Update #10: Freshman Class - big changes at the top as the season gets really, like for real, underway
There's a nautical saying to describe a tough situation in which you'll take whatever you can get, that is phrased 'any port in a storm'. For many participants this week, the saying was slightly changed to 'any Porte in a stormy Paris-Nice', as the third-most popular rider in the game got a whopping 493 points; if you didn't have anyone else who scored too much (although you probably had the second-most popular rider in the game, Caleb Ewan, who also scored a bunch), this is good news because it takes top points away from other riders, if not really getting you ahead in the game. But of course, this game is about not missing the right 'popular' picks and then supplementing that with a mix of picks that will work the best overall. And that certainly happened to work well for many teams this week, but none more so than freshman, who takes both the Top Scorers and High Movers titles this week on the strength of 942 points, the highest weekly total so far this year. Let's go through the list: Porte, Ewan, Henao and Sagan all over 100 points (I did a double take at that Sagan total until I realized they included Monday's T-A stage on the weekly rankings), De Gendt, Boswell, Mareczko and Purito over 30 each, and a mopping up of small points from a few more riders. A truly impressive masterclass. Barely any less impressive are the rest of the top 5 scorers, who all cleared 850 points. Check it out.
This week's top scorers
Rank Team Points this week
1 freshman 942
2 Blues in the bottle 864
3 zlev11 851
4 The Hitch 850
4 derrudi 850
The high movers list is, as mentioned above, headed by freshman as well, but the rest of the top 5 is different, largely due to the others already being fairly high up in the overall standings. Of interest to note is that the lowest fallers of the week actually fell more places than the highest movers, as one might expect in a week where popular picks score a bonanza of points and a few uniquely picked teams get left behind temporarily. I certainly won't list names here for that less glowing honour, though.
This week's high movers
Rank Team Up/down
1 freshman (+38)
2 merengues (+23)
2 LaVelocipede (+23)
4 Martin (+21)
4 sublimit (+21)
The Green Jersey competition sees a lead change after threatening as much over the past two weeks, but it's not one of the teams who were bunched up at the top last week. No stranger to the leaderboard in various categories of this game, The Hitch parlays his 4th place ranking this week into first in the competition by a single point. He's still got some work to do to find his usual top 10 overall haunt, but this should be good solace for now. The leaderboard is very close, as the top 10 are separated by 15 points (8th place on the week will get you 16). 98 teams have scored at least a point so far.
Points Competition
Rank Team Points
1 The Hitch 72
2 afpm90 71
3 jeroenk 69
4 greenedge 65
4 asdfgh101 65
6 Geraint Too Fast 64
7 ingsve 61
8 search 61
9 will10 59
10 Object 57
10 tom_jelte 57
The top 10 is a bit like the topsy-turvy 10 this week, with 3 new entrants and our first lead change since January. Newbie trackstand had a great run at the top but relentlessly good weeks from jeroenk and Geraint Too Fast were too much to withstand and so the top 3 flips around. Vaulting into the top 10 are will10, greenedge and Blues in the Bottle, and falling out are (sigh) skidmark, londonpat and search, whose Ewan-less team falls 13 spots from 9th last week.
Top 10 overall
Rank Up/down Team Points
1 (+1) jeroenk 3189
2 (+1) Geraint Too Fast 3146
3 (-2) trackstand 3119
4 (-) Object 3087
5 (+2) PeterB 3021
6 (+7) will10 2996
7 (-2) theyoungest 2975
8 (-2) asdfgh101 2972
9 (+2) greenedge 2966
10 (+9) Blues in the bottle 2962
Spreadsheet at dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jrk3hxjxq9np5tc/CQ%202015%20update%2010.xls?dl=0
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