Written by Ello Ello at 22:24 12/1-2020
Episode 9: Preparation
Narrator: Over the most recent few weeks Ello Ello have started to ride a wave of success and with one of their biggest targets of the season coming up the preparations have mounted up. Supporting Daniel Sammut Castelletti will be one of the strongest teams in the race. Iancu Raducioiu has won this race back to back and also has won the points classification here. Lincoln Hannity was 3rd in the race last year but has had staggering levels of success in other races he won three youth classifications early in his career and is the team’s most decorated rider so far and recently took the team’s (currently) only victory of the season. Geo Anamia won one of the most prestigious races on the calendar, Ainet Brugge, the previous season. Whilst not a regular captain, Storm Jonsen is one of the team’s best performing TMs and supported Iancu and Lincoln in their exploits here. Gyenge Rubik has been a nearly man of the team and will be hoping he can perform at his best here.
Placido Maciel (coach): I think we come here in incredible shape, all our riders are performing at close to 90% and we believe we have the right mix of riders for the race. The weather should be good for us with generally quite low winds.
Henri (manager): There are a few big rivals for this race. Daniel, whilst good does have some major floors to his riding and whilst we believe we have one of the strongest teams around him our rivals are far from week. Chief among these is Calle Tijs racing for de stamper. He’s an exception rider and will be able to push Daniel to his limit on stages 4 and 5, our one belief is we can use the hillier stages to our advantage and take the race to Calle there. The other team we’re looking regularly at are trackstah07 who have two contenders, although neither have top form. Kamutali is the sort of rider who poses a challenge to managers on where his strength lies but I think his all-around ability makes him well suited for this and Selmo can push us on the hills even if he may struggle on the DH stage. However they also have more senior options they may choose to take so there’s a lot going on there. All in all, I think we’re pretty well set up for this but Tijs is an exceptional competitor.
Narrator: Whilst the team’s preparation for Valparaiso has been going well the team has encountered surprising problems in it’s other endeavours. Their recent success has seen the team rise up to division 1, a feat which was further boosted by Sadiq Chakraborty getting his 4th points finish of the season, succeeding at every attempt. Whilst this would appear on the surface to be a good thing the team’s planning was all based off remaining in division 2 and so some of the races they were hoping to compete in have refused them entry based off too much success.
Bertus de Keijsere (coach): In many ways it’s a funny problem to have but it’s really annoying. We’ve already completely dropped Calgary from our calendar and it’s now touch and go to see if we can meet the requirements for Rio Pico and Hong Lien. Failing that we can shift the plan to try and fit in the division one races at the same time but that wouldn’t be ideal. Partly because the standard of competition is higher but also because all our best riders are racing elsewhere which leaves us a little depleted here.
Narrator: In a week of intense preparation and manic planning another positive story has come out, albeit to much less fanfare. Star talent, Brock Moeller has graduated from the team’s academy. At just 23 and having already reached a level of talent never seen before by Ello Ello he’s set to have a bright future.
Abigail Amor (youth coach): It’s a really strange situation with Brock. Like clearly he’s a rider who could go incredibly far but setting races to target is much harder. From our perspective the obvious choices are the Don Tour at the end of the season and then maybe attempt a Youth Classification next season but realistically that could be at any one of 5 different tours with Volta, Vuelta, Cymru, Valpa and Germany all containing opportunities for him. But ye it’s super exciting to see a rider like Brock come along and I’m hoping he can start scoring before the season even ends.
Daniel Sammut Castelletti (rider and Valpa YC candidate): I’m pretty pumped. Tomorrow the race begins and I’ve never really been given a chance like this before. It’s going to be super strange because I’m going to be able to make calls and stuff. Obviously Geo is going to be making most of the calls on the road and Placido and Bertus from the car but when it comes down to it the final calls are going to lie with me. The good thing is I’ve seen all these roads before. Last year I rode the race in support of Lincoln and even then I was being treated like the leader when it came to warm ups and feeding because the team planned my chance here from a while ago but this time it’s just that bit more real and exciting. Of course, I’m wanting to go big and win the YC jersey but even a few strong top 9s would be a great achievement.
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Comments
thanks very much both
Always fun to read, keep it up!
Good luck for tomorrow!
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