The 2014 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[Ferminal]

Half decent week here, depending on how many places Evans and PP drop in the ITT.

 

[HelgeBlendet]

Highlight this week so far:

Van Rensburg dominating the Mzansi Tour and Tekle getting some points looking good in the GC. Not much points, but at least some results.

Other than that, Dennis in Sarthe and not much else. Might shortlist the same team for next year. Can't get worse.

 

[Panda Claws]

Highlight this week so far:

Van Rensburg dominating the Mzansi Tour and Tekle getting some points looking good in the GC. Not much points, but at least some results.

Other than that, Dennis in Sarthe and not much else. Might shortlist the same team for next year. Can't get worse.

The Van Rensburg that is dominating the Mzansi Tour is Jacques Janse Van Rensburg and I am the only one who has him

 

[Geraint Too Fast]

Algarve - 1.Kwiatkowski, 2.Contador
Tirreno - 1.Contador, 2.Quintana
Catalunya - 2.Contador, 5.Quintana
Pais Vasco - 1. Contador, 2.Kwiatkowski

Michal and Nairo saving my team.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Pretty much all my best riders were in Pais Vasco this week. It could have turned out better (Cunego finshing way down in the GC because of the ITT when he clearly was the 4th strongest rider in the race was kind of frustrating if not exactly unexpected), could have been a lot worse :
Contador 398
Cunego 83
Villella 50
S. Yates 54
Barguil 20
Van den Broeck 9
Hesjedal 5
L.L. Sanchez 5
Brajkovic 5
A. Schleck 5
Kennaugh 0
J. Vanendert 0
Total 634

 

[LaFlorecita]

Nice! Loads of points from Berto who is now at 1150 points, only 78 to go to break even he will most likely be into profit after the Dauphine

Also 50 points from Villella and 54 from Yates, very nice.

I hope Stybar does well in PR tomorrow or Pais Vasco will be my only points this week plus Tommeke's points of course

 

[skidmark]

Okay, Contador holds the GC, Colli gets 40 points in Belgium, Daan Olivier into (not-too-difficult-to-achieve) profit, even Teklehaimanot gets a few points. Everything is lining up, just need P-R to be good. Time for people other than Contador on my team to start performing.

 

[Maaaaaaaarten]

yay random 60 points for Anacona being second in the Colombian National RR!

Doesn't really matter though, with Contador going on like this and probably winning the TDF and Vuelta I can quite this game already.

 

[LaFlorecita]

yay random 60 points for Anacona being second in the Colombian National RR!

Oh! Nice surprise

 

[del1962]

Anyone with both Contador and Kwiatowski will have got a shed load of points from Pais Vasco unfortunately I only have one of them, I sense a very big scorer this week, not me though.

 

[HelgeBlendet]

The Van Rensburg that is dominating the Mzansi Tour is Jacques Janse Van Rensburg and I am the only one who has him

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I knew something was strange with him riding for MTN.... bummer

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Degenkolb did well today. I don't know what his schedule is from now on (Frankfurt I guess but beyond that I don't have a clue) but clearly the first part of the season was a success. However each strong ride he puts in, makes me regret his MSR puncture even more.

 

[skidmark]

Well, the brightside of the failure of Phinney and (once again) EBH and my man Le Bon in Paris-Roubaix is that not too many popular picks that I don't have did well. Just finding out that Anacona got 60 points is a good cap to the week; fingers crossed on a good move up, I don't really know who everyone else has got but it's been my best week by far.

 

[lenissart]

I begin to realise that it will be SO HARD to survive without Contador and Kwiat this year ....
Fortunately, some good "rare pick" (<25) makes me believe in a good ranking (colbrelli, Swift, Colli, Cunego, Gerrans, Matthews ...) !


Hey Pistolero ! What about 2 months of holiday ??

 

[mc_mountain]

Update #14: The dust settles on the Cobbled Classics

As teased by search last week Hugo was due to take over the updates this week, but Hugo is on a few days vacation so has asked me to cover for him. Contador and Kwiatkowski were both big scorers this week at Pais Vasco, with other notable contributions from Peraud, Pinot, Poels, Evans, Cunego, Yates, Swift and Villella. Elsewhere during the week, Scheldeprijs pulled in points for Danny Van Poppel, Sam Bennett and Andrea Guardini. Over in South America Winner Anacona was second in the Colombia Nationals Road Race. Paris Roubaix wasnt perhaps the points bonanza it could have been but Degenkolb, Stybar, Sagan and Wiggins all scored well.

It was a good week for some of the big names in CQ games, former winner Skidmark rose several places and perpetual high finisher The Hitch also made a push, as did Will10, with 3rd best score of the week and the most places moved up. First and second on the weekly scoring are now third and second respectively on the overall ranking. Rywann has the glorious combination of Contador and Kwiatkowski, but also has Yates, Villella and Colli. Although without Anacona he does have the 3rd rider from the Nats in Juan Suarez. A weekly score of 1010 is enough for him to jump 10 places to 3rd. Freshman now in second place (up 7 places) also paired the 1st and 2nd from Pais Vasco, and got 100+ scores from Evans and Stybar. The other 2 teams with both the Spaniard and the Pole - Martin and Milanello also understandable had good weeks and are 6th and 12th in the overall.

At the top Pentacycle had another solid week, and stretches his lead still further - does he have the team to keep him there while Contador takes a break?

This Week's Top Scorers

1. rywann 1010
2. freshman 986
3. will10 926
4. Martin 919
5. keithjamesmc 861

This Week's High Movers

1. will10 (+34)
2. Leadbelly (+30)
3. Zuremelk (+29)
4. bicing (+27)
5. Crevaison (+25)

Top 10 Overall

1. (-) Pentacycle 4653
2. (+7) freshman 4466
3. (+10) rywann 4458
4. (+1) EvansIsTheBest 4445
5. (-3) Geraint Too Fast 4391
6. (+6) Martin 4370
7. (-3) SteelyDan 4300
8. (-) Oliveira 4240
9. (-3) MCardinalR 4237
10. (-3) Ruvu75 4226

Dropbox link to Spreadsheet

With the Ardennes to come the teams with Gerrans (from the current top 10 - Geraint too Fast, Ruvu75) on their books will hope to return to the ascendancy as will the Betacurists (SteelyDan), the Gilbertenites (Pentacycle, Freshman and Martin) will want their man to make his mark. Will Kwiatkowski (Freshman, rymann, Geraint Too Fast, Martin and SteelyDan) further emerge as a force in one day races as well as stages races. Will Moser repay the faith many of us showed by selecting him or will another rider break out to become a key rider in the 2014 game.

 

[LaFlorecita]

+11

42nd now

 

[GP Blanco]

Unfortunately Betancur won't race the Ardennes classics. I thought about a month ago that I had a pretty good Ardennes team with both Betancur and Uran, but something has changed now.

 

[mc_mountain]

Unfortunately Betancur won't race the Ardennes classics. I thought about a month ago that I had a pretty good Ardennes team with both Betancur and Uran, but something has changed now.

Betancur is still on provisional start lists but yes it looks bad.

 

[mutschi]

I thought I had a decent week with 541 points and just learned that rest of the field must be on some magic juice. That was only good enough for 77th !!! Over 1000 points for the winner!!! Give me a fukin break.
I'm going down, down, down........unless about 25 riders of my team get their act together very soon.

 

[jsem94]

Had Contador, still went down a place on rankings. Rest of my team sucks. I thought I really considered every single option throughly, but looking back, a lot of guys that should have been on were omitted, and only half of my squad was REALLY throughly picked.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Boonen has finished his season, Contador won't race for two months and Degenkolb is due a break at some point. Basically the three riders that have scored 60% of my points so far won't score in the near future while huge points are going to be dished out for the Giro and the Ardennes. My fellow members of the top 10 have the Kwiatkowskis and Gilberts of this world for the Ardennes Classics and guys like Quintana for the Giro. I have Cunego, what could possibly go wrong

 

[Panda Claws]

Brabantse Pijl[/B
GILBERT Philippe
NUYENS Nick
ISTA Kevyn
VAN DEN BROECK Jurgen
STYBAR Zdenek
FENN Andrew

Hmmm :/

 

[LaFlorecita]

Stybar
Zordan
Stuyven
Gerdemann
For me

 

[mc_mountain]

Had Contador, still went down a place on rankings. Rest of my team sucks. I thought I really considered every single option throughly, but looking back, a lot of guys that should have been on were omitted, and only half of my squad was REALLY throughly picked.

I picked too defensively (ie picked riders I knew would be popular and didnt want to see them do well and miss out on them). Riders like Goss, JVDB and Taarame (and to a lesser extent Hesjedal, De Gendt and Kessiakoff) that have so far done nothing, then of course there is Andy. Regret picking these guys over riders I really fancied like Bennett and Kudus (although others I was tempted by, Wellens and Reza, havent been massive successes either).

I can bring in 5 riders (from my shortlist/previous drafts) at an average of just over 100 points each and be in second place (currently 51st). Obviously that's not unique to me, but shows that although you dont necessarily need to make 33 perfect decisions you do have to get some key decisions right.

 

[Ferminal]

Time for my shades-of-green aliens to take over the heavy lifting.