro lineup.

[Schartner Bombe]

This Giro will decide about the future of our Team.

Is Florencio the GC leader we can trust? Or will we focus again on stages and sprints? We give him the best support for his GT debut we can.

#1 - Florencio Sànchez - GC Leader
#2 - Marius Draculea - Helper
#3 - Luis Lacalle - Helper
#4 - Tabaré Mujica - Classic
#5 - Hirving Ochoa - Sprinter
#6 - Edson Romo - Classic
#7 - Vlad Ticleanu - Helper
#8 - Dumitru Tsepeneag - Mountain Helper
#9 - Gerardo Vásquez - Helper

Kolone Takataka could replace Ochoa to safe some salary, but to many possible sprints and hard to leave Hirving at home. He is a big reason why our team was growing fast after our comeback.

Ochoa and Vásquez out. We decided to give Sànchez the maximum support and add Nathan Wengungo and Luis Arrazola to our team and the Giro lineup.

ok. now Grimseth would make sense - hmm

[Chemnitz Pro Cycling Team]

Well, the first stage already showed the future of the next 3 weeks - it will be a battle between the Alk-boys, Tarabesh (Tuk) and Kurzig (CPCT) on the one side and Selassi (Narrenparty) and Sanchez (zizou) on the other one. Pure climbers against climbers with tt. Hard to predict something, I'll do a try and open the discussion.

White jersey: Sanchez is the bof favo for this, Asfaw shouldn't be a fear there.

Blue jersey: this one is hard - I guess one of the pure climbers will collect it. I think it will be Tarabesh.

Red jersey: easy one - Schnuggi with the only two real sprinters. He can bust beat himself.

Pink jersey: A lot will depend on the cooperation between the pure climbers. Kurzig with the best tt out of the four, but with the risk of downtraining due his age. Golding with the best helper. Tarabeshnot bad in anything. But maybe Selassi can make it, or even Sanchez? So hard to predict, but I think, Selassi is the main favo here.

Best team: Alk

[Tukhtahuaev]

Tarabesh without a second climber will have a hard time gaining time on Kurzig and the Alks, so I don't see myself getting anything more than P3 under normal circumstances. Of course it doesn't mean that I won't try

On the other side I can even see Sanchez becoming the main favourite with a bit of lucky training. Already only 1 point below Selassie, with more reg

[Alkworld]

Interesting situation, I agree. Basically two groups fighting each other, then at some point the fight within each of those two groups. With the other jerseys, it's tricky: mountain jersey can go to some escapers, if the climbers are too busy with GC. For sprint jersey, there are many possibilities, strongly depending on how many sprints there will be. Team is also strongly dependent on the success of groups. And youth jersey is pretty much the GC fight, so I would say everything is still open.

[zizou]

All in all an interesting situation.

How long will the mountain guys keep the corporation up? Sooner or later Alk has to gain time on Kurzig. Maybe even on Tarabesh.
Selassie and Sánchez already lost 2 minutes. How much will they gain in the 72 km time trial? Most GC guys are pretty young, who will train and get better or will Kurzig even loose some skills?

We will have some fun 3 weeks!

P.S.: …come on guys, leave me at least the podium already lost +200k ;D

[Schnuggeritos]

Situation for maglia rosa is very interesting. The 3 GC favos with 86 climbing gained those already mentioned 2 minutes on Selassie and Sánchez but we will get the first clearer picture as soon as those 5 guys reach the finish line of the first ITT.
Between those 3 climbers its going to be a close fight for Kurzig and Golding as both have excellent helping hands. I'm counting on a lucky punch by Tarabesh.
Between Sánchez and Selassie I currently see the better chances for Sánchez because of his amazing reg.

Fight for maglia bianco will become interesting, too. Frantz currently 0'20" ahead of Asfaw and 1'10" ahead of Sánchez. Sánchez with his GC ambitions the clear favourite but if Frantz (and Asfaw) can stay in the group of the 3 climbers for a long time, they might have a chance against Sánchez. Otherwise they fight for P2 in this classification.

Maglia azzurra is going to be on the shoulders of one of the 'big 3'. If it's someone else, it's because they decided to give it away.

Ciclamino is as of today on Xmucane's shoulder. He will give everything to bring it to Rome on his own.

[Tukhtahuaev]

Sánchez in the lead after the ITT as expected, with a sizeable advantage over Selassie, who lost out 2 days in a row now. Will be a difficult task for him to gain that back.

Climber group surprisingly close together still with no one gaining a lot of time in the TT. Will be interesting to see, who has the most energy left for an attack tomorrow.

[zizou]

Die erste Woche lief herausragend und die Hoffnung war groß mit Sanchez zumindest auf dem Podium zu landen.

Auf den Schotterstraßen haben wir Haile unterstützt, um ihn als Verbündeten zu halten, hatten aber auf ihn trotzdem über eine Minute gewonnen.

Der Vorsprung gegen die Bergfahrer war zumindest groß genug, um Rosa bis tief in den Giro zu tragen.

Doch dann kam dieses verheerende Wochenende. Durch einen Flüchtigkeitsfehler verliert Sanchez auf dem letzten Kilometer am Samstag eine ganze Minute extra, wodurch der Vorsprung auf 10 Sekunden auf Haile bzw. 30 Sekunden auf die Bergfahrer schrumpft.

Dazu der Sonntag, an dem weder Sanchez, noch irgendeiner seiner wichtigen oder auch nur ansatzweise wichtigen Helfer trainiert.

Nun müssen wir wohl auf der nächsten Etappe Rosa abgeben und können nur hoffen, es zumindest im Zeitfahren nochmal für ein paar Tage zurück zu bekommen.

Positiv bleiben!

[Alkworld]

Nine stages over and rosa still looks awfully open
- climbers still very close together, expect Kurzig who however will gain some time back on the next ITT
- Selassie / Sanchez also really close after a flat tire for Sanchez on the last km on Saturday
- also very open, if the climbers can catch them still, considering they'll gain another 3 to 4 minutes in the second ITT

Even all the other jerseys are hard to predict still. Mountain jersey looks a bit like the climbers will be too strong compared to the escapers. And the Ciclamino strongly depends on how well the Schnuxpress can manage the flat stages.

I'm really looking forward to the remaining stages! We had GTs that were lots less exciting.