2026-2028 Emerging Riders CQ Game

[hayneplane]

Seeing way too much track stuff on his Instagram wasn't really winning me over on Barry. And riders who can't climb aren't prime candidates for big points from the get-go when they graduate from juniors. Tarling is the only non-climber I can think of who did that, and contrary to Tarling who won all of his junior TTs, Barry got beaten in almost all TTs he did in 2025. He can maybe become a great rider down the line, but I think he will have more of a Hagenes kind of development at first.

Having said that, I do realize that Brennan was an amazing pick, so if Barry goes down the sprinter-ish route he might well be worth the gamble. It's not like I'm writing him off at all. I'm just not sure if he's really that kind of rider. Most of his results seem to have been because he's just a really strong guy. Not necessarily lightning fast. But I don't know too much about him.

Agree about the last point that much of his wins were a result of steamrollering the opposition and winning solo much as Remco did in the juniors which is hard to replicate in the pro ranks unless you are generationally special.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

I find myself wondering whether the two teams with Filippo Agostinacchio thought they were getting Mattia.

I also worry that @Fivezzz has the wrong Hector Alvarez.

Due to my self-imposed rule of not wanting to have the same riders in multiple games at a time, I purposely included one of them in the Main Game and the other one here. Now it may very well prove to be a stupid choice to go with Filippo for this, but if Mattia ends up having more of a Markel Beloki kind of rookie season he'll still be available for next year's ERG. Speaking of Beloki, I have only had him in the 2024 Main Game and in last year's Vuelta game, so he would have been available, but I decided to give a second chance to a different 2024 MG pick in math wizard Yago Aguirre.

On the topic of riders with similar names, I did consider selecting Samuel Fernández Heres since I have the other Samuel Fernández in the 2024-26 game. They used to be teammates at Samu's MMR Academy team, so I assume they've tried being mistaken for one another.

About Gajdulewicz, he sadly had a serious accident this winter when a car run over him. Long recovery ahead.

Which is something that also happened to Seff Van Kerckhove.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

I've managed to do the task for which I wish that @Shakes was in this game: I've done the copying and pasting marathon to generate the Team similarity table.

The highest overlap is 14 (Qazaqstan and Squire)

13: Bminchow-Devil's Elbow; Bminchow-Skidmark; Madrazo-Qazaqstan

12: Bminchow-Madrazo; Bminchow-Qazaqstan; Bminchow-SafeBet; Madrazo-Squire;


That, and everything else knowable at this stage, is in the spreadsheet here.

But the fun of a game is what is not knowable at the beginning. I'll aim to update early each month.

 

[Berflamand]

Unless we have deliberately picked them for their points in Years 2 and 3, and accept a low year 1 as a cost, we probably hope not to be picking men in this race twice in a row. But there are 59 of the riders from last year that are still short of their 200 point lifetime total, and 33 of them have indeed been taken up again: sometimes by the same managers exercising patience.

Enough people still have faith in Behrens to get him into the Collective Wisdom Team after he didn't really repay the faith shown that made him one of the most popular picks last year. Our collective drop of confidence in Kajamini is very notable (from 16 picks to 1), with Svrcek suffering almost as big a fall in favour( 10 to 1): Danny Van Bekkum and Menno Huising have both been left out of this game having been picked 5 times each a year ago. Again, I'm not going to check who has stood by someone that rather flopped last year (I'll admit that I did so in the case of Behrens): I'm sure I am not alone, and that it won't only be the former U23 world champ that it has happened with.

Finlay Pickering seems something of a conundrum in this regard: he was only picked 3 times for the 2025-27 game, is by the standards of this game not young, had a 2025 that had some excellent rides but underwhelming scoring, and has grown his popularity to 15 picks. That Vuelta visibility is a thing.

The likes of Pericas, Remijn, Sparfel, Novak and Gualdi were very rare picks a year ago, and in Collective Wisdom this time: I guess they embody the idea of a few early pickers for those expected to thrive later. Whether Hector Alvarez was picked by everyone who believed in that tactic last year, or whether some were disappointed to see him back in this game this time, is not so obvious, as he was on 9 teams last year, and is one of the most popular this time.

Anyway, the most popular riders in the previous edition that are still eligible here are the "Popular last Year" team:

	last time picks	this time picks
BEHRENS Niklas	37​	14​
SENTJENS Sente	18​	13​
KAJAMINI Florian Samuel	16​	1​
PESCADOR CASTRO Diego	16​	9​
ALVAREZ MARTINEZ Hector	11​	23​
SVRCEK Martin	10​	1​
VANGHELUWE Warre	6​	2​
ØRN-KRISTOFF Felix	6​	7​
VAN BEKKUM Darren	5​	0​
PEDERSEN Henrik Breiner	5​	1​
HUISING Menno	5​	0​
FAURE PROST Alexy	5​	2​
CHAMBERLAIN Oscar	5​	4​
SHMIDT Artem	4​	1​
VERSTRYNGE Emiel	4​	10​
POLLEFLIET Gianluca	4​	1​
BELOKI FERNANDEZ Markel	4​	14​
ORINS Robin	4​	0​
SUMPIK Pavel	4​	1​

Yes: there are 19 of them: averaging out of those on 4 will deal with that.

Listing our teams by their popularity back then might tell us something about our level of patience, but not necessarily much about how well we will do:

1​	Berflamand	134
2​	Armchair_Cyclist	97
3​	Blues_in_the_Bottle	94
4​	Fivezzz	85
5​	Kazistuta	78
6​	PandaClaws	68
7​	AmisVelo	67
8​	Leadbelly	65
9​	Boris98	62
9​	Skidmark	62
11​	Haynepayne	59
12​	Bminchow	56
13​	SafeBet	52
14​	Earns1985	49
15​	JonEzeitza	48
16​	Vladimir	47
17​	Squire	45
18​	Cordi	44
18​	Laarsland	44
20​	Kryvoskyn	39
20​	Nakazar	39
22​	LosBrolin	35
23​	DJSprtsch	32
24​	Qazaqstan	29
25​	Laurens147	26
26​	Madrazo	25
27​	Josedin	24
28​	Del1962	23
29​	DevilsElbow	22
30​	EvansIsTheBest	21
31​	Ingsve	20
32​	Manafana	17
33​	Rufs	10
34​	Onizuka999	8
34​	RedheadDane	8
36​	SamuCuenca	2
	CollectiveWisdom	68
	MainGame2026	73
	PopularLastEdition	165

Oops, I am that '1' that still has both Kajamini and Svrcek.

I fear my rather big lead in this table is not good news at all but rather proof that I don't follow the youth scene (and cycling in general) nearly enough to be a relevant factor in these kind of games. I still enjoy playing them though and reading everyones way more knowledgeable analysis.

But hey, it looks like I'm the first leader on the board so I'll take that as it's probably going to be the only time it happens.

 

[SafeBet]

The one I see more ready to smash it from the start is Magagnotti (the only 2007 that entered in my team). Obviously there's the doubs about transition to higher categories being also probably the one of the 3 that will suffer more climbing... but man if you saw Maga sprinting the differential over his peers was crazy. If he can transition that he's a rocket, I gues his max power was ver close to the best u23 sprinters already as a junior.

Word from Finn and Donati is Magagnotti was already dropping the pros during the first team training camp.

Which is no guarantee he'll score many points in his first year (or ever) but yeah the guy has insane power numbers.

 

[SafeBet]

I don't really get the love for him from as many as 20 players. Unless I have missed something. But it seems like he hasn't done other disciplines than road either, where people might have seen promise. He's been really anonymous until getting some decent results as a final-year U23, at an age where it's almost rare to see people still be in that category nowadays. Based on his profile, I'm willing to bet quite a lot that his career will be mostly spent as a worker/lead-out rider. Especially at a team such as RBH. But I'd love to hear from someone who might know more about him.

I share your opinion on Thornley, and I would extend it to Tuckwell as well.
At the same time I can understand why in an edition with very limited amount of proven riders to choose from, you might want a couple of "safe" picks that you're at least sure are good enough to be pros.
That's the reason why I had riders like Novak, De La Calle and Turconi in my shortlist despite not necessarily believing they're elite talents. In the end I picked only one of them (Turconi) and decided for Karl Herzog as my 18th rider, but I would probably go for a more conservative strategy if I hadn't won this game before.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

I share your opinion on Thornley,

And after an underwhelmong prologue, he was one of only 4 guys to lose time today.

He's not going to justify his 20 picks in this event, but I'm one of those who hopes he will make up for it over the next 33 months.