The 2019 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[skidmark]

Okay, well my team has finally put together two good weeks to get into the top half of the standings. What's coming up?

DDV

Alberto Bettiol
Edward Theuns
Fernando Gaviria
Kristoffer Halvorsen
Mathieu van der Poel
Bryan Coquard
Tom Van Asbroeck

This race is always a hard one to predict - sometimes the favourites do something, often it's the case that there are plenty of bigger races before and after it so they just take it easy and an unexpected move goes up the road... sometimes it's a bigger group. So I'm not sure. I came into this season thinking vdP could podium almost any race he was in, and I've seen nothing to make me think otherwise, and he could definitely go with any move and also contest a sprint. Other than Bettiol (who is the type of rider who's allowed away in this race), everyone else can sprint, and it's sometimes not too hard for guys like Van Asbroeck to get to the end (maybe too hard for Halvorsen, although Theuns has podiumed twice and he's not the hardiest of cobbles guys). So yeah, lots of potential, but lots of ways it could end up.

Sicilia

Ramunas Navardauskas

He has zero points from a bunch of French races that suit his big-engine style. This is a mountains race. With Etna. Next.

Adelie Vitre

Benoit Cosnefroy
Baptiste Planckaert
Rudy Barbier

This race looks... a little bumpy, a little sprinty? Could be good for any of these guys. The other French race on the weekend I have the same guys and Coquard, so again, it's not impossible to see it being good for my team.

Limburg

Tom Van Asbroeck

Alright Tommy, time to live up to your brief history of a few years ago of being incredibly consistent in these types of races!

GP Mig

Darwin Atapuma

Points would be an unexpected surprise.

Flanders!

Alberto Bettiol
Edward Theuns
Fernando Gaviria
Mathieu van der Poel
Lars Boom

My team is a little thin here, and question marks abound. Bettiol has shown well, but this race is longer and bigger than races he's been successful in. vdP faces his stiffest test here - he can do anything, but I feel more secure in knowing he'll do well in something like Amstel or Brabantse Pijl than here. Gaviria, again, who knows, I haven't seen him in this kind of race. Theuns hasn't shown the engine for it, and Boom is more suited to Roubaix/has been invisible since Samyn. So, not expecting much, but got my fingers crossed for something good.

Lots of racing, but I think my biggest chance for points is tomorrow.

 

[Squire]

I was actually not too far from including Anthony Turgis as one of my rare (would've been unique) French pro-conti picks. In game terms, it kind of pains me to note that he's looking great so far. But good for him, obviously.

My actual unique French pro-conti pick, Arthur Vichot, is a disaster so far.

 

[tobydawq]

I had four riders for Dwars: Küng, Bettiol, Rowe and van der Poel. So that was awesome. And especially nice that Rowe finally got some points out of his fabulous form. It's difficult to imagine him not getting points in Flanders and Roubaix, as well. Bettiol should do the same, van der Poel is a winning candidate for Flanders, and Trentin and Kragh will be back and are looking either very good or on the rise.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Van der Poel is awesome and will single-handedly save my team from total mediocrity this year. I'm a bit annoyed to have missed out on Sarreau, I had him as a candidate for a Bouhanni like break-out season but decided that he was too expensive. Would have been unique too (and he fits perfectly in Aru's slot though if I'm being honest that would not have been the rider that would have made way for Sarreau).

 

[LaFlorecita]

Scored a nice amount of points with Rowe yesterday and some lesser points with Cortina and Gaviria. A shame that Cortina had to let go when Benoot and Jungels raced past, he could have gotten a top-3 result here.

 

[Tigerion]

FUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Just caught up on Dwars and thought I had a great result only to realise that Turgis was on my original submitted team that was overbudget due to spreadsheet error so had to make a last minute switch and took him out.
So close to a 1 and 2 finish

 

[Jancouver]

Nice ride by McNulty.

He was the first name on my 2019 list as he was also on my team in 2018 and 2017.

I was looking forward to the Tour of Turkey but apparently, he will do a race in Portugal and Fleche Wallonne.

 

[armchairclimber]

A fairly bobbins week so far for me. I have picked some real duck eggs amongst my duck eggs ... if you know what I mean. A couple of young french riders who seem incapable of finishing a race. Still. I am grateful for Pogacar's talent and a surprise bunch of points for Nishimura in Thailand. I need Van Aert, Gaviria and Philipsen to place well tomorrow.

 

[Eyeballs Out]

One of my unique picks, Patrick Muller, got a nice win yesterday. His first of many, hopefully

 

[armchairclimber]

Worst possible result for me today. Bottom half of the table, here I come.

 

[flashke]

I didn't pick Bettiol but that's fine he's not doing that good anyway.

 

[Salvarani]

Re:

I didnt pick Bettiol but thats fine he's not doing that good anyway.

 

[Sestriere]

I've got Bettiol, Asgreen, Politt and McNulty on my team. Maybe I can break the Top 100 again this week?

 

[PremierAndrew]

Slightly surprised *so* many people picked Bettiol. Would have expected a similar number to Boom

 

[skidmark]

MvdP is unreal. I can't recall a rider crashing at such a crucial point in a cobbled monument and still coming back and looking so strong... crazy. Anyway, his week puts him into profit, and makes me breathe a bit of a sigh of relief for deciding to pick him. I was so excited to see what he could do outside of this game, having that extra incentive to want to see it is completely welcome, and great for my team. If he sticks with his original startlist he's got Sarthe this week, and although I can't find any profiles, historically it's the type of race he could do quite well in (punchy hills, not mountains). Then Brabantse Pijl and Amstel, which coming into the season I thought would be his best chances to win. After this last week, that feeling is reinforced. In December when I picked him, I thought 'if he gets 800-1000 points in his limited calendar (ambitious, but possible) and then decides later in the year to do a few more races like the Dutch championships or even the Worlds, he'll be a game-changing pick'. He's a good way towards part 1 of that, we'll see what the rest of the season holds.

But holy cow, after the end of Nokere Koerse and after that ridiculous crash in Flanders my heart certainly leapt. Quite a roller coaster, that one.

 

[Koronin]

Flanders wasn't bad for my team. I do have Bettiol.

 

[Tigerion]

Should have an ok week. Had Bettiol as well as MVP with a smattering of points from Langeveld and Garcia.

 

[SafeBet]

Can't complain about my week with Bettiol, MVdP and McNulty but I really needed WvA to score big in both GW and Ronde. With such a reduced schedule he will have a hard time topping 1000 points, which was my expectation.

Fingers crossed for Roubaix though.

 

[shalgo]

i just noticed that Sagan is down to 7th in the "Current CQ Ranking" list. I wonder when he was last so low; he has been in the top 3 of the year-end ranking every year since 2015. Perhaps he will end up being a popular pick for next year.

 

[tobydawq]

It's so silly that MvdP will ride the Sarthe race. At least 150 certain points in our pockets.

Padun started his season today. But he was 6 minutes behind and more than 2 minutes behind the second worst rider today in the TT. I guess he can only improve.... But a very worrying ride.

I also have Landa, Vakoc, Felline, Atapuma, Óscar Rodríguez and even Carlos Quintero who hadn't been riding earlier in the season and actually did fine today. Felline lost less than a minute on today's TT in maybe his best performance of the season (which says very little). It's not exactly the stars I have riding for me in this race. But hopefully Landa can show something.

And I see that Spilak ended up not going. He really needs to pull it together for Romandie or Suisse.

In Sarthe I have Cosnefroy as well as MvdP. It could be a race for him but he DNF'ed both the French one day races he did last week, so I'm not holding my breath.

For Scheldeprijs I have Kittel, Gibbons, Iversen, Moschetti and Rowe so there could be some points there.

I'm not exactly flowing like in the other game, even though I have a monument winner on my team. It annoys the hell out of me that Søren Kragh can't string a good sequence of races together. Now he will even forfeit Roubaix.

I'm ready for Evenepoel to win the Tour of Turkey next week.

 

[skidmark]

Update #13: Bettiol and van der Poel a Safe Bet for Points

We're in the midst of the cobbled season, and with a win in DDV and 4th in the Ronde, road newbie Mathieu van der Poel made his 20 game owners very happy this week. As well, extremely popular and extremely cheap pick Alberto Bettiol came away with a wholly stunning win in Flanders. 92 teams had him, and 95 teams got more than his 285 points on the week, so he was essentially a must have. Of course, some teams had both these guys and more, and that's what we'll see in the rankings.

This Week's Top Scorers

Rank Team Points this week
1 SafeBet 886
2 Kryvo 872
3 Nyssinator 869
4 Tigerion 833
5 Sestriere 810

SafeBet wins the week at almost 900 points, a hefty haul for any week, let alone one without a WT stage race. Of course, the combined 590 points of vdP and Bettiol (305 and 285 respectively) go a long way to that, but SafeBet squeezed almost 300 more points by having another rider with his first pro win in Brandon McNulty (139 points, 7 teams), and a few other riders picking up a few dozen here and there (including 38 points from the other cyclocross phenom, Wout Van Aert). Kryvo almost wins the week with the same big 2, and is one of the few (5 teams) that got to reap the unexpected 175 point haul from Kasper Asgreen. Nyssinator rounds out a tight top 3, just behind at 869 points from the same 3 as Kryvo, but not quite as much juice from the supporting cast.

This Week's High Movers

Rank Team Up/down
1 SafeBet (+41)
2 Nyssinator (+35)
3 will10 (+25)
4 Kryvo (+24)
5 Eyeballs Out (+23)
5 postmanhat (+23)

It is still early enough in the game that there's a lot of movement - as we will see (spoiler alert!) in the top 10 overall. Most of the top scorers had room to move up the overall charts, so the list looks very similar with will10 making the podium on the strength of the week's Big Two riders and a smattering of small points.

Green Jersey Competition

Rank Team Total
1 Googolplex 144
2 Popchu 118
3 TheArt 104
4 Nicosix 103
5 MADRAZO 95
5 just_some_guy 95

Recent week's have seen a few repeat winners share the wealth and consolidate their leads, making this ranking mirror the overall. This week went to more of the 'have nots' from the overall rankings, and so there's no change in the top 5 overall in this ranking. Lortnoc is the highest ranking team in this competition to score points this week, and their team moved into 10th place.

Top 10 Overall

Rank Up/down Team Points
1 (+1) Googolplex 3918
2 (+3) Object 3903
3 (-2) Popchu 3897
4 (-) TheArt 3853
5 (+13) Lortnoc 3802
6 (+11) Joelsim 3796
7 (+20) Tigerion 3764
8 (+24) Kryvo 3760
9 (+12) fauniera 3727
10 (-2) ruvu75 3724

Things are tight at the top, with the top 10 separated by less than 200 points, and the top 3 separated by a mere 21 points (which is fewer points than Fabio Aru has this year, for a point of reference). Googolplex leaps back up into pole position, almost at 400 points overall. However, Object is right behind after gaining more than 200 points on Googolplex this week. Last week's leader Popchu just barely drops to 3rd. Further down, a whole 5 of the top 10 switch out, with Lortnoc, Joelsim, Tigerion, Kryvo and fauniera jumping in and MADRAZO, shalgo, Salvarani, Nicosix and bminchow falling out. Phew!

This is one of the most fun weeks in the cycling calendar, with a Ronde-Itzulia-Roubaix sandwich. As well, Scheldeprijs and Sarthe occur while Langkawi continues.

Spreadsheet at dropbox

 

[shalgo]

Thanks for the update!

Oh well, I am out of the top ten. My team didn't even have that bad of a week--472 points, tied for 46th overall. But it was hard to keep pace with all of the ascending MVDP teams.

 

[Tigerion]

FUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Just caught up on Dwars and thought I had a great result only to realise that Turgis was on my original submitted team that was overbudget due to spreadsheet error so had to make a last minute switch and took him out.
So close to a 1 and 2 finish

Well I'm sure that 108 points missed wouldn't have had much of an impact

Update #13: Bettiol and van der Poel a Safe Bet for Points

This Week's Top Scorers

Rank Team Points this week
1 SafeBet 886
2 Kryvo 872
3 Nyssinator 869
4 Tigerion 833
5 Sestriere 810

Well done past me you numbknuckle

 

[Koronin]

Thanks for the update.

Somehow my team moved up slightly.

 

[SafeBet]

Re:

Wow, I didn't expect to be the top scorer! First time for me!
Hopefully WvA can score big in Roubaix so my streak of positive weeks continues. I was 110th or something at the end of February, now 22nd

Padun started his season today. But he was 6 minutes behind and more than 2 minutes behind the second worst rider today in the TT. I guess he can only improve.... But a very worrying ride.

Yep, that's concerning. I don't know what's going on with this kid but it's not looking good. Wouldn't surprise me if he abandons today.