Update #7: The King Stay the King
**note: I'm looking for people to take on the posting of the updates for June and July. If you are interested, please let me know either here or by PM, thanks!**
Opening Weekend in Belgium has a different feel to anything that's come before it - the season really feels underway when the cobbles show up in Europe, when people strap on race numbers in Belgium, when teams try to make up for a bad Het Volk by trying too hard in KBK on Sunday. But as far as the CQ game is concerned, it's just a continuation of the points parade, a big week to be sure, but we've already had some weeks with several tuneup races giving lots of cumulative points. And as it happened, this year on Opening Weekend, most of the big points from major picks in this game were a continent away, in Dubai.
This Week's Top Scorers
Rank Team Points this week
1 fauniera 687
2 Kryvo 662
3 torcia_86 654
4 Kazistuta 627
5 18-Valve. (pithy) 614
We have a familiar face at the top this week. It was only a matter of time before the brash move of picking both Valverde and Alaphilippe paid off for reigning champ fauniera, and it turns out time is up by the end of February. Their team's most expensive 3 picks (those two and Lopez) really took it home in Abu Dhabi, one Wico Kelderman stumble away from taking the whole podium. Throw in 82 points from Formolo for good measure, as well as some dribs and drabs from backup support, and you've got a weekly win. Kryvo wasn't that far behind, without Alaphilippe but with a bunch of smaller points from supporting players like Guardini, Bille, Van Poppel, Izaguirre, etc. torcia_86 has a great showing too, 8 points out of second with no Valverde, but another succesful 'Val' in the winner of Het Nieuwsblad, as well as Ala and Lopez.
This Week's High Movers
Rank Team Up/down
1 torcia_86 (+55)
2 Hakkie2 (+44)
3 18-Valve. (pithy) (+39)
4 LightBing (+37)
5 fauniera (+32)
The aforementioned torcia conveys that third place on the last standings to first on the High Movers ranking, handily winning over the still-impressive 44 point jump by Hakkie2 (one of the 12 lucky ducks that chose Narvaez) and 18-Valve (riding high on the success of the team's namesake).
Green Jersey Competition
Rank Team Total
1 Jon_Ezeitza 90
2 Kryvo 80
3 18-Valve. (pithy) 74
4 ChrisDK 72
5 fauniera 60
Two-time weekly winner Jon Ezeitza still holds on to the lead, but it's tightening up! Kryvo gets 35 points this week to move up to second, 18-Valve gets 22 points to leap to third, and weekly winner fauniera jumps into the top 5 in this competition as well.
Top 10 Overall
Rank Up/down Team Points
1 (-) Nathanptz 2233
2 (-) Popchu 2216
3 (+1) bminchow 2136
4 (+2) Squire 2122
5 (+24) Kryvo 2092
6 (+3) DJ Sprtsch 2085
7 (+9) Blues in the bottle 2082
7 (+32) fauniera 2082
9 (+8) JSpear 2078
10 (-6) LosBrolin 2076
Early in the season and still a fair amount of volatility, but the very top is fairly stable. Nathanptz moved into the lead last week and although that has been dramatically reduced, it still holds. Popchu stays in second and bminchow claws back a spot after falling out of first last week. Kryvo and fauniera make big jumps into the top 10, and Blues in the bottle and JSpear make pretty decent ones themselves, while abbulf, l'velo, PeterB and CQManager say goodbye to the spotlight, at least for now.
I swear this is really the current spreadsheet at dropbox this time guys!