Week 2 started a little slow but boy did it pick up steam!

Races of the week:

Le Samyn, Strade Bianche, GP Industria & Artigianato, Dwars door West-Vlaanderen Johan Museeuw Classic, and Stage 1 of Paris-Nice.

Team of the week:

First named rider is the rider of the week and if a rider has a number in parentheses after their name it means the number of times they have made the select Team of the Week here.

Tiesj Benoot. Won a little race in Italy: Strade Biance. Played in the mud too. Not bad for his first World Tour win and he’s just 24.

Matej Mohoric. Won GP Industria & Artigianato with an aggressive move. Biggest win of his senior career. Kid is 7 months younger than Tiesj.

Remi Cavagna. Won West Vlaanderen. Age? Almost a year younger than Matej: 22 and 1/2. Sensing a trend here yet?

Romain Bardet (2)- 2nd at Strade Bianche and made what would normally have been a race winning move. He’s 27 and 4 months

Wout Van Aert. Literally left everything oil the road at Strade Bianche to complete the podium there. He’s 23 and 1/2.I hear he does other races.

Robert Power. Yeah he was just 6th at Strade Bianche but then again he’s just 22 years and 10 months old. Theres a theme here after all.

And some old guys to complete the Nine Riders:

Niki Terpstra. Old guy won Le Samyn with a ridiculously overpowered team.

Arnaud Démare. Won stage 1 at Paris-Nice...I guess. Closest photo finish EVAH.

Gorka Izagirre. 2nd @ Paris-Nice stage 1 due to being not French. Quietly having a better early season than his higher profile brother.

Team of the week:

This ia a hard one because how much was Tiesj’s win due to his individual efforts and how much does he owe his team? FDJ did a nice job keeping Demare in the hunt at Paris-Nice and normally AG2R played their cards wonderfully at Strade Bianche. But I have to give it to Lotto Soudal.

Do they understand tactics? Like at all?

Quickstep.Here’s a story. back when my kids were in Elementary school, i would help out at school: assist the teachers, recess monitor zerocks stuff. Stuff like that. Being the recess monitor was a riot: the kids loved to play basketball and the playground had a shot 7 foot (2.13 meter) basket they would play on. They loved having me play with them because I was the enormous guy who could dunk the ball with barely a jump and swat away almost any attempted shot that I felt like. The kids loved to try and beat me. But anyways me playing with the kids was like Quickstep at Le Samyn in particular and West Vlaanderen: waaaaay overpowering a team.

But wait! There’s more! Look at the results of Strade Bianche. Of the top riders, one, Zdneck Stybar of Quickstep Floors, a pre race favorite, finished in 5th place. Oh and his teammate Phil Gil, finished in 36th. What do those two have in common that the rest of the top don't share? They both rode midweek at Le Samyn in a race that Quickstep absolutely did not need them to ride in. Not even for QS was le samyn that important a race that needed to tire out two riders that were targeting a much bigger race. </div>

FSA DS Team of the week

Saunier-Duval, ds julienpretot. They scored 710 at Strade Bianche to go with 250 at Le Samyn to move up to 20th place in the standings. Congrats!