Update #17: Yorkshire Proves to be a Lawless Place, Costa Living High in Switzerland
As tempted as I was to ape Carlton Kirby's many teeth-grating, eyeroll-inducing mispronounced 'waiting for Godot' puns in the Romandie coverage this week, the fact remains that David Gaudu - despite the fantastic form and two-week haul - is a fairly popular rider. It's the ultra-rare Chris Lawless (3 teams) and Rui Costa (2 teams) that really are the difference makers this week.
This Week's Top Scorers
Rank Team Points this week
1 yoyokt 638
2 LightBing 632
3 Leadbelly 534
4 AupaPyama 505
5 Poles & Co. 502
5 torcia_86 502
It's a very close one this week, with yoyokt squeaking out the win. Lawless (208 points), Gaudu (218) and Eddie Dunbar (110, 7 teams) lead the way to victory by six points over second place LightBing, who had Gaudu and Costa (299 points), 90 from Zakarin and little else. Leadbelly is about 100 points behind in third, getting 90 points from unique pick Krists Neilandts on top of the Gaudu points.
This Week's High Movers
Rank Team Up/down
1 yoyokt (+19)
2 Leadbelly (+14)
3 Poles & Co. (+12)
3 flashke (+12)
5 zlev11 (+11)
5 Martin (+11)
5 Squire (+11)
As we settle into the season, the leaps are getting somewhat less dramatic than earlier in the season, but some respectable double digit jumps this week from the top 5 here. The two top spots are taken by first and third from the previous ranking, while the third spot here is split between Poles & Co. (who has a second great week in a row and is one of 4 teams to pick a now-in-profit - when is the last time that was said at the start of May - Carlos Betancur) and flashke (who gets some handy points from cheaper and rarer riders like Haller and Lawrence Naesen on top of Gaudu and Zakarin).
Green Jersey Competition
Rank Team Total
1 Googolplex 144
2 armchairclimber 135
3 Popchu 118
4 Sestriere 113
5 skidmark 110
No changes in ranking or point totals of the top 5 here, although the week's win gets yoyokt into a tie for 6th with 105 points, and 30 points gets Leadbelly into 9th overall. Three teams scored their first points of the season this week (and one other team with no points was heartbreakingly in 16th place), bringing the total of teams with at least one point this season to 103 out of 114 participants.
Top 10 Overall
Rank Up/down Team Points
1 (-) Object 5834
2 (-) fauniera 5609
3 (+1) Tigerion 5385
4 (+2) tobydawq 5354
5 (-) EvansIsTheBest 5342
6 (+3) karaev 5253
7 (-) skidmark 5237
8 (-5) Kryvo 5221
9 (+6) Nyssinator 5088
10 (+1) TheArt 5079
Not the biggest shakeup this week, as none of the top 10 overall were in the top 10 for the week. fauniera gains almost 50 points on Object but still trails by a couple of hundred. The biggest shakeup was Kryvo plummeting off the podium with only 67 points on the week, and karaev moved up 3 points with 12th place on the week. Nyssinator and TheArt crack the top 10, while we lose Googolplex and SafeBet.
This week is real quiet, sort of a calm before the storm - the only real top-level points are from the 3-day 2.1 Madrid race, with not many teams invited that have popular riders in this game. However, on Saturday we have our first stage of the year's first Grand Tour, and Sunday sees the start of the Tour of California. The big GC points for those will come in future weeks, so for now lets take a deep breath and get ready.
spreadsheet at dropbox