Okay, now that I’ve had time to recover from the team compilation process, I want to offer a few reflections on riders on my team, and ask some people their opinions (if you have any, or were considering those riders, I’d love to hear it). I think maybe it’s most sensible to go from least popular to most popular, as more popular riders require less explanation in general…
MARINI Nicolas (2 teams, 8 points): High five fauniera! Marini was my second last addition to the team. This is my summary of Marini: all of his points are from Asia, and he just signed with an Asian team so that he can race in Asia and study part time. 2018 he had 8 points from 33 days, none of which were in Asia. 2017 he had 114/132 points from 37 days in Asia of 71 total race days. 2016 he had 185/191 points from 41/56 days in Asia. 2015 he had 255/300 points from 40/60 days in Asia. So yeah, his ceiling isn’t huge, but by the end of my team construction I needed someone as cheap as him who could produce a few hundred, and that seemed like a good bet.
COQUARD Bryan (7 teams, 415 points): I mean, it is strange that he raced a lot of days, and lots of them in ‘easy’ races, last year and only got ~400 points. But I can’t overlook his 2016 ceiling of 1300+ points, and his 2013-15 average of ~700 points. I don’t love picking riders if I don’t know what was to explain their relatively lackluster results last year, but he’s still going to be the main guy on his team in 2019 so his floor is high and his ceiling is very high.
NIZZOLO Giacomo (10 teams, 444 points): I got to a point in my team where I needed to drop one of Nizzolo, Coquard and Trentin. They all have slightly different stories: Nizzolo had a horrible year two years ago, had a building back year last year, and has a new team this year. Coquard had a bad year due to team fallout two years ago, had a new team last year, but had little to indicate anything was ‘wrong’ last year. Trentin had a crazy breakout year two years ago largely on the back of an incredible month of Vuelta and Worlds, then had a ‘bad’ year last year with a new team and more responsibility. Each rider has one big season and some solid ones. I ended up dropping Trentin because I decided to let the numbers decide... his CQ average the last 5 years was only about 10 points more than Nizzolo and 40 more than Coquard, but his cost was significantly higher. So it was a close decision. Anyway, Nizzolo’s good and solid, but I have no inside knowledge that he’ll be better than any of the other guys I mentioned – just going with the theory that he needed a full season and GT to get back into his top producing potential. Moving to DDD is neither here nor there I think, he never needed much support and got plenty of chances already at Trek.
NAVARDAUSKUS Ramunas (10 teams, 133 points) – I took him last year and it didn’t end up being a great pick, but a switch to a French PCT team is perfect. He’s been used as an engine for the team in GTs and stage races before but will have a lot more room to breathe, and other than the Worlds, most of his good results have come at races like Sarthe, Denmark, etc, so the myriad .1 and .HC races in his calendar will give some options.
COSNEFROY Benoit (15 teams, 229 points) – I added him when I had about 5 spots left on the team. I had added Gaudu, but was having second thoughts because it really wasn’t clear why he was so lackluster last year, so there wasn’t as clear a path for an expansion this year. Then the other guys I wanted to add put the score up too high so I wanted to drop some points and Cosnefroy stood out at 70 points fewer. His season looked like a bit of a learning curve – he had 56 points by the end of July, but ended with a flourish, adding 173 more after that capped by 72 points for 3rd in Paris-Tours. And he was 9th in Plouay, as well as the last rider in the leading group in both the Canadian races. If he learned how to hang in the top tier in his first season, it’s easy to see him turning that into wins/podiums on the French calendar and good placings in WT races in his second year.
MCLAY Daniel and VAN ASBROECK Tom (18 and 19 teams, 88 and 95 points) – I added these guys begrudgingly after putting MVDP as the 23rd member of my team and realizing I needed a bunch of cheap guys. I don’t know why McLay did poorly, couldn’t really find much info on it, which makes me wary, but he’s fast and he’s motivated, so, sure. TVA had that one Theuns/Planckaert type season at PCT and has been on steady decline since, and although I’m no fan of the results ICA has had with their riders, he seems motivated to go for his own chances and will probably get them in PCT races if anywhere.
VAN DER POEL Mathieu (20 teams, 539 points) – I spoke at length about him already.
SIVAKOV Pavel (21 teams, 195 points) – I picked him last year because I thought despite his injury and being on team Sky, his incredible talent would shine through and he’d pick up some points. His first race back, he got top 5 in Coppi e Bartali, and then… he cooled off adjusting to WT pace it seemed. He did okay in Suisse, but I expected him to be a guy like Bernal who was good enough to pull for a leader and get a GC result himself. I still believe that talent to be there, and I think he’s more talented than Lambrecht, who I also picked for my team at almost 150 more points. So I don’t have an analysis on where he’ll get his chances, but I trust that with enough of a calendar through the year, his talent will come through. Sometimes you trust flashes of talent you’ve seen and they work out (Landa and Majka come to mind as riders I’ve done that for in this game), sometimes they don’t (Romain Sicard, Vincenzo Albanese, Enrico Battaglin, etc etc). Hopefully it’s the former with this guy.
LAMBRECHT Bjorg (23 teams, 337 points) – similar to Sivakov but different situation: I feel like Lambrecht is the less talented of the two (mostly because Sivakov whupped him head-to-head repeatedly in 2017), but of course he’s got more opportunity at Lotto, and showed more high-level consistency in year 1 at a WT team. Survived a very tough Pais Vasco in April for a top 20, podiumed Fjords in May, top 20 in Suisse and Pologne in June and August, 4th in a Vuelta breakaway and 2nd in the U23 worlds in September. That’s no fluke run of form, that’s rider development. I had a similar assessment with Oomen last year and although he didn’t break through the stratosphere, a bit higher results with the same consistency and I’ll be happy.
That’s all I have time for now, I’ll throw some thoughts about the more popular riders (probably fewer words) sometime soon.