The 2021 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[BlueRoads]

So, for the next races I have:

Romandie
Thomas, Kruiswijk, Kuss, Leemreize, Hirschi, Romo, Froome, Arensman, Brenner, Powless

Asturias
Latour

Algarve
Kämna, Politt, Jakobsen

Giro
Bernal, Sivakov, Gallopin, (Tejada), Buchmann, Bardet, Mollema, Gaviria

 

[Earns1985]

Now, my time will begin..

For the giro I have:
S.Yates, Bernal, Evenepoel, Buchmann, Sivakov, Sosa, Tejada, Ciccone, Ewan, Moschetti, P. Bevin, Gaviria, Oliveira

 

[bminchow]

Now, my time will begin..

For the giro I have:
S.Yates, Bernal, Evenepoel, Buchmann, Sivakov, Sosa, Tejada, Ciccone, Ewan, Moschetti, P. Bevin, Gaviria, Oliveira

Holy Crap. i thought my team was going to be good. But I don't have Yates or Ewan. I do have Bardet and Sagan. Not quite the same:
Bernal, Evenepoel, Buchmann, Sivakov, Sosa, Ciccone, Bardet, Champoussin, Foss, Sagan, Aleotti

 

[postmanhat]

Not having any GC riders at Romandie, I was expecting to finish near the bottom this week. But Colbrelli had a great race and manged to haul 130 points, so I might tread water, before dominating the next three week weeks with my Giro team

 

[manafana]

Hanging on into that top 10 for dear life after last week

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Thanks for the update! I'm glad to be a top of the leaderboard once again, although I'm sad that Otoxiep87 took the green jersey away from me! I'll have to get that back somehow

Btw, here's a question for you CQ game historians: When was the earliest someone got their team into profit?

As always with the first to a milestone/most points at a certain date questions, the correct answer is 2012 aka the year where everybody had Boonen and he proceeded to win every cobbled race on the calendar*. TeoSheva and 3 other managers with slightly lower totals broke even after the Tour de Romandie. In a "normal" year, I don't think anybody's broken even before the Giro GC update but I'm not sure on that one.

* I don't actually keep track of teams' cost so I use breaking 7500 points as the barrier for breaking even. Considering that pretty much every team comes within a few point of the budget I think it's a reasonable proxy but it means that if someone had a crazy low cost team I might have missed their team technically breaking even earlier.

 

[skidmark]

Update #14: A tie for first in the weekly rankings as the overall standings flip again

This update's a little later than hoped, but better late than never. Last week saw Romandie as the center of CQ points, while a rescheduled Asturias also provided a few points to those who had riders in it. In keeping with the theme of the season so far, there were some high scores, and the leaderboard continued its constant back-and-forth jumble.

This Week's Top Scorers

Rank	Team	Points this week
1	Devils_Elbow	830
1	escartin	830
3	LosBrolin	812
4	del1962	785
5	Armchair cyclist	754

Aside from weeks early and late in the season where teams with the same handful of scoring riders tie, I can't recall too many ties at the top. But Devils Elbow and escartin manage to do so this week, each with a very decent 830 points. And indeed, they each had the same crop of highest scorers - Geraint Thomas (347 points), Sonny Colbrelli (133), Pierre Latour (91), Peter Sagan (78), and Thymen Arensman (60). That accounts for 709 of their 830 points, and the rest just jumbled up in a way that made them even. Congrats to both! LosBrolin nabs third place with of course Thomas, Lucas Hamilton (100 points) and a few others.

This Week's High Movers

Rank	Team	Up/down
1	Devils_Elbow	(+16)
2	escartin	(+14)
3	del1962	(+13)
3	will10	(+13)
5	LosBrolin	(+12)

The same top 2 but no tie at the top this time - Devils Elbow takes it in a clean win. There is a tie lower down, with del1962 and will10 each with a foot on the last podium spot.

Green Jersey Competition

Rank	Team	Total
1	Otoxiep87	190
2	Hugo Koblet	172.67
3	Boris98	168.67
4	Jon_Ezeitza	120
5	Devils_Elbow	115

40 points on the week (splitting the difference between 45 for first and 35 for second) gets Devils Elbow to slip onto this ranking. No points this week among the top 4, and therefore no movement either.

Top 10 Overall

Rank	Up/down	Team	Points
1	(+3)	Bicycle_Boy	7098
2	(-)	Northerner	7040
3	(-2)	Hugo Koblet	6984
4	(+1)	Total Package	6884
5	(-2)	Boris98	6879
6	(-)	Otoxiep87	6813
7	(+5)	Armchair cyclist	6662
8	(-)	Squire	6641
9	(+1)	Object	6628
10	(-3)	Nakazar	6581

Somewhat out of nowhere, Bicycle Boy jumps into the lead! This comes after a decent but not flashy week (28th on the week), but it's so close at the top that this was enough to flip the lead over Northerner (who was 32nd on the week but 79 points behind Bicycle Boy) and Hugo (57th on the week). The top 6 are all within 300 points. Armchair Cyclist rides a 5th place on the weekly rankings into the top 10 at the expense of manafana, who slips to 11th.

This week is already mostly over, but the points are still to come! The rescheduled Algarve has some .Pro points on offer, while a few teams may have riders in the 2.1 Rwanda race. All in all not a huge week for points, but of course the biggest thing going on is that the Giro starts on Saturday... we are in Grand Tour season! Happy racing everyone.

spreadsheet at dropbox

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

This could be my first decent performance since the first two editions of the game.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

This has been a very up-and-down season for me so far, being in the top 5 of the green jersey with just three scoring weeks sums it up nicely. Enjoying this up while it lasts (ie, until the next update).

 

[Koronin]

I'm happy to see Colbrelli and I Izagirre doing well for me this year.

 

[skidmark]

Well, last week I felt good that my somewhat rare riders in Izagirre and Colbrelli scored well, but beyond them and Latour I didn't get much else and actually fell in the standings. This week the Algarve is kinda meh for my team, with my hopes mainly riding on Sosa. But you know what? I don't care! Remco is coming back.

Fingers crossed, fellow Remco owners. Let's see what else is going to excite me for the next three weeks:

Giro

Egan Bernal
Pavel Sivakov
Elia Viviani
Remco Evenepoel
Romain Bardet
Bauke Mollema
Matteo Moschetti

Well, hopefully this is a 'quality over quantity' type of team, with only seven entries (and also hopefully it means that guys like Izagirre are doing the secondary rescheduled Spanish races where points should be a bit easier to come by). Of course all eyes are on Evenepoel. He has not lost a race he has finished since 2019, and it's not impossible he could be the best cyclist of all time someday. But no pressure. Sivakov is an interesting one, especially with Bernal questionable. I have no doubt he can top 5 - if the day he fell off the pace in Tour of Alps is representative of his worst day, he shouldn't fall as far in a 3 week race. But we'll see, I think he has the potential to podium. Bardet and Mollema are just solid, top 7-9 potential all around. Viviani is hopefully back, and Moschetti is my rarest pick, so I'm hoping he can prove he belongs with the big time sprinters here.

Ah, the day before a Grand Tour, always full of hope before your guy hits a bidon in the neutral zone or something and crashes out. Good luck everyone!

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

If you are doing well in this, you will want to prove that it is not a fluke: what better way than to do well in the Giro CQ game.

If you are doing poorly here, you won't want to wait until next year to reprieve your reputation and restore your confidence in yourself as a pundit: You won't get an opportunity sooner than the Giro CQ game.

In short, no excuse, give it a go. You have about 22 hours from the timestamp of this post.

And I'll stop hijacking threads now, at least until I'm plugging the Tour game.

 

[DJ Sprtsch]

Here's my Giro team.
SAGAN Peter
BERNAL GOMEZ Egan Arley
BARDET Romain
TESFATSION Natnael Ocbit
VIVIANI Elia
HONORE Mikkel Frølich
BUCHMANN Emanuel
CHAMPOUSSIN Clément
VAN DER HOORN Taco
GEBREIGZABHIER Amanuel Werkilul
ALEOTTI Giovanni

Finally! Maybe today is the turning point, I think I've dropped some 50 places in the last four updates.

 

[postmanhat]

I always like to pick riders from pro teams, to spread the interest across the season, and because they're often very profitable. That wasn't really necessary this year, but old habits die hard so I went for

Dupont
Lastra
Van Der Hoorn
Mareczko
Gavazzi
Rivera

Dupont's already a good pick and Lastra (unique pick was fourth at Algarve and almost certainly will be. Then today, Van Der Hoorn's achievement was one of those days that playing this game makes watching cycling so much more enjoyable. Mareczko was rolling along nicely but then came the Vini Zabu issues. I think he'll go well as long as they get a decent Asian calendar. Just need Gavazzi and Rivera to rediscover their old magic ..

 

[postmanhat]

Have been away for the last week so here is my ludicrous Giro team

Yates
Bernal
Evenepoel
Buchmann
Bardet
Ciccone
Formolo
Sagan
Viviani
Moscon
Gavazzi
Van Der Hoorn

Nine of my fourteen most expensive riders, and pretty much all my WT GC contingent. Fair to say this will make or break my season. I'll settle for the top 3 on GC, and a few stages

 

[skidmark]

Update #15: Hayter lovers have their day

It turns out that not too many popular riders were riding the Algarve or Rwanda... I will take advantage of the quiet week to offer a relatively quick update, as I'm squeezing this writeup into one of my few free hours the first half of this week.

This Week's Top Scorers

Rank	Team	Points this week
1	armchairclimber	290
2	VeloRooms	248
3	ChrisDK	232
4	Yellow Knight	226
5	Fivezzz	224

After several weeks of leaders getting 800+ points, this week is more subdued, but a weekly win still gets your name in lights and this week it's armchairclimber who comes out on top! This is almost entirely thanks to 2 performances at the Algarve - 159 points from Ethan Hayter (9 teams), and 100 points from Elie Gesbert (8 teams), who at a cost of 6 points is certainly delivering returns. The VeloRooms collective team is back in the rankings, topping 4th place a few weeks ago to get 2nd on the backs of Kasper Asgreen (117 points, 5 teams) and Filippo Ganna (106, 3). ChrisDK rounds out the podium thanks to those same 2 but a tiny bit less small-point support than VeloRooms.

This Week's High Movers

Rank	Team	Up/down
1	merengues	(+6)
2	Nyssinator	(+5)
2	SafeBet	(+5)
4	Fivezzz	(+4)
4	postmanhat	(+4)
4	EvansIsTheBest	(+4)
4	ChrisDK	(+4)
4	VeloRooms	(+4)

As one might expect, not a lot of movement this week given the sub-300 point scores, but the biggest move goes to merengues, who has Hayter's 159 points and then a next highest scorer of Tobias Foss with 25 for third on the opening Giro TT. Nyssinator (Hayter) and Safebet (Gesbert) tie for the second podium spot.

Green Jersey Competition

Rank	Team	Total
1	Otoxiep87	190
2	Hugo Koblet	172.67
3	Boris98	168.67
4	Jon_Ezeitza	120
5	Devils_Elbow	115

No movement or scoring in the top 5 here; Fivezzz jumps into the top 10 with some points on the week to make the highest move on the chart.

Top 10 Overall

Rank	Up/down	Team	Points
1	(-)	Bicycle_Boy	7187
2	(-)	Northerner	7081
3	(-)	Hugo Koblet	7024
4	(-)	Total Package	6952
5	(-)	Boris98	6901
6	(-)	Otoxiep87	6847
7	(-)	Armchair cyclist	6840
8	(+4)	Fivezzz	6708
9	(-)	Object	6686
10	(-2)	Squire	6674

Things stay mostly the same here, although Bicycle Boy gains about 50 points on the closest two teams, which seems both very important (given how tight it is at the top) and not important at all (given that teams are scoring a bazillion points most weeks). The podium, and indeed most of the top 10, stays the same, although Fivezzz turns a good week into a jump back into the top 10, at the expense of Nakazar who falls out.

This week, the Giro continues apace, and the undercard is a mix of races that I personally find fascinating - the 2.1 Tour of Hungary, the 1.1 Circuit de Wallonie, the rescheduled Mallorca Challenge races, and the now 1.Pro Tro Bro Leon on the weekend. That is some diversity of racing!

Spreadsheet at dropbox

 

[Koronin]

I'm really happy with having picked Kasper Asgreen for my team this year. Team still isn't the greatest, but there are some definite bright spots and he's one of those.

 

[manafana]

well played to Gesbert pickers, lovely pick up

 

[tobydawq]

I constantly forget which riders I have, so I will have to write my Giro riders here:

Evenepoel, Sagan, Bernal, Bettiol, Formolo, Buchmann, Moscon and Gallopin.

That seems like a very good line-up. At least the gamble with Remco seems to have some merit. Bettiol has not been good points-wise, yet, though his form seems very good now. The same for Moscon. I expect lots of points tomorrow.


For Ruta del Sol, I have Superman, Kristoff (who finally got a few points on Mallorca but has been pretty bad so far) and Trentin.

 

[postmanhat]

Have ticked over quite well this week with a couple of stage wins at the Giro (Sagan and Van Der Hoorn), and additional points for Gavazzi, Lastra and a few others.

Now though, seven members of my team are currently sitting in the top 15 of the Giro -Bernal, Buchmann, Ciccone, Formolo. Yates, Evenepoel and Bardet. So of course, I'm anticipating various crashes and collapses eliminating them, until only the first two remain, who nearly everyone has anyway.

For Andalucia, my GC hope is Lastra, with Trentin and Jansen also riding

 

[Koronin]

Well this was my Giro team when it started:
Landa, Cavanga, Jorgenson, Arndt, Gaviria,

Here's my Andalucia team:
Serrano, Gonzalez, MA Lopez, Garrison,

Well, if nothing else, I got Andalucia's stage 1 winner.

 

[BlueRoads]

My Giro looks very underwhelming, I got nobody in Andalucia. I did get a few points from Romo in Hungary, I think. I'm now waiting for Dauphiné and Switzerland already.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

As I am, for the first time in years, not doing appallingly this season, perhaps I should consider my Giro team. Bernal, Sagan, (both common picks) Formolo and Cimolai (much rarer) are doing a good job for me; Buchmann and Mollema have not done a lot, but could feature yet; Moscon and Moschetti are maintaining the not terrible positions that are about as much as could have been hoped for.

I had hoped that Henao, a unique pick, would follow up his decent Algarve performance in Andalucía, but he seems to have lost a minute somehow (I haven't watched it yet). Maybe Hodeg will dominate the sprint stages. Naaah.

Alexandre Balmer to dominate at the Alpes Isere tour from tomorrow?

 

[postmanhat]

Have ticked over quite well this week with a couple of stage wins at the Giro (Sagan and Van Der Hoorn), and additional points for Gavazzi, Lastra and a few others.

Now though, seven members of my team are currently sitting in the top 15 of the Giro -Bernal, Buchmann, Ciccone, Formolo. Yates, Evenepoel and Bardet. So of course, I'm anticipating various crashes and collapses eliminating them, until only the first two remain, who nearly everyone has anyway.

For Andalucia, my GC hope is Lastra, with Trentin and Jansen also riding

Well that was emotional. Formolo, Evenpoel, Bardet and Ciccone all lose time. And predictably, the two superstars of the stage (Bernal and Buchmann) are so popular it won't have much effect on the game.

Somehow though, I still have six of the top twelve on GC, and it's very possible that Formolo will move up again. Am mostly worried now about Ciccone and Evenepoel not blowing up completely

 

[tobydawq]

Did anybody see the bird in Andalucia today?

Or was it a plane?

Or was it...?