In 2018, the Aqua Blue team was much the same as the real life team. Dan Pearson was a surprising talent, to which his real life equivalent is living up. In August, the team was joined by two stagiairs: Hamzic, a Croatian climber hailing from ABS' own U23 squad, AquaTurquoise. The other was Adrien Costa, the American talent who has retired from cycling in real life but flourishes with ABS. The best results for the team came in the nationals though, with the team succesfully defending the American and coquering the Dutch (Kreder), Danish (Pedersen), Irish (Dunne), British (Christian) and New Zealand (Archbolt) jerseys. Wildcards were few and far in between, but with great results on the bookends of the year. Connor Dunne made the Irish selection for the World Championships, and was on breakaway duty. In a stroke of luck, the Lange managed to stay in front beating out the sprinters to the line on a flat championship!  Due to the game's relegation system, the team was promoted to World Tour level from 2019, where Wilier joins the team as material sponsor! 

The transfer season leading the team from 2018 to 2019 was a chaotic one. Dan Pearson and Stefan Denifl could not be kept on board, and Aaron Gate was let go willingly. Our strongest riders staying on their contracts were Michel Kreder and Caspar Pedersen, two strong puncher-sprinters on opposite sides of their careers. The focus for new signings was on stage hunters, and our resulting team would've made a great PCT team.... and then we realized we would go world tour! 

Most important signings:

Adam Blythe - Renewal. Our main sprinter, although not a top-level sprinter. We were willing to pay for him, especially after Sam Bennett turned out to be way out of our budget.

                          

Edward Planckaert - Sponsor needs a Belgian rider, Eddy will be lead-out to Adam.

Krist Neilands - Our first signing, puncher providing potato-power to the team.

Sebastian Henao - Not on our radar, but actively approached our team and welcomed with open hands.

Adrien Costa - Allround puncher, young talent. Staying until 2020.

Fabio Felline - Much needed addition to our classic's squad, biggest signing of the year.

Clement Chevrier - Another opportunistic signing, a climber in support of Henao, Costa and Warbasse.

A boatload of pack filling - Mostly young "sprinters" with 70-72 sprint and not much else and a duo of ancient riders with 72 flat. 

In the end, we spend way under our budget, as most mayor signings apart from Felline fell through.

The early season of 2019 began marvellous. Shane Archbolt managed to defend his New Zealand Jersey, and in the Tour Down Under, one of our youngsters managed to win from a break on day one and defend it over Willunga Hill. Hamzic began his season on fire, but had negative form all throughout the rest of the year, so this was his last feat. Larry Warbasse managed to win the Tour of Oman for the second time in a row, slipping away unnoticed from the favourites at the start of the Green Mountain. 

Our classic's season saw a great improvement over the previous year. Pedersen, Kreder, Felline, Pedersen and Neilands and Costa in the more hilly classics saw us put in plenty of top 10 placings as sponsors demanded, most notably top 10 placings in AGR, Fleche and Ronde van Vlaanderen and podiums in Strade Bianche and eventually San Sebastian and Lombardia. Especially Kreder shone, who couldn't manage similar results a year before.

By the time Paris-Nice and Tirreno rolled by, our team found itself seriously struggling in the mountains, not even the best of our climbers able to stay with even the domestiques of the established teams. Nevertheless, this opened doors to opportunic stage hunting by the likes of Costa, Neiland and Chevrier. Edward Planckaert turned out to be a better sprinter than expected, bringing in top fives of his own account!

The nationals of 2019 were less succesfull than those of '18. We defended the New Zealand jersey, and kept the Irish, Danish and American jerseys within the team, albeit with different riders (Dunbar, Hansen and Costa). The only new jersey we got was the Latvian jersey, while we lost the British and Dutch jerseys. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to conquer the Colombian and Croatian jerseys, despite Hamzic being nominally the best rider in that last race.

Being a World Tour team has the advantage of auto-invites into the grand tours, but with great power comes great responsibilty: how to utilize that however? Our sponsors expected nothing from us for these races, but a Grand Tour is the highest podium for cycling, so they remained our main focus this year.

AquaBlue had a two-pronged approach to the grand tours: we'd focus on sprints with Blythe while keeping a few spots for opportunistic riders, while the Tour would see our climbers hunt stages. An injury for Fabio Felline in May made us reconsider however, and our Giro squad saw the inclusion of Sebastian Henao. 

Giro d'Italia: Faced with top sprinters, Blythe managed some descent placings in the first days, but not after. Sebastian Henao and Larry Warbasse outperformed expectations: after Neilands won a stage and he and Costa shared the Maglia Azzure during the first week, Henao dominated the KOM competition from the second week onward, taking another stage along the way. Several times he took a lot of time loss intentionally, if we had not done this, he might have come close to a top 10.  T

Final tally:  KOM jersey, two stage wins, 16th in GC

Tour de France: A tour of opportunism saw us rewarded with four days in yellow when Clement Chevrier won a stage early on. After losing the jersey, he won another stage later on, which concluded most of our tour succes. Despite this, this was the first time Aqua Blue wore the leader's jersey in a big stage race, let alone the tour!

Final tally:  Four days in yellow, two stage wins

Vuelta d'Espagna: This grand tour was different from the previous two, as by this time the team has signed a for now Secret Stagiair (S) who we believe capable of a GC placing. He is joined by supporting climbers and time trialists, to help with the TTT that starts the race. This TTT is an immediate suprise: our time places second, at 10 seconds behind Mitchelton Scott. On a hilly stage with echelons, the Mitchelton Scott team is wiped out and Krist Neilands take the Red Jersey! After losing it in the first mountain stage, our focus returns on the classification for S. Unfortunately, it was too big a weight on this young guy's shoulder who's climbing and tt skill are not matched by his stamina. The S has a great recovery, but despite finishing top eight in many of the stages in the last week, his overall ranking doesn't improve past 12th. He does manage to grab a stage win though, as does Adrien Costa. Seeing the relative lack of GC chance for the team, Henao is given freedom again and with some assistance from his teammates, manages to grab the KOM jersey for the second time in a year!

The World Championship brings us back to another sprinter's fest. This time, Bennett was the leader for the Irish team with Dunne again being in the break. Again, the break made it to the finish line just before the sprinters, but the defending champion was pipped on the line by another. 

At the start of our last race of the season, the Tour of Turkey, Aqua Blue can look back at a succesfull season. In the rankings, we're third in terms of total number of victories, fourth in terms of World Tour ranking and fifth in terms of Superprestige ranking, safeguarding our spot on the world tour. It won't be the same team however, as we've changed to a different sponsors and done some radical transfers - stay tuned!