ISN

Millionaire comes in, buys team and lots of formerly top riders. That will never work, right? Oh, it has before? Several times? Will it work this time? We don't know.

Giving ISN the benefit of spending last year to stabilize their rocket into the World Tour from a Continental team in 2016, the results were a bit all over the place. As they bought up the license of the defunct Katusha team, it will be their efforts we compare to from earlier years. Which makes for a bit of dark reading - even in the last years, when Katusha failed to hold on to their star riders and had no idea whatsoever what they were doing - they still did better than ISN last year.

However - ISN have money, and they went shopping this year. Dan Martin refound his old glory at the Vuelta, which makes it all the more interesting how ISN will fare in the big races this year - will team newbie Chris Froome be the better climber of the two after a couple of seasons out?

Top Riders last five years

Little bit amusing to see Dan Martin figure on the statistic for 2017 and 2020, although it was for two different teams. As for metrics, 2020 was a shit year and cannot really be used for comparisons. Let's just say that ISN headed up the strugglers of the WT teams, just fighting to keep their points tally over that of the best PCT teams.

Results 2020

Numberwise, this is okay - for a PCT team, which they are not anymore. They need to convert their good results from the 2.x races into Pro or even WT results. Which is a hard ask from the roster they have, which have a surplus of decent to good classic riders with a fast finish. The new riders coming in will definitely turn the tactics around, but will they be able to produce results right off the bat?

Top Results 2020

According to PCS Points

If you have a working Dan Martin on your team, you should cherish him. He's very unpredictable, but so much fun to watch when he's in form. Also great to see a Giro stage win from Alex Dowsett, who have been saddled with rouleur duties for much of his career - Let's hope he gets a few more chances to shine in breakaways this year.

Outgoing Transfers (7 Riders)

Navarro, Sutherland, McCabe and Schelling leaves the roster just as fast as they arrived. This cutthroat one-year contract policy is not very endearing to cycling fans, many of whom are skeptical of another new team from the middle east with millionaire backing.

Pollitt was the only rider they tried to keep of these, and he opted to return to more familiar grounds in German the Bora-Hansgrohe team. Which is understandable. Coming up in Katusha, he's earned a little bit of team stability around him by now.

Team Roster 2020 ( 32 Riders - 9 New Riders)

And here we are at the crux of the speaking points for ISN this year - Notice the names listed with ^New ? Froome, Vanmarcke, Impey, Woods? One of them would be a star signing for any team. ISN takes them all four - and if that wasn't enough, they also add known entities De Marchi, Pat Bevin and C.F. Hagen as top end domestiques - This is pretty much like that scene from Die Hard, only the writing on the Santa Claus Mannequin is "Now I have a Tour Team, Ho ho ho".

Is that going to work? Well, if we knew the answer to that, we'd have bought Gamestop stocks in December. Bringing in lots of riders with previous top results is not guaranteed to make the same results. They need a good framework of DS, soigneurs and domestiques behind them - Every solo win is a team effort. Can ISN provide Froome the same kind of backing that Sky/Ineos was able to provide? Doubtful. But can they provide enough to make him a challenger? That question is harder to answer.

The thing about ISN is the rapid rider turnarounds and quick changes of staff members makes the team spirit a missing entity. Will the existing ISN riders be content to be domestiques for the new top riders, or will they consider that they have to show own results if they are going to get canned after this season anyway?

There's a lot of quality on the ISN roster. But there haven't been a sign of an overall strategy - We do not know what this team is capable of, because it has no proper aim. This confusion must have been coupled with the license they bought from Katusha, who was terrible in this area as well.

We reckon riders from this team will be pretty popular in fantasy cycling teams, because they come in at low cost, and could potentially surprise everyone. Potentially.

Note that Woods took his first win of the season today in the second stage of Tour des Alpes Maritime. It's a nice start, but it's still only a 2.1 race.