Update #26: Sneekes ekes out a win
We've had our final monument of the season, and our second grand tour is winding its way towards a conclusion. I'll have to be a tad briefer than usual this week as I'm on the road, but I'll be back and settled for next week's update, so I promise I'll give these last few weeks the attention they deserve. This week saw another win under 500 points; I'm sure this week with the Giro GC it will be different.
This Week's Top Scorers
Sneekes grabs the top spot this week headlined by two riders who have shown up on various occasions for leading weekly teams this seaon - Van Aert added 170 and Almeida added 197, making this yet another week in which he's gotten more points than his total cost of 112. And, well, it looks like he's lined up for a significant amount more this week. Sneekes also got 72 points from McNulty and 34 from Meurisse, which made the difference as it was tight at the top. Yellow Knight only came in 4 points behind, and has shown up a few times this season in the top with an interesting combo of Sagan and Sam Bennett, who got points this week on top of those of Almeida, Narvaez and McNulty. bminchow has shown up a lot in these standings as well and has the same big 2 riders (and notably potentially for this upcoming week, also has Kelderman).
This Week's High Movers
A different crew on here, with escartin moving up 20 spots thanks to Guess Who (ie WvA) and Oh Yeah He Got Points This Week (Sagan with 110). ray10 was one of the two teams to get the full 280 points from MvdP, and Yellow Knight shows up on both rankings this week.
Green Jersey Competition
Wallenquist gets 18 points on the week and bminchow gets 30 to create some more bunching around 2nd place, but Jakob747's lead here is still not really under threat, although if the last two weeks of the season are only the Vuelta and someone has rare riders that do well there, it could conceivably tighten.
Top 10 Overall
BlueRoads only got 190 points this week, whereas Wallenquist and bminchow were in the top 10 of the week, so a bit more is at play at the top of the list, although the top teams are separated by triple digits so it's not neck-in-neck per se. But a lot of points are to be had from the GCs at the 2 GTs still in play, so it will be interesting to see how the season ends. Usually in this game, there's the Vuelta, some pretty clear teams with chances for big points in the Worlds, but then a bit of a wind down with some one-day races, and after Lombardia there's the China race and Japan Cup, which have very few riders participating. Here, the last race of the season is the Vuelta, with big points and big names. Aside from the inherent uncertainty of any race in times of covid, this is shaping up to be pretty open right up until the sudden end.
This is our last real overlap week (presuming Sardinia goes ahead we will have one other small race overlapping the Vuelta), and although the crazy triumvirate of October 25th no longer includes Roubaix, there is still the last week of the Giro, the Vuelta starting on Tuesday, and - try to imagine hearing this sentence in 2015 and believing it would be true - the last one-day race of the year, the WorldTour level Three Days of De Panne.
spreadsheet at dropbox