Gipfelstuermer - The road will decide

[Gipfelstuermer]

May 2022: Un Giro mediocre

Important races
We convinvced ourselves that it was a good idea to send our best riders to the Giro. Pagie as Captain, Lootens as super domestique, etc... but turns out, it wasn't a good idea. Too many stages offline/app. Not exploited by opponents but we lacked the concentration to really fight 100% for GC, so lost too much time in week 1 (ITT and Etna stage). So GC was out of reach quickly, even though we tried until the very last stage. Pagie was also not a really strong captain with 85 Mountain, 50 TT vs. Boaz with 87 Mountain and 59 TT. ... You can read all the details in the nice and long Giro thread, but in the end it was 5th place for Pierre nearly 2' behind Boaz. At least Pierre collected one of the three stage wins for us. But the other two were better stage wins somehow. Gerbi and Abbiati with Italian stage wins. Somehow those were more exciting. The best would have been a Vespa stage win. After winning Liege Bastogne Liege. But ok, 3 stage wins compensate a bit for the lack of success in GC. Overall, it was "un Giro mediocre" we can be happy that 9 teams participated and we had a great atmosphere there.

Rider of the month
Giacomo GERBI. His stage win in Cuneo was a big success not only for our team, but for the whole of Italy.

Training:
Abbiati with some surprise training as a 32 year old going to 74-81. Good timing as it enabled him to win a Giro stage. But Belgian climbers suck. Pagie stayed 85-59, Lootens stayed 80-63.

Finances:
+890,440. We are happy with this result because we predicted -2M after the first week of the Giro. The 3 stage wins and some placement in GC saved the month financially.

Retired Riders:
-

Sold Riders:
Pierre PAGIE leaves the team after failing to win the Giro. It was not a hard fail. He won a stage. His opponents were strong. So mainly he has to leave because of mediocre training.

Luuk LOOTENS leaves the team as well. His starting values were amazing but his training wasn't. Hoped for 82-68 or similar and got only 80-63... not enough for him to be our Tour de France leader.

New Riders:
Mikael Meyer, the great-great-grandson of Charles Meyer, joins our team. With starting values of 51-69-77-46-43-71.1, 60reg, he would like to be a helper during stage races and a leader during pavé races, just like his great-great-granddad, whose best results were a win in the 560 km long Bordeaux–Paris in 1895 and a second place in the first Paris–Roubaix in 1896.

Normal Stats of the month:
Races: 27
Race wins: 3
Points: 6,160
"Season" points: 8,364
Result: #16 in Div1

Gipfel Statistic of the month:
Giro stage wins. We now have 14 Giro stage wins from 9 different riders. JJ and DeWit were able to win more than one stage (4 and 3 respectively).

Giro - Stage Wins (Total 14)
4 - Jacob JJ JEFFERSON (2x Giro '19, 2x Giro '20)
3 - Willem DE WIT (3x Giro '21)
1 - Fabio FONDA (1x Giro '18)
1 - Carlos CHIMBO (1x Giro '19)
1 - Trevorvano THOMPSON (1x Giro '19)
1 - Bartholomäus BRANDT (1x Giro '21)
1 - Giacomo GERBI* (1x Giro '22)
1 - Pierre PAGIE (1x Giro '22)
1 - Aldo ABBIATI* (1x Giro '22)

--> All Gip Statistics here


General Statistic of the month:
Most Giro Stage wins by teams (and for each of the teams most Giro stage wins by one rider). Alkworld dominating as in many categories, but FL not too far thanks to this year's hero Magnus Marxer with 4 stage wins. Some well-known interesting names in the list. Thanks to database access, I was able to compile this list relatively quickly. Hopefully, in the future, we can have more statistics like these in-game. But this will take some time as Alkworld and I are working to improve the react version.

45 - Alkworld (6 - Don Quijote)
36 - Team FL (4 - Magnus Marxer)
27 - Circle Cycle (4 - Richard Springer)
26 - Falkenbier (3 - Klemen Bosilj)
24 - Rasmussen (2 - Matteo Badilatti, Tom Bohli, Pierre Kengo, Guido Wirz, Jean Nuttli, Johan Jacobs)
22 - Team Trojer Vellau (4 - Thomas Dressen, HansJoerg Tauscher)
21 - SV Furpach (3 - Maatis Toafa, Ang Rita)
21 - Liquigas-CND (5 - Humberto Carillo)
19 - francais (6 - Hans Blocher)
19 - Big Donkey (3 - Caius Aeschlimann)
18 - lesossies (2 - Gregoire Levasseur)
17 - r Sukuran Pokemon (2 - Taiga Aisaka, Kanako Miyamae, Noha Peleikes, Andreas Sander, Kaori Miyazono)
16 - Radler (4 - Fernando Tirado)
15 - SM Team (2 - Szilveszter Kovago, Gasper Katrasnik, Valdis Ernestovskis, Andrew vanWyngarden, Georgios Zalagkitis)
15 - Oxfam International (3 - Leonardo Varela, Berel Refaeli)
14 - Gipfelstuermer (4 - Jacob Jefferson)
14 - Freudenfeuer (3 - Talgat Loschkin)
14 - Hansa (3 - Flurin Lauener)
14 - Los Galacticos (3 - Alejandro Otxoa)

Goals for June 2022:
Holidays for the team. After a hard Giro, we will spent 3 weeks in a training camp in the French alps. Training camp for the directeur sportif, not for the riders. The DS plans to watch the Dauphine live to learn something for his future strategies and prepare for the TDF. The riders will do what they want in the meantime. Some might take part in the Tour de Suisse. Others might rider a couple of one day races. But we've told them not to ride too much in June as they'll need to be fit for the Tour de France in July.

[Gipfelstuermer]

What a ride with Vespa through Switzerland!
(June 2022 Report)

Important races
We had a lot of fun at the Tour de Suisse in preparation for the Tour de France. In a strong field (Donkey, Alk, Bergwerk, AAD), our LBL-winner Vespa won the second stage and took over the GC lead for a couple of days. It was always clear that he couldn't keep it till the final ITT in Liechtenstein, but it was a great experience for him and a lot of fun for the team. If he could repeat that at the TDF, it would be a dream. But it's unrealistic with the ITT start and the following flat stages... New idea for 2023: Specifically buy riders who can conquer leader's jerseys early and keep them for a long time, depending on the published routes of the GT's.

Rider of the month
Vittore VESPA. Thanks to his Tour de Suisse performance.

Training:
Not much happening in our oldie-team. But 27-year young Faber reached 71 mountain. So eventually a classic that can call himself a classic. Our Ukrainians Poulnikov and Outschakov a bit lazy. Should have more flat by now. Missed some 70% chances this month... and the youngest guy Mikael Meyer taking his double trainings. But that was not surprising given his low starting values. Lét's see what he can reach in the future.

Finances:
+1,159,133. Very good month considering we rode only 19 races. Thanks to successful Tour de Suisse.

Retired Riders:
Paul POUDRIER retires at the age of 39 after incredible 363 races for the team! Only two riders rode more races in our history (see Gipfelstuermer statistic of the month below). In 362 of the 363 races, Paul was a helper. But in one race, he was allowed to race for the win and won out of an escape. So even if he was not the most talented rider of all times, his Palmares is not empty and his career was a complete success. Dank u, Paul.

Sold Riders:
Casper CATTEAU leaves the team. With 69-80, he will never get enough time to race in our team. Vespa and Abbiati will still be stronger when they retire... 0 wins in 69 races also not the best... In the end, Belgian riders are overrated in this game. They never train. At least not in my team. We stop hiring Belgians for now and focus on nationalities that train better.

New Riders:
Leopold LAESER was scouted and signed during the Tour de Suisse. He is a great-great-grandson of Charles Laeser, the first foreign rider to win a Tour de France stage in 1903. With starting values of 52-74-79-56-48-73.4, 52reg, he is a big talent for flat races, cobbled classics, escape groups and late attacks.

Gipfel Statistic of the month:
Riders with most races. Paul Poudrier enters this statistic after his retirement, being Nr.3. Only the two Finnish domestiques Myyry (383 races) and Kemppainen (371) reached more than that. GW Paul for a podium place here.

Most Races (Total 1,703 | Riders with >300 races)

383 - Matti MYYRY
371 - Kaapo KEMPPAINEN
363 - Paul POUDRIER
360 - Boas BERGSTEINSSON
342 - Jacob JJ JEFFERSON
331 - Jairo JIMENEZ
325 - Magnus MARTINSEN
310 - Halvard HALVORSEN
310 - Matthieu MAJERUS
307 - Chris COOPER

--> All Gip Statistics here


General Statistic of the month:
Riders with most races. Was looking forward to produce this statistic. Easy with the database now. Ex-Riders in React Version is not yet complete, though. Don't get fooled by that. (Would hurt performance at the moment to load all riders into react in one go.) Anyway, German Marcel Aust from rsv lünen the winner with impressive 486 races. 0 wins. But >5,000 points. Lünen generally impressive with 3 riders in the Top 20! But Team Toto with 5 riders in the Top20! Another impressive guy was Finnish Ari Nyukinnen from Killers. 456 races, 0 wins, 174 points only. GW also to Urs Zwingli from Hansa who joined the statistic today. No Gipfelstuermer in the Top20, but we can live with that.

486 - Marcel Aust (rsv lünen) - 0 wins, 5543 points
478 - Kristy Dallhaus (Team Toto) - 6 wins, 5298 points
476 - /// Alim Selimow (Freudenfeuer) - 0 wins, 423 points
475 - Bongani Ngumla (Hansa-Team) - 0 wins, 765 points
474 - Urs Zwingli (Hansa) - 3 wins, 3467 points
473 - Gustav Mahler (GlasgowRacing) - 0 wins, 1502 points
472 - Andreas Buschhausen (rsv lünen) - 6 wins, 3717 points
459 - Chris Raven (Skullz) - 0 wins, 649 points
456 - Ari Nyukinnen (Killers) - 0 wins, 174 points
455 - Gregor Schuster (rsv lünen) - 7 wins, 4826 points
454 - Julian Aeschbacher (Hansa) - 3 wins, 5261 points
446 - Nkunulego Duma (Hansa-Team) - 1 win, 1033 points
445 - Brenda Schmitt (Team Toto) - 1 win, 1377 points
445 - Jenna Wolf (Team Toto) - 10 wins, 4974 points
444 - /// Karla Mineiro (Team Toto) - 1 wins, 1155 points
444 - HansPetter Buraas (BayernPower) - 0 wins, 534 points
442 - Django Freeman (Chartreuse Monks) - 0 wins, 498 points
441 - Aurelio Aguero (Hansa-Team) - 1 win, 1433 points
440 - Fabian Kleine (Hansa) - 0 wins, 371 points
439 - Senna Miller (Team Toto) - 0 wins, 453 points
439 - Llyr Williams (GlasgowRacing) - 0 wins, 274 points


Goals for July 2022:
La Grande Boucle is coming. Starting directly on the 1st of July. We plan to ride the real TDF = Afternoon Edition. Read all about our great ambitions here. And don't forget to sign up.

[Bear]

Nice rider this Leopold. These starting skills make me think of some great 60-85s in the last couple of years. Maybe he becomes a rider like real King Küng.

[Gipfelstuermer]

Maybe he becomes a rider like real King Küng.

King Küng. One of the best Besenwagen episodes. (Unfortunately difficult in C4F to have a rider who is strong in Flat, TT & Pavé. And even if you have one, he will be insane expensive.)

[Gipfelstuermer]

Broom Broom
(July 2022 Report)

Important races
The sound of a Vespa could be heard from Denmark through Belgium, Switzerland and France all the way to Paris. Following his win in Liege in April, we had a lot of fun with our leader Vespa at the TDF. In a field of 8 teams with only 4 climbers, we scared the GC teams a little bit by riding for Vespa's chances in GC. With lots of attacks, he was able to gain time here and there, staying in touch with the favorites Melville, Blind and Basterretxea. In the end, he lost too much time in the mountains and the time trial, but it was great fun to attack so much and ride for a guy like Vespa.

Rider of the month
Vittore VESPA. The Italian won stage 6 to Longwy (near the Gipfelstuermer headquarters) and stage 17 to Peyragudes (mountain finish in the Pyrenees), wore the maillot jaune for 2 days and finished on 4th place in GC (only 3'33'' down) as well as 3rd place in the points classification. A remarkable result for a 35 year old classic rider.

Training:
Our ageing Italian classics Duo Vespa/Abbiati is now declining quickly (72-75 and 74-80 right now). Our flat heroes Gerbi and Fischer will also start declining now as they hit the age of 33. But we have the Ukrainian duo who are slowly becoming strong flat riders: Poulnikov is now 59-84-76 and Outschakov is now 54-83-84 (both 25 years). Meyer (23), Laeser (22), Frédérick (21) and Meyland-Smith (21) are the future basis for the team. But all of them are helpers or riders for escapes. Hopefully we find classics and a GC leader on the transfer market, too.

Finances:
+1,336,377. Fantastic result for a Grand Tours month, thanks to some success during the Tour, a relatively cheap team (475k) and only 7 opponents.

Retired Riders:
Gaspard GAGNEUX, the first monument winner in Gipfelstuermer history, retired after the Tour de France at the age of 38. With top skills of 61-82 with 55 sprint and 81 pavé, he was mostly an attacker and helper. But 81 pavé was enough to be the team's leader at De Ronde this year, where he delivered a phenomenal win. He can be sure about his place in the Gipfelstuermer history book. It was one of 4 race wins in 305 races for the team. If you win only 4 races in a career, winning De Ronde and E3 are really good choices

Sold Riders:
-

New Riders:
Mads MEYLAND-SMITH was scouted and signed during the Tour de France's Grand Depart in Copenhagen. He is a great-grandson of Olaf Meyland-Smith, a participant at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm. With starting values of 55-67-73-51-48-69.7-39reg he will try to become a rider for the Spring Classics 2023.

Fabrice FRÉDÉRICK was also scouted and signed during the Tour de France, in particular when the race visited Lausanne. He is a great-great-grandson of Michel Frédérick, a stage winner at the Tour de France in 1904 and the 3rd guy on the podium of the 1897 Paris-Roubaix. With starting values of 49-70-74-54-47-70.3-35reg he is a big talent for flat races and cobbled classics.



Gipfel Statistic of the month:
Maillot Vert wins. The streak is broken. After 4 years in a row, we couldn't win the maillot vert at the Tour de France. Notice that we never won it with a pure sprinter. Fabio Fonda was a 80-70 rider, JJ was a hill sprinter and DeWit was a climber. In the end, Ical was the deserved winner in 2022 and we have won it often enough. If you try to target the maillot jaune, you cannot always target the maillot vert at the same time.

Willem DE WIT - Maillot Vert 2021
Jacob JJ JEFFERSON - Maillot Vert 2020
Jacob JJ JEFFERSON - Maillot Vert 2019
Fabio FONDA - Maillot Vert 2018

--> All Gip Statistics here


General Statistic of the month:
Most Tour de France Participations. It was our 5th Tour de France, but there are teams with much more experience. SV Furpach and Alkworld have participated 9 times. Ansach, Idé and Big Donkey have participated 8 times. Not bad. If you count Big Donkey or Poke with their previous names, they'd be on top actually. But not sure if I missed the re-naming of other teams, so better not get involved in this. By the way, 367 teams in total have participated in the C4F Tour de Frances. Hopefully some of them can celebrate a comeback in 2023!

9 - SV Furpach
9 - Alkworld
8 - Ansach
8 - Idéfix
8 - Big Donkey
7 - Team Gismo
7 - Team FL
7 - Lorient


Goals for August 2022:
We ride Poland and La Vuelta, but not sure about the goals. Main goal is to have some more fun with the Vespa. Can he get a 4th Grand Tours stage win? Can he reach 10,000 eternal points? Would be very nice for a classic rider, but he has downtrained quickly... Abbiati looks like the better leader for the Vuelta...
After that, we really need to think about the future of the team. For two years we have tried to build a Grand Tours team that can ride for the GC, but with limited success. I blame bad training luck, but of course wrong team setup and impatience are the main factors. But bad training, too! So for 2023.... what type of leader? Two climbers? Better buy three or four because of bad training? Remember, Poké did that once and it was impressive on mountain stages. Or go for a climber with TT (like Boaz), Climber with a lot of TT (like Mor), Classic with a lot of TT? Very difficult to make decisions... and have to see what's there on the transfer market...

[Gipfelstuermer]

Broom Broom Broom
(August 2022 Report)

Important races
August, not the most spectacular month of the season, but the Tour of Poland and the first half of La Vuelta provided some fun, meaning 2 stage wins each for our team. Aldo Abbiati took home two stage wins from Poland early in the month and then we had a fantastic start into the evening Vuelta with Vespa winning stage 2 out of an escape. Broom Broom Broom. Not enough for the maillot rojo after the TTT on day 1, but enough for the maillot verde, which he is still wearing today. But with 10 stages to go - most of them mountainous - it will be almost impossible to defend it against the mountain riders a.k.a. Alejandro Otxoa, the current leader of the c4f rider ranking.

Rider of the month
Vittore VESPA. Again. Bravo. The 36-year-old surprised everyone by going into an early on stage 2 of La Vuelta and winning his 4th Grand Tour stage out of the escape.

Training:
Vespa declining really quickly. He is now 71-72. Heard that he still aims for the World Championship and Il Lombardia, but hard to imagine that he can compete there. Our young pavé riders are all doing OK so far, but the decisive trainings are yet to come, except for Poulnikov. He's 59-85 with 83.2pavé at 26 years, which is fine.

Finances:
+1,092,520. Pretty good considering that the Vuelta is still on-going.

Retired Riders:
-

Sold Riders:
-

New Riders:
-

Gipfel Statistic of the month:
Vuelta stage wins. Vespa is our first rider to win stages in two different Vuelta editions. Previously, JJ was the only rider to win stages in two different editions of the same Grand Tours (he won stages in Giro and TDF in 2019 and 2020). Surprisingly, Vespa is also our first non-US-rider who wins more than one Vuelta stage in his career. Let's see if he can win another, but will be hard in the tough evening edition.

5 - Jacob JJ JEFFERSON (5x Vuelta '19)
3 - William WASHINGTON (3x Vuelta '17)
2 - Vittore VESPA* (1x Vuelta '21, 1x Vuelta '22)
1 - Bartholomäus BRANDT (1x Vuelta '20)
1 - Bastien BOULANGER (1x Vuelta '20)
1 - Joost ZEVENBERGEN (1x Vuelta '21)
1 - Anibal ALVES (1x Vuelta '17)
1 - Oscar OLIVEIRA (1x Vuelta '17)
1 - Ole OVERBY (1x Vuelta '19)
1 - Sigurd SANDVIK (1x Vuelta '19)
1 - Viktor VON GÖDRICH* (1x Vuelta '22)

--> All Gip Statistics here


General Statistic of the month:
Average daily active teams. Let's start looking at some insights from the development side of the game. So far, 2009 to 2013 was the heyday of this game with more than 200 daily active teams. But in 2014 it dropped by 50% ! I don't remember exactly. I wasn't active back then. Was it because of the new sprint system? or because the game switched from the very old version to Flash? or because of the new license system? or because Buhmann stopped working on the game? or a combination of these factors? Because 50% down in one year is really shocking! It's even worse than the end of Flash, where in 2021 we dropped almost 50% as people needed to switch to backup-flash-solutions... The real shocker was of course 2022 with the PHP upgrade in June, which was the final death blow for the Flash Version. However, we recovered very quickly thanks to the functioning React version and now we have an upward trend for the first time since... well really since 2009, because between 2009 and 2013 there was also no growth, just stagnation in number of players. I really hope that we can keep the momentum and continue to improve the game. We are already working on the next release v 0.5.0 and my feeling is that players are now more likely to stay with the game because they see some progress, so I am optimistic for the future Only problem is that we do not yet have control over the server and domain. For now, it's no problem, but if we want to make bigger steps in the future, do some advertising, etc, a move will be necessary, I reckon.

2009: 244
2010: 231
2011: 245
2012: 237
2013: 221
2014: 118
2015: 107
2016: 97
2017: 89
2018: 73
2019: 66

2020
Qtr1: 59
Qtr2: 76
Qtr3: 66
Qtr4: 67

2021
Qtr1: 50
Qtr2: 44
Qtr3: 37
Qtr4: 34

2022
Qtr1: 31
Qtr2: 34
Qtr3: 49

Goals for September 2022:
Finish Vuelta, maybe Top10 and maillot verde are possible for Vespa? or another stage? Just dreaming here... Then we ride our "home" race Tour de Luxembourg and afterwards there is the World Championship. Vespa wants to win all of that, but he is really way too optimistic, even if he is lucky to remain our leader because we do not yet have any other leader in the team.

[Gipfelstuermer]

Mam Florent op d'Schaff
(September 2022 Report)

Important races
La Vuelta ended without a positive surprise (no additional stage or palmarés entry in September), but we are more than content with the two Vuelta stage wins by Vespa and VVG in August. Afterwards, we participated in the Tour de Luxembourg, which meant 5 beautiful days of racing around the Gipfelstuermer headquarter. With Luxembourgish Florent Faber - currently our strongest rider with 71-79-79 - we had a real 'Lokalmatador' on the start line. And he delivered! On stage 3 from Rosport to Diekirch (home of the local beer), Florent took the stage win and had the yellow jersey for one day. As he lacks time trial skill, he couldn't keep the lead, but the win was great for the team's motivation. So we participated in the Tour of Croatia as well, again with Florent as the leader, again he took a stage win and this time he even managed to finish on the podium. Last but not least, we took part in the UCI World Championship in Wollongong. Despite his age, we nominated Vespa as the leader for this highlight. He managed to attack 74km before the finish but was caught a few km before the finish.

Rider of the month
Florent FABER after his home stage win.

Training:
Vespa and Abbiati are coming to the end of their career. With 68-67 and 70-76 now, they are not in best shape for the Italian autumn races, but they will give it a try. That's why Faber is the leader now with 71-79-79... But his age of 30 is not ideal, either. His was too young for 2022 and will be too old in 2023. The younger riders are training but as usual in our team, training happens at slow pace. Meyer, Laeser, MeylandSmith, Frederick, they have all missed a few trainings already... it's OK because they will mainly be helpers in their career... hopefully the training luck comes back when we have new classics and leaders for 2023 in the team.

Finances:
+1,242,364. Good result. We need money to buy some youth riders for 2023.

Retired Riders:
-

Sold Riders:
-

New Riders:
Paolo PERUCCA . He is a great-grandson of Jean Perucca, a participant in the 1909, 1910 and 1912 Tour de France. With starting values of 56-71-74-50-55-64.2-53reg he can become a great domestique for a GC leader but with 55 sprint he might also be able to ride for his own chances from time to time.

Gipfel Statistic of the month: 10K Club.
Ok, stole this category from AAD, but as Vespa has entered the club this month (despite neither winning the Worlds nor Lombardia), it is worth looking at the club. We have four riders in there, all of a different type. Hill sprinter JJ, then 80-70 Fonda, then climber DeWit and now pure classic Vespa. Being a classic with Reg made this achievement possible as he continues to be a great escapist. But with off-season coming, the 15K club or 20K club seem out of reach.

24,214 - Jacob JJ JEFFERSON ★All-Time Nr. 20★
16,516 - Fabio FONDA
15,691 - Willem DE WIT
10,015 - Vittore VESPA*

--> All Gip Statistics here


General Statistic of the month: Active Teams per Month.
I have to show this graph with a logarithmic scale to show what is going on. The least active months used to be February (Off-season) and the most active month used to be July (Tour de France). This was an easy prediction until 2017. From 2018, the difference between on-season and off-season started to shrink and other races gained popularity vs. the Tour. For example, in 2018 April was the strongest month (Spring Classics) and in 2020 May was the strongest month (Giro). But with the death of Flash in 2021, everything changed. January was the strongest month and December the weakest, simply because user numbers declined and declined. This year, the trend was eventually reversed. February was the weakest month and September so far the strongest month of the year. We are very far away from 1,000 active players, but a beginning has been made. Let's hope that the trend continues, perhaps even despite off-season.

Capture.PNG (60.48 KiB) Viewed 3970 times

Goals for October 2022:
The Italian autumn classics! Well, writing this text too late, so we know the result without any surprise classics win for us. So we need a new goal! Tour des Pavés is an interesting one for us!

[Gipfelstuermer]

Learning lessons in Lombardia
(October 2022 Report)

Important races
After 2017, 2019 and 2020 we participated in Il Lombardia for the fourth time. In 2017 we came very close to winning, when Anibal Alves finished 2nd in a sprint vs Seishiro Sakurazuka (Cerro Torre RT), after 246km in the escape and only 2'' before the best riders from the peloton. Our best chances for Lombardia are usually in escapes and attacks, as we rarely have strong climbers... So as in all previous editions, this year, we had no climber or other favorite. Well, actually, we had the crowd's favorite: Vittore Vespa. With 38 years of age, he was far from being a candidate for the win, but nonetheless he tried his best. On the climb to the mighty Madonna del Ghisallo, he followed an attack from Jonathan Joestar (Pokemonogatari) and they stayed in front until Civiglio. In the end, it wasn't enough for him and he came into the finish as 21st. Our leader for the race, Florent Faber, became 8th. Next year, we hope to have a competitive climber!

Rider of the month
Giacomo GERBI for the only real race win of the month, as he won the 6th stage of the Tour of Croatia. He also helped Pavlo Poulnikov to win the Tour des Pavés at the end of the month.

Training:
Time to compare our six flat riders between 24 and 28 years:
Poulnikov: 28 years, 16/29 trainings (from 70 to 86)
Outschakov: 28 years, 12/29 trainings (from 71 to 83)
Meyer: 26 years, 14/21 trainings (from 70 to 84)
Laeser: 25 years, 11/17 trainings (from 74 to 85)
Frederick: 24 years, 10/13 trainings (from 70 to 80)
MeylandSmith: 24 years, 11/13 trainings (from 67 to 78)
...Not very impressive... Poulnikov the only upside surprise. With his TdP win, he looks like the captain for Roubaix 2023.

Finances:
+1,399,828. Very nice result. Should help us to invest more into the team as we had some guys retire this month.

Retired Riders:
Famara FAYE, the cousin with the dropper seatpost, retires after impressive 322 races for the team. He broke the RSF record for highest downhill value (93). It was a lot of fun to have a guy like him in the team. We hoped to use him as a downhill sieb more often, but in reality that's rarely possible and if it's possible, it's rarely useful. Instead, he was allowed to into escapes and sometimes the strategy worked very well to have him as a relay station for long-range attacks.

Felix FISCHER also retires. With only 37reg, we used him not as often as possible, so he reached 228 races and won 2 of them, but both Category 1. However, he was a good helper during Spring Classics season, contributing to the team's wins at E3 Harelbeke, Dwaars Door Vlaanderen and Ronde Van Vlaanderen.

Sold Riders:
-

New Riders:
Gérard GOLDSCHMIT joins the team as the most interesting youth talent from Luxembourg these days. He is a great-grandson of Jean Goldschmit, who was not only Luxembourgish road race and cyclocross national champion but also won a stage at the 1949 Tour de France and finished in the Top 10 in the same edition of the race. Gérard's starting values of 54-73-72-75-60-68.5-39reg make it difficult to decide on training, but everyone can see some potential in him. Let's see in which areas he will develop his strengths!

Rafa RUBIANO was scouted in the Andes while we checked some possible routes for lenny and Hansa for this year's Andes edition. Rafa is the grandson of Julio Rubiano, who competed in the Summer Olympics 1976 and later the Tour de France 1983, even though he couldn't finish the race. Hence, Rafa's goal is to return to the Tour de France for his granddad! Also, he wants to ride the 2022 and 2023 Campeonato de los Andes. With his skill of 69-56-78-55-53-53.6-54reg, we'll probably be happy to take him to all those races!

Marco MEDINA was also scouted in the Andes. We only travel there once per year, so it made sense to squeeze in this late Signing, even though it happened after the 5th of the month. Marco is the grandson of Hernan Medina, who was a regular participant in the Vuelta a Colombia from 1958 to 1962. He also competed in the Summer Olympics 1960 in Mexico. Marco starts with skills of 56-72-68-52-55-63.9-58reg, even though that's technically more like 55-71 because his first training will happen on the 12th. After Perucca and Goldschmit, he is the third classic signed for 2023.

Gipfel Statistic of the month: Riders with most races.
Famara Faye new in the list after his retirement, ranking #8. It's also nice to see Vespa and Gagneux - our first two monument winners - made it above 300 races. If you are a successful rider, you get your race time in our team! The message to our new youth talents is clear: Train well, ride well and you will have a bright future in the team!

Most Races (Total 1,834 | Riders with >300 races)

383 - Matti MYYRY
371 - Kaapo KEMPPAINEN
363 - Paul POUDRIER
360 - Boas BERGSTEINSSON
342 - Jacob JJ JEFFERSON
331 - Jairo JIMENEZ
325 - Magnus MARTINSEN
322 - Famara FAYE
315 - Matthieu MAJERUS
310 - Halvard HALVORSEN
307 - Chris COOPER
306 - Vittore VESPA*
305 - Gaspard GAGNEUX

--> All Gip Statistics here


General Statistic of the month: Races with most participants in C4F History.
Who knew that GP de Denain was more popular than Milan - San Remo? Ok, MSR has more participants per edition, so it might actually be the most popular race. And GP de Denain is probably only there for its nice spot in the calendar. Also interesting: Le Tour is more popular than the Giro, but not by much, especially if you consider that it had 2 editions more than the Giro in C4F History.

762 - GP de Denain (63 editions, Cat. 2.3)
738 - La Classicissima (53 editions, Cat. 6.0)
727 - Brabant (60 editions, Cat. 3.6)
716 - Bourges (55 editions, Cat. 3.0)
715 - Milano-Torino (56 editions, Cat. 4.0)
703 - Paris - Camembert (58 editions, Cat. 2.5)
688 - Tour de Vendee (52 editions, Cat. 3.0)
676 - Le Tour (56 editions, Cat. 5.0)
669 - Circuito de Getxo (54 editions, Cat. 1.8)
668 - Aargau (53 editions, Cat. 2.4)
667 - La Doyenne (53 editions, Cat. 6.0)
664 - Pais Vasco (54 editions, Cat. 4.0)
648 - Tours (54 editions, Cat. 5.0)
640 - GIRO (54 editions, Cat. 5.0)

Goals for November 2022:
Campeonato de los Andes! We thought! But cancelled for the afternoon... could have ridden evening but 22h just too late, when sometime you want to get up at 6:30 to go cycling to work... So what do we do? One-day races! Good because of the time flexibility. Bad for points and finances... especially when you have Andes form with Andes riders (high mountain, high reg = expensive). So the goal is really just to make a little bit of money.

[Gipfelstuermer]

Identity Crisis
(November/Half December 2022 Report, before we publish our 2022 review end of December)

Important races
The whole team prepared for the Campeonato de los Andes, but the afternoon edition was cancelled because not enough teams signed up. The moral is really down because of that, especially because the team manager already knew that he wouldn't have time for the December Tour, either.... So if you don't participate in important races, you cannot win important races... unless your name is Oleksandr Outschakov! The guy with the spelling error in his passport won the off-season classic Jable - Al Farandis! That doesn't really make it important... but he won in the afternoon, for which Roby created his own ranking! Ok, that also doesn't really make it important... but it was the team's 300th race win! That's important! Nice one for Oleksandr, nice one for the team!

Rider of the month
Florent FABER for November as he won the off-season "San Francisco classic", which does not only have "classic" in the name, but it is classified as an off-season classic.

Training:
Let's look at our youngstars for next season
- Rubiano at 74-62 is an experiment. He took 5/6 mountain trainings and 6/6 flat trainings.
- Perucca is now 66-77. 10/10 mountain trainings is nice so far. 6/10 flat trainings not ideal, but acceptable.
- Medina is 60-77. 4/5 mountain training and 5/5 flat trainings is super strange as we have him on 96%/47% for moutain/flat.
- Goldschmit 60-78 is better. 6/6 mountain trainings and 5/6 flat trainings. Keep going.

Finances:
+533,221. Bad result for an off-season month... but not surprising without Andes with Andes form.... so perhaps not only an identity crisis, but an existential crisis for the team?


Retired Riders:
Vittore VESPA retires. Brumm Brumm. This is a big loss for the team after 20 seasons that we enjoyed together. Vittore was one of the most liked riders in the peloton thanks to his attacking style (61 reg is awesome!) but also thanks to his Italian Vespa style He rode 318 races for the team and really impressed throughout the whole season. His win of Liege-Bastogne-Liege, the second monument win for the team, will remain in the history books. But he also won 2 Tour de France stages (both this year) and 2 Vuelta stages (one last year, one this year). Grazie mille, Vittore and brumm brumm.

Sold Riders:
-

New Riders:
Klaas KEMP joins the team with starting values of 49-72-77-48-54-68.8, 52reg. Thanks to our excellent connections in the Grand Duchy, we were able to sign the great-grandson of Willy Kemp on very short notice after realising that our team had become too expensive in terms of salary. Difficult for the team, but an opportunity for a young guy like him to come in and get lots of experience. Let's see what he makes out of it!

Gipfel Statistic of the month: Best World Tour riders.
Big thanks to Alkworld for implementing this race series in-game. It was started by Rapid Vitesse in 2019 in the forum. Now it's in-game. Fantastic! Our most successful rider in the World Tour was De Wit thanks to lots of GT podiums last year. DeWit even finished 3rd in the weighted ranking! But if you count JJ's points together from 2019 and 2020... his 2,920 points are also quite good. @Alkworld: Can we add more years and all-time World Tour ranking? Anyway, this year's points by Gagneux and Vespa are less impressive, but who cares... monument wins are more important

3,815 - Willem DE WIT (2021)
1,860 - Jacob JJ JEFFERSON (2020)
1,080 - Jacob JJ JEFFERSON (2019)
960 - Gaspard GAGNEUX (2022)
900 - Vittore VESPA (2022)

--> All Gip Statistics here


General Statistic of the month: Best World Tour riders.
Wow! Lorient and Gala have had by far the strongest riders in the World Tour in recent years! And this is not even the weighted ranking, which would be even more impressive, because late evening used to be the time with higher number of teams! What is clear though... GC riders can be more successful than classic riders, which is a bit of a difference to the real world where classic riders can be very far up as well (WVA 2nd this year behind Pogacar). The reason is that in the real world you can ride lots of classics, but you can hardly ride more than one GT as a leader... whereis in in this game, you can have the same leader for all three Grand Tours and be successful there.

6,705 - Thomas FONTAINE (Lorient, 2020)
6,460 - Alejandro OTXOA (Los Galacticos, 2022)
5,885 - Luca DE MARCHI (Los Galacticos, 2021)
5,745 - Laurent BRAM (Lorient, 2019)
4,990 - Tim EIFFEL (Big Donkey, 2021)

Goals for December 2022:
Find a new identity!

[Gipfelstuermer]

2022 - a monumental year!

THE 2022 TEAM
We started the year with two young, promising Belgian climbers: Pierre Pagie and Luuk Lootens. Pagie became the Giro leader with 85-59-74. Lootens was supposed to be leader for the Tour with his 60 TT and >60 pavé (spoiler: but he never became a leader). In addition, we had spectacular Italian classics, who trained late, but they trained: Aldo Abbiati reached 74-80 and Vittore Vespa 74-78 with 61 Reg, making him a dangerous attacker as well. A couple of pavé specialists completed the team: Giacomo Gerbi, Felix Fischer, Gaspard Gagneux. Of course we had helpers, too. Savoie and Catteau never became really strong classics, so they were helpers mostly. And our Ukrainians Poulnikov and Outschakov joined after the war started and so they were young helpers, too. And I almost forgot, we also had our money sprinter Viktor von Gödrich (VVG).

IMPORTANT RACES
This year, like most years, we went into the Spring Classics with lots of Vorfreude. It's simply the best time of the year. Temperatures are going up, you start to feel the sun on your skin, and there are phenomenal races on TV and in RSF. And this year, we finally had a pretty good classic campaign, thanks to home grown Luxembourger Gaspard Gagneux. He took the win at E3 Harelbeke and his success at the Ronde Van Vlaanderen will be in the Gipfelstuermer history book forever. We waited 13 years for the first monument win, so Gagneux's win was extremely important for the team! Later in April... brumm brumm... Vittore Vespa took the victory in Liege, adding a second monument to the team's Palmares. A monumental month, a monumental year!

Afterwards we rode all 3 Grand Tours, where the team collected 8 stage wins (3x Giro, 3x TDF, 2x Vuelta) thanks to 5 riders (3x Vespa, 2x Gerbi, 1x Abbiati, 1x Pagie, 1x VVG). So 6 out of 8 stage wins from our Italian riders! However, the team was not able to deliver in the General Classification. Pagie became 5th in the afternoon Giro, 1'44'' behind Boaz Trakhtenbrot (Alive And Dead). Pagie wasn't happy, the team wasn't happy, so we decided that Pagie should try his luck at another team. His helper Lootens left the team as well... so it seems at the moment, the team is still not yet where it needs to be for competing in the General Classification during Grand Tours.

RIDER OF THE YEAR
This year it is an extremely difficult decision. RVV winner Gagneux or LBL winner Vespa? Even though Gagneux's win at RVV was more emotional, as it was our first monument, rider of the year is... brumm brumm... Vittore VESPA! Vittore did not only win LBL, he was also extremely successful at Le Tour, where he won 2 stages and wore the yellow jersey for 2 days. Moreover, Vittore was one of the most liked riders in the peloton thanks to his attacking style (61 reg is awesome!) but also thanks to his Italian Vespa style Grazie mille, Vittore and brumm brumm.

2022 - Vittore VESPA
2021 - Willem DE WIT
2020 - Jacob JJ JEFFERSON
2019 - Jacob JJ JEFFERSON
2018 - Fabio FONDA
2017 - Oscar OLIVEIRA
2016 - No Racing
2015 - No Racing
2014 - No Racing
2013 - No Racing
2012 - Karim KHAIR
2011 - Jose JANUARIO
2010 - No Racing
2009 - Carloe TEVEZ

OUTLOOK FOR 2023
Even though we would like to compete in the GC during Grand Tours, we have not yet signed a climber for 2023. Instead, we will try to build a team around the young Luxembourgish talent Gerard Goldschmit. With 23-years, he currently has values of 64-79-72-75-60-72.7 and 39 Reg. With his talent, we hope he can become an allrounder, successful in lots of different races: Hilly classics, pavé classics, hilly time trials and maybe even stage races! To support him, we signed two Colombian talents - Rafa Rubiano and Marco Medina - and swiss classic talent Paolo Perucca. The strategy will completely depend on training, so we need to be patient. If we have no luck in training, we might sign a climber later in the year. Le Tour and La Vuelta look very much like pure climber Grand Tours this year, so for those races it could make sense, even though a late Signing is always difficult because training won't be better...

In addition to the Grand Tours, we already have some Vorfreude for the spring classics. On paper, we have a decent pavé team with Poulnikov (83.9), Laeser (81.8), Meyer (81.6) MeylandSmith (80.9) and Frederick (79.4). So fun is guaranteed! Gagneux and Vespa had to retire, but of course we will think of them during RVV and LBL. We have less pressure to win a monument now, but of course it would be great to add the missing three monuments to our Palmares one day. So MSR, Roubaix and Lombardia! Nice goals for 2023!

[Gipfelstuermer]

A month to forget
(January 2023 Report)

Important races
Hoped I can skip this report but the sponsors want to see it.... Before the month, thought there are no important races at all... even forgot to put form... then realized there's TDU and Cadel Evans. They weren't there during covid times, cheap excuse of course. Someone should be fired for not putting form. So we got no stage win there, no podium either. Rubiano surprised us with a 3rd place in the Cadel Evans classic.

Rider of the month
Pavlo POULNIKOV for winning the mountain jersey at TDU. No rider with a stage win this month... this is really bad of course and another reason to fire someone.

Training:
Another area with total failure. We turned our former youngstar Goldschmit into a 66-79 who is unable to train. Climber Rubiano stopped at 75-66 for now. The team is already in revolution mode. Perucca wants to become the new leader ("I can follow in Vespa's footsteps") and Poulnikov wants to fire all riders with less than 80 pavé ("Let's become a pure pavé team.").

As a consequence, our Dutch climber coach DeWit was fired. We also half-fired our downhill & nutrition coach Famara Faye. He remains downhill coach but we release him from his role as nutrition coach.

Finances:
+397,574. Finance Manager also under risk of being fired


Retired Riders:
-

Sold Riders:
-

New Riders:
-

Gipfel Statistic of the month: Months without a win

Jan 2023 (24 races)
Sep 2020 (7 races)
Dec 2017 (19 races)
Mar 2012 (9 races)
Jan 2010 (16 races)

So this month was really the worst month ever... grrr...

--> All Gip Statistics here

General Statistic of the month: Most Omloop Het Nieuwsblad Wins

4 - Alkworld (2012, 2016, 2021, 2022)
3 - Team FL (2011, 2012, 2016)
3 - Lorient (2018, 2019, 2020)

Goals for February 2022:
Het Nieuwsblad. Less in the game, more in reality. Goal is to watch it on the Muur and ride the cyclo event on Sunday. Problem is, might miss the race in-game in that case and it's not really a race you should play half-hearted from the app.

[bergwerk cycling]

Goals for February 2022:
Het Nieuwsblad. Less in the game, more in reality. Goal is to watch it on the Muur and ride the cyclo event on Sunday. Problem is, might miss the race in-game in that case and it's not really a race you should play half-hearted from the app.

thought you will watch this year on the Muur???
have fun and don't drink too much

[Gipfelstuermer]

2023 Season - Bring it on

We missed Omloop and Strade Bianche (two of our favorite races), but just in time for Milano - San Remo we have our 2023 presentation!

The team behind the scenes

Directeur sportif: Vittore Vespa (former L-B-L winner)

Flat Coach: Magnus Martinsen (former 90 FL and winner on Champs Elysees)
Downhill Coach: Famara Faye (former 93 DH and best ever DH rider in C4F history)
Sprint Coach: Jacob Jefferson (former 82 SP and 2x maglia ciclamino & 2x maillot vert winner)
Pavé Coach: Gaspard Gagneux (former 80 Pavé and RVV winner, if we didn't have him, would hire from Bearclaw Cycling)

We are hiring

- Climber Coach (much needed as our guys never really train, will try to hire from Big Donkey's team)
- TT Coach (much needed for Goldschmit, will try to hire from CircleCycle)
- Nutrition Coach (has to be an expert in coffee & cake, will try to hire someone from T-Mobile-A)

New Jersey for 2023

After 13 years, we have to keep the tradition and will continue to ride in not very well copied Euskatel Euskadi design! But with some unique features!

- We keep the classic Gip orange (thanks to sponsor Euskatel Euskadi)
- Include brand new bike with Honeycomb bike paint for the wow-effect (thanks to bike partner Orbea)
- Add infamous Gip Trousers (thanks to clothing partner Rapha)
- Add Luxembourgish Flag (thanks to additional sponsor City of Luxembourg)

[schappy]

We miss the Gipfel statistics...

[Gipfelstuermer]

2023 - A great year for C4F and Gip monuments
(But less so for other Gip races.. )

The year for C4F

For monthly reports, our press team was too busy (coding and other things), but we found the time for the yearly report! That's a success already, because since the arrival of little Gip, we did not have enough time for everything we wanted to do and between Calendar, FPC and Team Management, it is the Coding that suffers a bit. Therefore, big big thank you to Alkworld who did the main work this year, and to all volunteers, especially designers, FPC members, NC members. You are amazing! We stabilized the game this year with roughly 50-70 teams racing and 80-100 teams logged in per day. Hopefully we can grow it a bit in 2024

Gip Monuments

In 2023, we reached some statistical milestones. 2,000 races (#43) and 300,000 points (#30). The highlights for this year are obvious: Pavlo Poulnikov's win in Roubaix and Marco Medina's win in Liège. Two monuments in one year, just like 2022, which was an incredible success for us. Roubaix in particular was a win we had chased for 14 years now! This year, we had built the team, lots of pavé specialists, but none with a high sprint skill, we made the race hard, too early, but better too early than too late if you don't have the sprint skill. Then Pavlo with the late attack on the Willems-to-Hem sector, 8km before the finish. Nobody could follow, so it was an enjoyable solo win in the vélodrome. Medina in L-B-L was spectacular, too. It was also a solo win, after Vespa had won it in a sprint from a small group one year ago. But Medina and Vespa were very similar in terms of skills (74-78) and the first win will always remain the first win. So Roubaix this year was definitely the more special one. That win alone would have been enough for Poulnikov to be rider of the year, even though he added a few other wins to his Palmares later on, including one TDF stage.

Les Monuments (Total 4)
Cat. 6: Milano - San Remo, Ronde van Vlaanderen, Paris-Roubaix, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Giro di Lombardia
1 - Marco MEDINA (Liege-Bastogne-Liege 2023)
1 - Pavlo POULNIKOV (Paris-Roubaix 2023)
1 - Vittore VESPA (Liege-Bastogne-Liege 2022)
1 - Gaspard GAGNEUX (Ronde van Vlaanderen 2022)

Rider of the Year Award
2023 - Pavlo POULNIKOV
2022 - Vittore VESPA
2021 - Willem DE WIT
2020 - Jacob JJ JEFFERSON
2019 - Jacob JJ JEFFERSON
2018 - Fabio FONDA
2017 - Oscar OLIVEIRA
2016 - No Racing
2015 - No Racing
2014 - No Racing
2013 - No Racing
2012 - Karim KHAIR
2011 - Jose JANUARIO
2010 - No Racing
2009 - Carloe TEVEZ

Other Gip Races

The rest of the year was difficult for the team, to say the least. We were struggling to stay in Div 1 already in the system with 30 Div1 teams. Now we are down to Div 3! A generational change was unavoidable after we struggled in the Grand Tours, both in terms of placements and financially. 2 stages in Giro and Tour each were fine, but Medina ended up as cannon fodder for the GC. Rank #15 and #7, respectively, after Pagie and Vespa had achieved #5 and #4 last year. That was also not great, but we had more fun in those editions! Let's hope next year we have a stronger team for the GTs!

Outlook for 2024

We crossed out 3/5 monuments now. MSR and Lombardia are missing. So we'll target those in 2024, but the team build-up is not straight-forward as we would like to target the Grand Tours as well. MSR can be anything, we tried the attack downhill from the Poggio this year, but were caught by r Quick's excellent management. So we'll try something else this year. Lombardia normally for climbers or super-classics. Ottolenghi is the most likely candidate from our team, but he started with 71 only and already missed one mountain training, so he's on the normal Gipfel climber road to irrelevance already! Our cuisine in the team bus is too delicious, it seems! But at least, if we aren't sucessful in 2024, we'll have the best coffee and cake for sure!

[Bear]

Congrats on the birth of little Gip!!

[Gipfelstuermer]

ANNOUNCEMENT: Gipfelstuermer to become pure classics team.

Due to time constraints, the Team Gipfelstuermer will become a pure classics team for the rest of 2024 and for the time being. Going forward, the team will exclusively participate in

- World Tour one day races (all 20 per year)
- Pre-specified other classics (max 20 per year)
- Pre-specified off-season classics (max 8 per year)
- National Championships (3x per year)
- World Championships (1x per year)

In total, this will mean 52 days racing per year (on average 1x week). DS Vittore Brumm Brumm Vespa has been tasked to come up with a transfer strategy for this approach, consisting of an optimal number of riders, a maximum average salary and an early retirement scheme. Special advice had been received earlier on from low number of races per year specialist Team FL and more advice from others is welcomed.

In line with this policy, the design departement will be restricted to designing one day races. The coding and development departement will stay in full force.

The team will finish its current participation in the Tour de Wallonie and move on to its pure classics race programme afterwards (see below). Our participation in the max. 8 Off-Season Classics 24/25 will be announced later.

Gipfelstuermer race programm for the rest of the 2024 Season

SA 03.08. Olympic Road Race
SA 10.08. Donostia San Sebastian Klasikoa
SU 25.08. Bretagne Classic - Ouest-France

SU 08.09. Hamburg Cyclassics
FR 13.09. Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec
SU 15.09.  Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal
SU 22.09. World Championships Road Race

SA 05.10. Giro dell Emilia
TU 08.10. Tre Valli Varesine
TH 10.10. Gran Piemonte
SA 12.10. Il Lombardia

[Chemnitz Pro Cycling Team]

You will be missed in the peloton, but I think, the decision is well-thought. Hope to see you more in 2025!