Kind of Blued

Gotta love the good people at Cyclingnews for putting this together. I was lost, especially with all the merger business.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/the-...fers-2011-2012

Confused with Janez Brajkovic... they list him as "in" at both Astana and the Nissan-Trek team. Anybody know which is true? I hope it's Astana, but it probably isn't.

A LOT of things worth mentioning, but one I'll mention is that I'm hoping that Tejay Van Garderen on BMC may get some good GC opportunities for the 'B' races that Cadel isn't riding, and he may actually get some team support, which didn't seem to be the case at HTC. Always nice to see the young guys get their shot.

GreenEdge will be fun to watch. They don't have many "pure _____ers" of any kind, but they have a crazy number of guys with just outright brute strength.

DXchulo

Brajkovic is with Astana. Just looks like a mistake in the Cyclingnews article where he was originally slated to stay on for the merger but later transferred to Astana and they forgot to update that part.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/vide...edom-at-astana
https://twitter.com/#!/janibrajkovic/...91702431780864
https://twitter.com/#!/AstanaTeam/sta...18801146253312

It will be interesting to see what happens to Cobo and whether he'll be a one-hit wonder.

paperbackwriter

I'm worried that Cobo will slip into mediocrity again- he has a difficult character and who knows what will happen when he's forced to leave his favourite DS again. Would be a shame if the Movistar situation repeated itself. I think it wouldn't be bad for him to go to Riis who could stop him from going backwards. Maybe it would mean not even trying to defend the Vuelta- if Contador was free to race and felt like having a go- but he'd get the Giro and he doesn't have much chance of beating AC anyway. But it's all irrelevant since Riis doesn't have the money. Which is pretty disappointing, by the way (I mean, Saxo still being rather weak.)

I doubt Van Garderen will get the support he needs at BMC. They have super strong leaders but they still lack domestiques who can climb. And I can see Cadel suddenly realizing it when he tries to win the Tour in which someone actually challenges him in the mountains (well, the route won't give many chances to do it but still). But Tejay I actually find slightly overrated, there are many youngsters who I'd like to get their shot more and I think they can achieve more when their time comes.

I'm interested to see how Pozzato will do at Farnese-Vini- it may not be the most beautiful sight when he's wheelsucking Gilbert but how Katusha treated him wasn't nice.

DXchulo

I like Van Garderen but I do agree that he was a little overrated. It's not like he didn't get his chances at HTC in 2011. He had shots in California and Colorado and didn't come through either time. I'm sure I'll get some grief for that statement since he had top 5 finishes, but I felt like 2011 was the year he needed a breakthrough victory and he didn't have one.

I could be wrong but I feel like he's just not guide a good enough climber to reach his goals.

GrayJay

Neat website I just found for the first time that provides a sortable list of all known 2012 rider/team contracts and status. Cool because you can re-sort the list to show who is leaving a team, which team transfers are arriving from, sort by rider nationality, contract status etc.

https://www.cyclingfever.com/transfers.html?xs=4

One thing that really jumped out at me was just how much greenedge raided garmins roster (5 riders).

Also interesting to see that none of the 2011 OPL team members transfered to the 2012 omega-quick step team, so much for the idea that this was any sort of merger.