Update #2: It's a 2.2 Kinda Week
Quite often the week after the CQ game opens, there's a bit of a lull before the TDU sees the World Tour level teams hit the pavement, and the game has a bit of a quiet week. No exception this time, with a few picks riding the 2.2 Vuelta al Tachira or New Zealand Cycling Classic. CQ included the points from the first stage of Tropicale Amissa Bongo (which is strange since the update is dated January 19th but the stage was on the 20th), and that ended up determining the winner of the week. Well, CQ defines our weeks around these parts, so that's how it goes.
This Week's Top Scorers
Elia's little brother was picked by 8 teams, and winning the opening stage in Gabon got Attilio Viviani 20 points for the win and 6 for the leader's jersey. Newcomer Fivezzz supplements that with 10 points from Luca Pacioni (4 teams) in Tachira and a single point from Jefferson Cepeda in the same race. That's enough for the weekly win! adamski101 nabs second with a similar combo, swapping out Pacioni for young Eritrean Biniam Girmay Hailu (5 points, 7 teams). A trio of teams tie for third with 27 points; two of them with Viviani/Cepeda, and triley36 with 24 points from Kevin Rivera (4 teams) and 3 for Daniel Munoz (2 teams)... which means that without Gabon's results, triley36 would have led the week.
This Week's High Movers
It can only really happen in the second week of the season, but the leader in this category almost moved as many spots as the leader of the prior category got points! Muddy Waters managed to get in a place mid-table last week on McCarthy's 35 points, to where Viviani's 26 points leveraged their team quite a large leap in the standings! A fortuitous confluence of events. Fivezzz and adamski101 repeat their podium standing from the other ranking here with double-digit moves.
Green Jersey Competition
will10 manages to quickly move beyond the maximum weekly points total (refresher - the points here are awarded to the top 15 places weekly on a scale based off the TdF flat stage finish points from a few years back before they made it more top-heavy), leveraging 35 points for second place last week and 12 points for a 10th place finish this week to move clear of the field. The two weekly winners so far are tied for second. greenedge somehow managed to get 17 points both weeks, even though that's not an actual score for a placing (tied teams are given the average of the tied spots, ie if teams would have gotten 18 and 16 points for the two spots that are tied, I give them each 17). Anyway, the competition is underway!
Top 10 Overall
Not a lot of movement but 7 of the teams in the top 10 scored some points this week (and 50 teams overall did). the asian holds onto the lead and the podium is identical to last week.
This week with the TDU offering lots of points should see a shakeup, as well as some riders in Gabon that will continue to score for some teams.
Spreadsheet at dropbox