Update #34: Popchu Pops Off; Hugo Has a Huge Month
The Vuelta's first week was a back and forth one, the 2.HC Deutschland Tour ran its course, and there was a 1.WT race in Brittany as well as a few Belgian 1.1 races on the menu. And it's the end of August! How did everyone do?
This Week's Top Scorers
Popchu takes the top spot with almost 500 points; their team's leading light is Bonifazio, who gets 160 points for his 9 owners for winning back-to-back 1.1 races in Belgium. Also scoring highly is unique pick Lutsenko (89 points in Germany), rare pick Danilo Celano (86 points, 7 teams) and brief red jersey wearer Nairo Quintana (76 points, 8 teams). The collective team from VeloRooms makes an appearance in second place with some rare riders of their own - unique pick Sep Vanmarcke leads the way with 220 points for winning in France, while Aleksandr Vlasov (83 points, 3 teams) and Arvid De Kleijn (80 points, 9 teams) do some of the lifting as well. Squire manages 3rd on the week, getting 101 points from Tony Gallopin, as well as the big haul from Bonifazio and the 80 from De Kleijn.
This Week's High Movers
It's the time of the season where the standings don't change dramatically week to week, but we had a couple of standouts this week in Squire and Londonpat, who split the honors jumping 9 spots (Londonpat on the strength of a different combo of riders, 112 points from Haig and 100 from Van Asbroeck). AupaPyama rounds out the top 3.
This Month's Top Scorers
The Founder himself, Hugo Koblet, leads the charge in August with a fantastic 1895 points on the month. He had some pretty good scores from a wealth of riders, but leading the way was De Plus (24 teams, 252 points), Vingegaard (247 points, 2 teams), Sivakov (242 points, 21 teams), Hindley (201, 12), Haig (167, 4) and 105 each from Garcia Cortina (14) and Lucas Hamilton (10). Londonpat puts in a strong showing to claim second with Cosnefroy (297 points, 15 teams) leading the way, while Jakob747 gets a nod for third place with an always-interesting mix of riders including Cosnefroy and De Plus, as well as 160 from finally-getting-some-points unique pick Valgren and 137 from the excellent almost-unique-pick Higuita (2 teams).
This Month's High Movers
The top 3 in this list is the same 3 in different order; Londonpat claims the top on this ranking, as well as moving a third of the way up the overall standings to a current placing of 26th. Jakob747 currently sits right behind in the overall in 27th, and Hugo moved up slightly less but started slightly higher than the other two, parlaying his strong month into a top 15 overall placing (14th on the current sheet).
Green Jersey Competition
There's a whole ton of movement in this competition this week, and a new leader! Popchu's 45 points for the weekly win would have taken them to 2nd overall and 3 points out of first, but ruvu75 scored 26 points and TheArt 22 to both leapfrog armchairclimber to take over the standings. Their two teams are often moving up and down the standings together thanks to sharing several rare riders, both this year and last, and it's no different this week as they claim the top two spots overall here. Jancouver and fauniera also both scored further below (they're in 7th and 8th), and there are 9 teams within a weekly win (45 points) of the lead. I think next week I'll start listing all the teams within 45 points of the lead, which I tend to do towards the end of the season.
Top 10 Overall
After a few quiet weeks, there is once again some separation between the top two. fauniera got 400 points and 6th overall this week, while karaev had a still-respectable 24th but lost 117 points to fauniera, who had Bonifazio. ruvu75 uses 4th on the week to launch into 3rd overall. TheArt jumps into the top 10, displacing DFA123 who falls out.
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