The 2018 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[Koronin]

Valverde has 550 points so far and the season has hardly started. If he keeps going like this, where is his ceiling? 4000 points? For sure clearly more than 3000.

Calm down he'll slow down at some point

In October.

Not sure which year.

LOL

According to members of his team, they seem to think that might be after he turns 50.

As for his ceiling, some of that depends on his calendar.

 

[skidmark]

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!

 

[Kryvo]

Interesting week! Thanks for the update

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Nice to see Bardet back on track for his world domination so soon after his accident.

 

[Kazistuta]

Now my placement begins to look promising, although most of my points come from the most popular guys. Still five of my riders without a race day yet (Haig, Betancur, Vervaeke, De Plus and Intxausti), too bad some of them a rather rare. Well, hopefully that just means their season will go into october

 

[Popchu]

Second week in second place, which is my highest placement ever in this game, but it could have been first if Stybar, Lutsenko (Omloop) and Vliegen (Kuurne) weren't caught just metres from the line. But overall, I'm very happy with how my team is going.

 

[LaFlorecita]

-12 in the latest update but this week has started well, 98 points in Le Samyn with Terpstra, Capiot and Jakobsen.

Strade Bianche (1.WT)
Rosa
Latour
Moser
Bettiol
Conci
Felline

GP Industria & Artigianato (1.HC)
Martinez

Dwars door West-Vlaanderen (1.1)
Jakobsen
Senechal
Coquard

Paris-Nice (2.WT)
Chaves
Oomen
Pantano

Not too many riders racing, but I have some potential high scorers in Strade Bianche and Paris-Nice.

 

[Squire]

Great to be moving up two places on what was just an okay week for me.

Strade Bianche (1.UWT)
LATOUR Pierre
MOSER Moreno
BETANCUR Carlos
DE BIE Sean

Let's see if Moser is really reborn.

GP Industria & Artigianato (1.HC)
CICCONE Giulio
DE BIE Sean

I feel like De Bie has ridden every race of the season so far.

Dwars door West-Vlaanderen / Johan Museeuw Classics (1.1)
JAKOBSEN Fabio
COQUARD Bryan
MÜLLER Patrick
WELTEN Bram
BOL Cees

Paris-Nice (2.UWT)
OOMEN Sam
ALAPHILIPPE Julian
TAARAMÄE Rein
CHAVES Johan Esteban
JONES Brenton

What's up with Kennaugh? He disappeared from the startlist of PN, and hasn't ridden since the Cuddles race.

 

[Koronin]

I'm finally in the top 100. Don't know how long that will late, but I'll take it for however long it stays.

 

[rote_laterne]

This year I have actually most of my riders racing and not bad. Top 30 is my highest ever ranking I believe.

 

[Ferminal]

Wasn't actually expecting to go backwards last week... Good result yesterday though with not too many more points on offer this week.

 

[Koronin]

Strade Bianche:

Alejandro Valverde
Alberto Bettiol
Romain Seigle
Carlos Betencur
Maximilian Schachmann
Zdenck Stybar
Ben O'Conner

Paris-Nice

Rein Taaramae
Marc Soler
Jaime Castrillo
Lawsom Craddock

 

[postmanhat]

After Porte's terrible Algarve ITT, and now pulling out of Tirreno, my chances of success in this competition are hanging by a thread. A good result from Moscon tomorrow would be very welcome. Only other riders there are De Bie and LaTour, who will probably be domming

 

[Koronin]

Re:

After Porte's terrible Algarve ITT, and now pulling out of Tirreno, my chances of success in this competition are hanging by a thread. A good result from Moscon tomorrow would be very welcome. Only other riders there are De Bie and LaTour, who will probably be domming

Well Moscon may be a better option tomorrow than Valverde with his flight issues today and the likely hood he won't get to the team hotel until at least midnight tonight if not later. He may not be in very good condition to race tomorrow.

 

[fauniera]

Valverde is up 230 points compared to 2017. Of course last year he then went on to win Catalunya, Itzulia, Fleche Wallonne and la Doyenne.

Bardet is at + 120 points and looking in much better shape than last spring.

 

[Koronin]

Apparently the flight debacle only cost Valverde a podium instead of an actually bad race. However, it also seems the flight debacle was even worse than reported.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Valverde is up 230 points compared to 2017. Of course last year he then went on to win Catalunya, Itzulia, Fleche Wallonne and la Doyenne.

Bardet is at + 120 points and looking in much better shape than last spring.

Yeah, he won't top 2017 up until Dauphine/Suisse, but chances are he will top 2017 after the Tour. And then you have the Sebastian, Vuelta, WC, Lombardia..

 

[skidmark]

Well, Valverde comes from out of nowhere to make Strade Bianche a tolerable enterprise for my CQ team (and a great race as a cycling fan, of course - don't want to diminish that looking only through a CQ lens)... impressive that he finished even, and so high, looking at the waste laid to big names. Kwiatko - 11 minutes back. Van Avermaet and Gilbert - 13 minutes back. Vanmarcke - 17 minutes. Roglic and Gaviria - 19:30. Seemed like a tough day out there. Too bad I dropped Rob Power from my team at the last minute, he looked really good out there.

I don't really have anyone at all for the other one-day races this weekend, so that'll probably be it, unless something surprising happens on the first stage of Paris-Nice. Speaking of which:

Paris-Nice

Ivan Garcia Cortina
Heinrich Haussler
Esteban Chaves
Jurgen Roelandts
Sam Oomen
Lawson Craddock

Chaves is a good bet of course, and I'm very interested to see what kind of progress Oomen makes this season. Craddock looked good in the TT last week in Abu Dhabi and was bad on the climb but only after being in a break all day, so maybe he'll go well. The other guys can theoretically sprint, but probably no points on offer against a high level field.

 

[Maaaaaaaarten]

Very happy with Rob Power doing well. He seemed like a pretty obvious pick to me and I didn't think about it too much, so I got a bit worried when he turned out to be pretty rare, but so far he seems to prove me right for my trust in him. Actually he surpassed my expectations. I had serious hopes he would do well tomorrow in GP Industria & Argitianato - Larciano, but never expected a top 10 today in such a hard race! Maybe he'll be tired now and not do too much tomorrow, but that's okay.

 

[skidmark]

Valverde is up 230 points compared to 2017. Of course last year he then went on to win Catalunya, Itzulia, Fleche Wallonne and la Doyenne.

Bardet is at + 120 points and looking in much better shape than last spring.

Well he's up 230 from this date last year, but by race days he's behind. After 15 race days this year he has 608, after his 16th race day last year (the last day of Catalunya) he had 783. Although I guess he hasn't done a race with as many points as Catalunya yet so it's not a direct comparison, but still, he's got a good start but it'd take a lot to keep up with last spring.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Strong showings by Madouas and Latour today which didn't really translate into points but it's encouraging for the rest of the season.

Valverde finishing 4th feels like dodging a bullet. Crazy the standards that he sets. That being said, turn enough victories into 4th places and it's the difference between 3000 and 2000 points in the season.

Bardet has 228 points in 4 race days. 2018 is going to be his year

 

[Koronin]

Even for those of us who put Valverde on our teams, did anyone actually expect him to have the same type of spring this year that he had last year? With the injuries, even with what he and his friends (and a handful of pro who ride with him) were saying. If he does anything remotely close to what he did at Catalonia last year and another Ardennes double this year, I wouldn't be shocked if he again says Best spring ever, which he's been saying for the past couple of years. I think we were hoping for a typical Valverde spring (which would not be as good as last year) and then his typical top 10 GC at the Tour and another podium at la Vuelta and just maybe finally win the Worlds, another podium at San Sebastian, and another top 5 at Lombaria and whatever other couple of races he'll do. The says they plan to send him to one of the cobbled races (definitely not Roubiax) and he typically races GP Miguel Indurain, although many times will pick a teammate to ride for in it. He also will most likely do another short Spanish continental race somewhere on the calendar. If he's going to race a cobbled race it's got to either be Dwars Door Vlaanderen or Ronde Van Vlaanderen (Flanders).

 

[Koronin]

Valverde finishing 4th feels like dodging a bullet. Crazy the standards that he sets. That being said, turn enough victories into 4th places and it's the difference between 3000 and 2000 points in the season.

This is a perfect example of an article from 2015. He had a very good season including an Ardennes Double, but the two things most talked about from his season was not the Ardennes double or his first Tour podium, where he broke down crying when he realized he finally had the podium, but not getting onto the podium at la Vuelta and not getting onto the podium at the Richmond Worlds. Forget that the Richmond course didn't fit him and he forced it to fit his abilities. Of course for me, I'll forever just be grateful that he came to race Richmond as that was my (and my husband's) one in a lifetime opportunity to see these guys race.

 

[Jspear]

Re:

Even for those of us who put Valverde on our teams, did anyone actually expect him to have the same type of spring this year that he had last year? With the injuries, even with what he and his friends (and a handful of pro who ride with him) were saying. If he does anything remotely close to what he did at Catalonia last year and another Ardennes double this year, I wouldn't be shocked if he again says Best spring ever, which he's been saying for the past couple of years. I think we were hoping for a typical Valverde spring (which would not be as good as last year) and then his typical top 10 GC at the Tour and another podium at la Vuelta and just maybe finally win the Worlds, another podium at San Sebastian, and another top 5 at Lombaria and whatever other couple of races he'll do. The says they plan to send him to one of the cobbled races (definitely not Roubiax) and he typically races GP Miguel Indurain, although many times will pick a teammate to ride for in it. He also will most likely do another short Spanish continental race somewhere on the calendar. If he's going to race a cobbled race it's got to either be Dwars Door Vlaanderen or Ronde Van Vlaanderen (Flanders).

Absolutely!
That's the only reason I stuck him on my team...It's not like he's my favorite rider (I do like him some)...I picked him simply because I thought he'd be great this season...of course now I'm hoping his season will last longer then through July.

 

[Koronin]

Re: Re:

Even for those of us who put Valverde on our teams, did anyone actually expect him to have the same type of spring this year that he had last year? With the injuries, even with what he and his friends (and a handful of pro who ride with him) were saying. If he does anything remotely close to what he did at Catalonia last year and another Ardennes double this year, I wouldn't be shocked if he again says Best spring ever, which he's been saying for the past couple of years. I think we were hoping for a typical Valverde spring (which would not be as good as last year) and then his typical top 10 GC at the Tour and another podium at la Vuelta and just maybe finally win the Worlds, another podium at San Sebastian, and another top 5 at Lombaria and whatever other couple of races he'll do. The says they plan to send him to one of the cobbled races (definitely not Roubiax) and he typically races GP Miguel Indurain, although many times will pick a teammate to ride for in it. He also will most likely do another short Spanish continental race somewhere on the calendar. If he's going to race a cobbled race it's got to either be Dwars Door Vlaanderen or Ronde Van Vlaanderen (Flanders).

Absolutely!
That's the only reason I stuck him on my team...It's not like he's my favorite rider (I do like him some)...I picked him simply because I thought he'd be great this season...of course now I'm hoping his season will last longer then through July.

So you expected him to have another career spring at 37 almost 38 after suffering a broken kneecap and ankle? Although truthfully at this point in the races he's been in so far, I'm not sure you could have asked him to do more than he's done. Well I guess maybe get to Strade Bianche more than 10 hours before the race started. :redface: