Recent content by ingsve

One example of good team management in recent times is the 2024 Fleche Wallonne. This was a very brutal day where the weather forecast predicted low temperatures and snow in the middle of the race. The Uno-X team decided to wear extra cold weather clothing from the start of the race even...

Overall it seems like sprint trains, even if we see them form at times does not have the same punch as the ones had. Nothing like Saeco obviously but even Cavendish with HTC or many other like Greipel etc. Now it seems that trains often disintegrate or get interfered with a lot more. With how...

My initial thought on this subject is that in a world where there are rich teams and poor teams and where riders are more and more concentrated into the richer teams, something like having good management can be a good equalizer. There is nothing inherently that requires money to set up a good...

I was listening to the three episodes of the Cycling Podcast labelled "Trapdoor" that looked deeper into the UCI points race and the strategy taken by three teams, Astana, Uno-X and Cofidis. My big takeaway from listening to those three podcast episodes is how different team management setups...

This game is mostly about not missing out on individual picks that several others have identified. Nys is not really the problem area. There are more often natural picks in that range or close to it even if the margin for improvement starts to go down as well. But 700 is far better than above...

You said it yourself. 2 out of your 3 most expensive picks failed. That was a gamble lost. There are no ifs, buts, or do overs. By going with expensive picks one needs to be lucky with them. Luckily in a way, Van Aert was so popular so failing with him didn't hurt as much as an expensive pick...

Ya, I can agree that Evenepoel is a bit of both. He still fits the mold of having his best year followed by a massive year but that previous best year was still cut in half so ya. I not exactly like the others and I believe that year he was a very popular pick? I wasn't back playing yet then so...

The problem in that range is that you are putting a lot of points into a single rider in a category that is exceedingly hard to predict. Gilbert in 2011 was an extreme outlier in his career coming from 1843 which was already his highest performance year up to then. Same exact thing with Wiggins...

Alpecin especially is very top heavy. Their 5th best rider on CQ ranking has 209 points in Dehairs. It's VDP, Philipsen, Groves and Del Grosso carrying the team. Their whole team screams "we're here to win races, not get top 10s to earn points". Groupama is at least a bit more spread out...

Ya, but that was the other way around. There he helped at the Giro before his main task at the Tour. If he does classics and Tour first then of course he won't be a superdomestique in the vuelta mountains for anyone. He would merely be a stage hunter in the Vuelta.

Why not? It's not the same as doing it as a GC rider. He can go to the Vuelta and hunt for stages without being anywhere near 100% every stage. He'll just take it easy and target certain stages.

It feels like with all the options available this year risk will play a huge role. Either you can go for a strategy where you try to avoid risk in order to minimize duds since a winning team will likely have very few duds with all the potential profitable picks available so anyone who happens to...

Yep. I've already made a team and then I did a second team that uses none of the same riders and that second team could easily get 12000 points minimum if not more. I'm guessing there won't be as many must pick choices this year since there are good alternatives and not likely as many picks...

To me the TDU will always be like reaching an oasis after wandering through a raceless desert for three months.

You sure? Never heard that.