The 2020 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[postmanhat]

Simon Yates is very much alive, which will please about 75% of us

Soler has at least tried a couple times. Hopefully he will have better luck in the much weaker Giro

Oomen looks a long way from ready for The Giro, which isn't surprising given his lack of racing. Maybe he'll be able to ride himsef into it

Don't know what's happening with Latour. He doesn't seem to have recovered at all well from his injury

Valgren continues his pointless amble around France

Another DNF for Padun. Assuming Bahrain don't renew his contract, it's difficult to see anyone taking a risk on him for next year

 

[Koronin]

Stage win for Martinez should give a few points.
Soler is starting to find some form. He's likely to try a few more breaks in the Tour looking for a stage win. However, it's looking like he should be better for the Giro.
Mas is finding his form and as long as he stays on his bike should be able to get the top 10 he was aiming for before the Tour started.
Pinot and Dumoulin, I have no clue.
Valverde looks to be getting better for his later races.

 

[skidmark]

Decent day at Tirenno... Yates is had by many so not alot of gain, but still good. My better return will (hopefully) be from Kelderman, on fewer teams. Meintjes finally showing something (even an attack!!) after a couple of years of nothing suggests a promisingly anonymous top 10 in the Giro. Oomen looking better but not great, although of course many have him.

In the Tour, well, I guess I can keep my fingers crossed for stages and polka dots from the likes of Pinot and Chaves, although neither really look like they can do much right now. I also have hopes for them at the Worlds though.

Soren Kragh Andersen getting some more form, hopefully will continue to build for the classics. Soler not quite there but hopefully that means he will be looking sharp for the Vuelta or something.

Froome is not looking like he'll be sharp for anything. Nor does Latour. Aru's career might be over.

 

[repre]

Simon Yates is very much alive, which will please about 75% of us

Soler has at least tried a couple times. Hopefully he will have better luck in the much weaker Giro

Oomen looks a long way from ready for The Giro, which isn't surprising given his lack of racing. Maybe he'll be able to ride himsef into it

Don't know what's happening with Latour. He doesn't seem to have recovered at all well from his injury

Valgren continues his pointless amble around France

Another DNF for Padun. Assuming Bahrain don't renew his contract, it's difficult to see anyone taking a risk on him for next year

Padun crashed with Bauhaus, bad luck again...

 

[Salvarani]

With Kragh, Pedersen and Cort it looks pretty good for this fall.

My 4th dane Valgren seems like a lost cause though.

 

[BlueRoads]

Simon Yates winning Tirreno is quite catastrophic for me.

 

[Gigs_98]

I was just wondering how this game was actually going for me as I haven't checked the standing since March, looked at my team since I had forgotten most about it, saw the first 8 names on the list were
"Sagan, Pinot, Kwiatkowski, Moscon, Dumoulin, Oomen, Froome, Bardet".
Didn't bother checking the standings.

 

[postmanhat]

After a quiet couple of weeks, good to see some non-WT races this week.

Luxembourg - Gallopin and Vanendert have already cemented their status as terrible picks on stage one. All hopes lie with Simmons now

Slovakia - Notable for the return of Modolo, who's barely raced this year. De Bie, Strakhov and Steimle also.

Alfredo Martini - Is Moscon about to go on one of his late-season blitzkriegs? And good to see Bouhanni back so quickly after his crash in Brussels. Hayter and Mader also.

 

[skidmark]

Update #21: The Stages of Success

It's a bit of a transition week in the CQ game - although the Tour is in full force and the dissonance of the season continued with Tirenno-Adriatico overlapping, neither race awarded GC points in this update. Aside from a couple of 2.2 races and a 1.1 race won by a cyclo-crosser, the WT points this week came solely from stages (which included three wins by cyclo-crossers off the top of my head, so maybe the takeaway is that cyclo-crossers are killing it on the road these days). Let's see how it shook out.

This Week's Top Scorers

Rank	Team	Points this week
1	triley36	416
2	Eric10	393
3	zaka_fan	387
4	comodoro	385
5	DJ Sprtsch	382

triley36 comes out on top as the only team to top 400 points; Soren Kragh Andersen was the star for their team, parlaying a 1st and 3rd in Tour stages into 115 points for his 43 owners. Wins from Marc Hirschi (15 teams) and Dani Martinez (9 teams) supplemented 50 points for a 2nd place from Lennard Kamna (spoiler alert - at least 80 more to come this week) and 80 points from Simon Yates (also more to come). Eric10 comes in second, swapping in Lucas Hamilton (45 points) in place of Dani Martinez from the above combination, and zaka_fan rounds out the podium with 60 from Sagan and 50 from Merlier to supplement Andersen/Yates/Kamna.

This Week's High Movers

Rank	Team	Up/down
1	dimasotf	(+13)
2	triley36	(+12)
3	Nicosix	(+10)
3	Eric10	(+10)
3	Team_Instigator	(+10)
3	DJ Sprtsch	(+10)
3	zaka_fan	(+10)

We are 21 weeks into the CQ season so 400 points isn't going to take you as far up the standings as earlier, but some teams still manage a double digit leap. dimasotf tops this one, riding Andersen/Yates/Kamna/Merlier/Hamilton to a 13 place rise. triley36 comes in second here, whereas 5 teams tie for third.

Green Jersey Competition

Rank	Team	Total
1	Jakob747	236.7
2	ChrisDK	192
3	EvansIsTheBest	131
4	Wallenquist	122
4	Hakkie2	122

No scoring for the top teams aside from the one at the very top. Jakob747 gets 13th on the week and 6 more points in this competition, extending the lead over second place ChrisDK to 44.7 points. Of course a weekly win is worth 45 points, so ChrisDK is still technically within reach of the lead on any given week. The rest of the pack is quite a ways back.

Top 10 Overall

Rank	Up/down	Team	Points
1	(+1)	Jakob747	5552
2	(-1)	EvansIsTheBest	5460
3	(-)	Nyssinator	5035
4	(+4)	Nathanptz	5000
5	(-1)	skidmark	4999
6	(-)	BlueRoads	4944
7	(+2)	Lortnoc	4914
8	(-3)	bminchow	4893
9	(-2)	mineralJ	4887
10	(+2)	Wallenquist	4844

There is a change at the very top for the first time in weeks. After slowly creeping up for a few weeks, Jakob747 gains 116 points on EvansIsTheBest thanks partially to Pogacar's amazing run, although that is likely to pay off more in the upcoming week. EITB remains comfortably in second for now, while Nyssinator stays in third. 150 points separates 3rd and 9th, so it's quite tight below the top two. Wallenquist moves into the top 10 at the expense of JPettersen.

The upcoming week has not only GC points for the Tour, but also for Tirenno, which ended on Monday. And for good measure, there are no fewer than 3 one-day races in Italy, and 1.1s in France and Belgium. It definitely has the potential for a points bonanza and an upheaval in the standings.

Spreadsheet at dropbox

 

[Salvarani]

Up 23 places in the last two updates combined. Going in the right direction

 

[BlueRoads]

I think Simon Yates should take a sabbatical, enjoy the sun somewhere (not in Italy), drink some cocktails, ride horses or dolphins, and come back next year.

 

[Mayomaniac]

I dropped 13 places, now 30th overall.
Gaviria, Rob Stannard and Biniam Ghirmay scored some nice points for me in the Giro della Toscana yesterday, that should help.

 

[Jakob747]

It's getting close-ish towards the top of the ranking. Wout van Aert, Kwiatkowski, or who would belive Wilco Kelderman, will probably be my undoing.

I need one or two of my "cheaper" selections to finally start lightning up the roads a little. For example, Alexander Cepeda (Androni) whom I had/have high hopes for.

Just before Cepeda traveled back to Europe after the corona -break, he did the "Guagua Negro" ascent in 12min 58sec - a new record time. 6.5kilometers which starts at 2920m of altitude and finishes at over 3300ms. Carapaz did the same climb in 13.31 on July 13th and although it was reported that Richie was in less than optimal form while training in Ecuador its still an impressive register from Cepeda.

He was ok-ish strong in Savoie, but his positioning in the Italian one-day events has been anything but optimal. Tomorrow he starts in Giro dell'Appennino and I hope to see him with the best on Passo della Bochetta at least, fine turning his form as he declared to Primicias.ec that his aim is to win the "Maglia Bianca" at the Giro.

 

[Jakob747]

I forgot the footage of Cepeda grinding the gears.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwB9f8YtFPI

 

[tobydawq]

Simon Yates, Søren Kragh, Kämna, Kwiatkowski, Steimle, Urán, Dumoulin are all on my team. Surely, this week must be decent for me even if none of those are particularly rare picks.

 

[postmanhat]

Good day for me with Steimle and Hayter both winning. Just after I picked the latter, it was announced that he wouldn't be racing till after The Olympics. As it turned out, neither was anyone else, so he must be one of the few riders to benefit from the Covid break.

Looking at the calendar, there's not many races below WT left, so about half my team are more or less out of the game now. Need some of my expensive failures to lift their wings - Latour, Valgren, Gallopin, Moscon, Soler, Kwiatkowski and Pinot

 

[Mayomaniac]

Kwaitkowski and Dumoulin saved this week of the Tour for me, but still a bad Tour.
At least Rob Stannard has been picking up some nice points in the Italian races.

 

[tobydawq]

Dumoulin is on every team except three or four, so it's not much we get out of his performances.

 

[BlueRoads]

Weirdly many of my riders have been great the past week, but nonetheless I will fall deep, because other teams will just be better. I am hoping for a podium of van Aert, Hirschi and Martínez at worlds. Fuglsang, Nibali and Thomas to reign the Giro, please...

 

[Northerner]

My team has wins this week for Yates, Gaviria, Bouhanni, Andersen, Steimle, Kamna and Hayter. Yet I still don't expect a particularly good score.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

PINOT Thibaut​

BARDET Romain​

LATOUR Pierre​

SOLER GIMENEZ Marc​

DUMOULIN Tom​

ANDERSEN Søren Kragh​

ARU Fabio​

KÄMNA Lennard​

That's my team. Coincidentally that will also be the top 8 in Paris (in that precise order if you were wondering) I have six of my nine most expensive riders here (the absentees being Bouhanni, Gaviria and Evenepoel) so this will make or break my season basically.

What a disaster. My team is done now. Might be able to hang on for a decent finish thanks to the cushion from Evenepoel's hot start to the season but having three 800+ pts picks unable to compete for basically the entire classics season and the three GTs is just a killer. Unfortunately it's going to wreck the fact that I did a much better job than prior years of nailing the support riders. Even Steimle, Vakoc and Oomen are starting to show signs of life. It's only Bjerg, Latour and Juan Pedro Lopez and a few sub 100pts guys that I whiffed on.

It's getting close-ish towards the top of the ranking. Wout van Aert, Kwiatkowski, or who would belive Wilco Kelderman, will probably be my undoing.

I need one or two of my "cheaper" selections to finally start lightning up the roads a little. For example, Alexander Cepeda (Androni) whom I had/have high hopes for.

Just before Cepeda traveled back to Europe after the corona -break, he did the "Guagua Negro" ascent in 12min 58sec - a new record time. 6.5kilometers which starts at 2920m of altitude and finishes at over 3300ms. Carapaz did the same climb in 13.31 on July 13th and although it was reported that Richie was in less than optimal form while training in Ecuador its still an impressive register from Cepeda.

He was ok-ish strong in Savoie, but his positioning in the Italian one-day events has been anything but optimal. Tomorrow he starts in Giro dell'Appennino and I hope to see him with the best on Passo della Bochetta at least, fine turning his form as he declared to Primicias.ec that his aim is to win the "Maglia Bianca" at the Giro.

I don't think you "need" anything. You'll get a ton of points from Pogacar (well deserved by the way, what a pick) that nobody else is going to get. You have a 500 points cushion on third place already and you'll add the Tirreno GC win from Yates to your cushion over my team (which as I covered earlier is probably done anyway). You might be 1000 points clear by the time the next update is released and you should lock down the green jersey competition pretty soon for whatever that's worth. Kwiatkoswki is a terrible pick by the way (and to be clear I only denigrate his scoring which is limited far more by his own team than his own abilities, he remains quite obviously a world class rider). If somebody beats you, it'll be in spite of him. Don't really think he deserve to be in the same conversation as Van Aert or even Kelderman.

 

[Salvarani]

Tour team

DUMOULIN Tom
KUSS Sepp
KÄMNA Lennard
BARDET Romain
LATOUR Pierre
MAS Enric
SOLER Marc
PEDERSEN Mads
ARU Fabio
VALGREN Michael
KRAGH ANDERSEN Søren

On paper it looks decent.

Hit or miss, seems like a fitting phrase to use here.

I think the hits has been really great. Mas and Pedersen, especially, since they werent picked by that many has been great to watch. Kuss turning out to be a really great pick. Been a joy to watch Kämna and Kragh.

With S. Yates, Bouhanni, Stannard, Vakoc and Oomen also getting points in the past week. Im looking forward to the next update.

 

[SafeBet]

Kwiatkoswki is a terrible pick by the way (and to be clear I only denigrate his scoring which is limited far more by his own team than his own abilities, he remains quite obviously a world class rider). If somebody beats you, it'll be in spite of him. Don't really think he deserve to be in the same conversation as Van Aert or even Kelderman.

Kwiatkowski might actually turn out being a decent pick considering he didn't burn himself out at the Tour (for once). His shape looks good entering the Classics.

 

[postmanhat]

Two riders racing today (Bouhanni and Van Poppel) and two victories. Added to those of Hayter and Steimle yesterday, it's been a fantastic weekend. Will it be enough to compensate for only having Dumoulin in the top ten of The Tour? I'm guessing that most of the rest won't be that prevalent in the game. Maybe Landa and Mas being the most popular?

EDIT - just checked and it looks like Uran is the most popular, with a few people also selecting Mas

 

[skidmark]

Correction: Week 21 standings in error

I was alerted to a formula error that affected the standings this week. Mellow Velo's team page was reading Quinn Simmons' seasonal score as his 'score last week' on the otherwise empty line below his name, and the 'this week points' column measured as if he had zero points from this season up to this week and 195 points up until last week, so the formula ended up giving Mellow Velo's team -195 points on this week, netted against the overall. With the correction, Mellow Velo's team actually won the week! Here are the restated standings:

Rank	Team	Points this week
1	Mellow Velo	443
2	triley36	416
3	Eric10	393
4	zaka_fan	387
5	comodoro	385

Mellow Velo's correct points total allowed their team to enter the top 5 of the high movers as well:

Rank	Team	Up/down
1	dimasotf	(+13)
2	triley36	(+12)
3	Mellow Velo	(+11)
4	Nicosix	(+10)
4	Team_Instigator	(+10)
4	zaka_fan	(+10)

I adjusted the Green Jersey standings appropriately as well. Simmons only started scoring a few weeks back, so I looked back to see if the error affected other weeks. There was one week where Mellow Velo would have finished 14th, so I adjusted the points accordingly as well.

Thanks all! I'm very curious to see what this week's standings will look like.