The 2021 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[Object]

After participating since the very beginning(How many years is it now?) of this game, I can finally call my self the winner of the best cycling manager game there is!
Thank you Skidmark for hosting the game. As always, you do a tremendous piece of work, and I am always looking forward to next weeks update.

And thank you Squire for making it exciting to the very end!

I am not the most active participant, but I read all of the posts in the thread with great joy. So thank you all for your great insights and analysis on the riders.

I think my wife will be happy not to hear about my teams performance for some time now...

I can't wait for another season to begin!

 

[SafeBet]

Thank you as always @skidmark, this game makes watching cycling more fun than it already is.
Kudos to the best teams out there @Object and @Squire!

Another top20 finish for me. My top heavy strategy didn't really pay off but I'll be back next year.

 

[adamski101]

Thank you, Skidmark for running the game once again. All your time and effort is very much appreciated.

Congratulations to Object on winning and Squire for running it close. Being involved in this game every year makes watching cycling even more interesting and enjoyable.

My team was the epitome of mid table mediocrity, frustrating as some of my last minute omissions went onto to score a hatful of points.

Now to start working on nexts years team.

 

[triley36]

Congrats to Object and the rest of the top ten.

A giant thank you to Skidmark for running this game.

I start making my long list for 2022 today!

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Can only reiterate what everyone else has said. Thanks to skidmark for running the game pretty much seamlessly, congratulations to Object for defying the odds and managing to win the game without Colbrelli, and kudos to Squire for pulling an extremely close race out of seemingly nowhere. It feel like we collectively missed the best opportunity any of us will ever have to crack the 20000-point barrier, though - skidmark's old points record has also barely survived, although this year's top-4 will be second through fifth on the all-time list by the looks.

As for myself, reasonably happy with 24th on my first attempt, probably should have been able to do better with a team that had Colbrelli on it though.

 

[jon ezeitza]

Happy with the Green Jersey, an award that I did not expect. The fifth position of the GC also leaves me very satisfied, because in previous years I had not achieved anything similar. In the year 2,022 we will fight for the podium and to win the Green Jersey again, which will not be easy.
Thanks to the organizers, because doing weekly updates is a very demanding job. Good vacations!

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

Even with the greatly depressed 2020 scores, none of us managed the elusive goal of every rider in profit. As far as I can see, the closest to this was Tom-jelte, although he finished 3/4 of the way down the field. Only Sergio Higuita and Oliver Naesen scored less than 100%, and at 80% and 94% respectively, even his most disappointing selections did not disappoint by much. Pinot and Jungels ensured that most teams had at least one rider in the low 30s, if not lower.

 

[skidmark]

I just want to say, out of update, that it's great to see the enthusiasm and participation in this game continue through the years, and it's been good to have cycling/this game back to relatively normal after the last year and a half we've all had. In that vein, I think it's also great for the game to see such a close race between two participants who have been around since pretty much the start. Certainly Squire has been a notable contributor to this thread over the years, be it talking through strategy, doing guest updates, analyzing teams at the start of the year, etc; he has been one of the consistently great performers in this game. And even if you don't post a ton Object, your participation in this game is greatly appreciated. Congrats on it all coming together this year.

I can't believe that 2012 score wasn't topped, what a crazy year that was for that team. It's given me cause to look back on that year, and it was fun to check out the names in the spreadsheet - here's a link in case anyone is feeling nostalgic.

I realized at some point this year that I totally blanked on doing the monthly updates despite tracking them in the spreadsheet. I thought it might be fun to keep posting in this thread every Monday with a year-in-review monthly rankings month by month, so I think I'm gonna try that to pass the time until next year's game gets started. Looks like Aussie nats are January 12-16, and Langkawi seems to be scheduled starting January 16th as well, so I'm guessing a start date around then. Stay tuned, and thanks all!

 

[DJ Sprtsch]

Thanks a lot for your effort, Skidmark.
Even though I ended up in the lower end it's such a fun game to participate in. Highlight of the year for me was having Taco on my team - but ok, I've had him since 2019 since he scored 396 points in two months autumn '18 after being injured (I think, can't remember exactly to be honest).
Already have some 75 riders on my long list for next year...

 

[BlueRoads]

Thank you, Skidmark!!

 

[Boris98]

Thank you Skidmark! It was very fun to follow the game and support for the riders in my team.

I managed a top 10 in my debut season, very happy with that. It will be difficult to do beter next year.

 

[skidmark]

Year In Review: February

I mentioned last week that I realized sometime through the year that I hadn't been doing updates on the monthly leaders this year. I let it slide, but now that the main game is over I figure I might as well go back and give those leaders their due, which also provides us with an opportunity to take a look back at this year.

The game started in the last week of January with a couple of races, so the first 'month' of the season covers that little bit of January and all of February.

February's Top Scorers

Rank	Team	Points this month
1	Hugo Koblet	1030
2	Northerner	998
3	LaFlorecita	977
4	Object	966
5	rote_laterne	906
6	manafana	879
7	Jon_Ezeitza	858
8	Hakkie2	848
9	R_O_Shipman	808
9	skidmark	808

Hugo Koblet became the first team to top 1030 points, presaging a fairly lengthy stay at the top of the standings. Looking back at the early part of the season is also a reminder that the season is long and a lot can change. Hugo's highest scorer in the month was Ivan Sosa, with 183 points in February - he would end the season with 211 total. Tim Wellens was next with 173 on the month, and although he ended up better off with 615 total, I'm sure his owners might have foreseen more months like February for him, which didn't really come. The other two scorers Hugo had above 100 were Alahilippe (120) and Bernal (107), and both of those guys did alright for the season. Those picks were supported with a good spread of riders, notably 50 points at a cost of 15 for Mauri Vansevenant, a sign of the season to come for the youngster.

Northerner didn't crack 1000 points, but managed second with a strong and top-heavy team, with all 4 of Hugo's 100 point scorers plus Bauke Mollema getting off to a great start with 164. LaFlorecita managed third on the month, with the same big 4 as mentioned above.

The overall standings at the end of the month were the same as the month obviously - looking through the standings, there are a handful of names in the top 10 that ended up there at the end of the season (notably, Object was already well positioned in 4th back in February), and some teams that faded a bit after getting off to a hot start.

Okay! Back next week to go through March. Here's the spreadsheet for end of February if you wanted to take a look.

 

[postmanhat]

Snuck into the top ten in the penultimate week, the Taco's 7 points in the last week meant a joint 9th at the end. Easily my best result since playing this game.

Thanks so much skidmark for organising this. It really adds to the enjoyment of watching cycling! PArticulalrly in a year where your team is still involved right to the end. Looking ahead to next year's growing shortlist, it will be very different. I think we're all going to be taking a lot more interest in sprint stages in 2022?

 

[Squire]

Looking ahead to next year's growing shortlist, it will be very different. I think we're all going to be taking a lot more interest in sprint stages in 2022?

Haven't started working on my team yet, as I don't want to constantly think about CQ for the next two months! But I had one quick glance through the 2021 ranking, and I couldn't even identify five obvious picks, I think. Scores are gonna be on the low side next year, it seems.

 

[escartin]

thanks skidmark. close to a top 40 which considering I had Colbrelli is not fantastic.

he was obviously my best pick along with Taaramae and Aleotti.
Jungels was obviously the worst pick but he was for all 61 people who chose him! the picks that had the biggest negative impact on my score were Pedersen, Kristoff and Bettiol, all picked by few, all unlucky to not score more, all not scoring enough. Higuita as well but he was not that rare.

worst non-pick was Cavendish clearly, I had him last year, and, like many, ignored him this year, I obviously picked Froome both years . Vingegaard and Vansevenant would have been great as well but I never considered them.

 

[skidmark]

Haven't started working on my team yet, as I don't want to constantly think about CQ for the next two months! But I had one quick glance through the 2021 ranking, and I couldn't even identify five obvious picks, I think. Scores are gonna be on the low side next year, it seems.

I haven't taken a look yet for similar reasons... but I'm almost ready to start! Last year was the busiest I've ever been despite being cooped up indoors, and I didn't start putting a team together until relatively late for me (helped by the delayed start of the game). But I'm looking forward to having a bit of time this year to do a first pass over the list to make a longlist, take a break, revisit it a few weeks later. etc.

 

[skidmark]

Year in Review: March

Back in the early season, we went from the tune-up races into March where things got real - Het Nieuwsblad at the end of February through Strade Bianche, Paris-Nice, Tirenno-Adriatico, the first Monument of the season in Milan-San Remo, and onto the cobbles. It was early enough in the season that hopes were high for many teams, and we began to see just how many points would be scored in this game where most riders were at a discount for their 2020 score.

March's Top Scorers

Rank	Team	Points this month
1	Boris98	4091
2	Total Package	3832
3	Bicycle_Boy	3691
4	Hugo Koblet	3494
5	tom_jelte	3467
6	Fivezzz	3350
7	Armchair cyclist	3323
8	Nicosix	3282
9	Hakkie2	3270
10	skidmark	3250

Cracking 4000 points for the month (admittedly including 6 updates just due to timing and a bit of spillover into April), Boris98 had a great month. Perhaps unsurprisingly, their team's top scorer was the winner of the first monument - on top of the 280 points for Milan-San Remo, Jasper Stuyven got almost 200 more from other races, netting 473 for his 4 owners. Next up as the second highest scorer - and this will likely be a surprise to his owners in retrospect, as it was to me - was Greg Van Avermaet, who scored 375 in March before his season fell off a cliff, only scoring 119 more from April onwards. Absolutely not surprising was that Egan Bernal scored 311 to have another solid month, and other high scorers for Boris98 were Christophe Laporte and Michael Matthews with 270 each, Mauri Vansevenant with 235, Tiesj Benoot with 211 and - in what was just the beginning - Sonny Colbrelli with 209.

Total Package had a great month as well for second place, having a top heavy team with their top 5 costing riders each scoring over 200 on the month. GvA was tops here, but impressive contributions from Adam Yates (331), Bernal, the Matthews/Laporte duo at 270, Bauke Molleman continuing a great start of year with 262, Peter Sagan with 218, and Colbrelli once again. Bicycle Boy rounded out the podium with a ridiculously top-heavy team, picking three riders who cost more than 1000 points, and getting a good return out of them - Wout Van Aert had 1010 for the month(!), MvdP had 738, Julian Alaphilippe had a relatively pedestrian 204. Add to that their team's next 4 highest costing riders had good returns, with Sam Bennett (329 points - remember when he was riding?), Sagan, Geraint Thomas (178) and Mollema all coming correct.

Top 10 at the end of March

Rank	Team	Points
1	Boris98	5408
2	Total Package	5350
3	Hugo Koblet	5271
4	Northerner	4986
5	manafana	4895
6	Bicycle_Boy	4879
7	Fivezzz	4799
8	Squire	4739
9	skidmark	4736
10	MADRAZO	4707

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this list looks much like the previous one. Hugo Koblet relinquishes the lead but remained close, and several of the names up here would be up there at the end. In case you were wondering, eventual winner Object was in 16th overall at this point.

Spreadsheet if you wanted to take a look

 

[shalgo]

Object has a pretty commanding lead but there's still a fascinating race involving their team. Can they chase down the all time record of 19345 (by skidmark in 2012) ? 2000 points with the fall classics (+ Paris-Roubaix) and the World Championships remaining on the calendar seems tough for any team that doesn't have Gilbert in 2011 form (I don't think anybody picked him that year but what a legendary pick that would have been). Should be pretty fun to follow for people like me who are completely out of it this year.

It is amazing to me that, despite the very unusual circumstances this year, Skidmark's 2012 score still remains the highest ever in this game. That was quite the team: the most expensive rider was 532 points, and yet seven riders ended up scoring more than 1000 points.

Still, Object did end up with the second-highest-score ever, which is an impressive feat.

 

[DJ Sprtsch]

In terms of scoring maximum points this year I went through the current CQ list and picked riders along the way. It is by no means an the optimized team, there probably is a much better possible combination. For staters there's only 21 riders so far. But what a team this would have been!

	2020​	2021​
pogi	2044​	3656​
van aert	1702​	2780​
a yates	592​	1414​
gaudu	484​	1288​
bernal	450​	1736​
colbrelli	347​	1823​
mollema	310​	1190​
mohoric	302​	1310​
Van Poppel D	290​	948​
e hayter	228​	1106​
O'Connor	218​	857​
honore	170​	855​
laporte	136​	952​
vingegaard	107​	1254​
pidcock	57​	708​
cav	15​	990​
vansevenant	15​	438​
marit	14​	366​
taaramae	10​	290​
gesbert	6​	330​
skjelmose	0​	344​
	7497​	24635​

 

[skidmark]

Year in Review: April

As our year continued on, the excitement of getting back to a 'normal' cycling season was tempered somewhat with the news that Paris-Roubaix would be postponed once again, turning Holy Week into more of a Holy Half Year between the Ronde and Roubaix. But the Ronde went ahead to kick off April, with a few cobbled races closing out that phase and moving to the Ardennes. Stage races chugged along in the buildup to the first grand tour of the year, with Itzulia starting it off and Romandie finishing it, with Tours of Turkey, Valenciana (also rescheduled from earlier) and the Alps filling out the lower tier. A balanced set of races for riders of different qualities to score in!

April's Top Scorers

Rank Team Points this month
1 Galpedal 2381
2 18-Valve. (pithy) 2327
3 PremierAndrew 2318
4 Bicycle_Boy 2219
5 ray10 2183
6 Otoxiep87 2144
7 BlueRoads 2137
8 Tigerion 2130
9 Rebecops 2106
10 Object 2070

It was tight at the top, with 63 points separating the podium finishers. (Note that scores were quite a bit lower than March, mostly due to the non-exact start and end date of months - as CQ updates are weekly - led March to be about a week and a half longer than April). Galpedal topped the rankings, with Julian Alaphilippe in a starring role with 466 points on the month. Galpedal had two other scorers with more than 300 points, Geraint Thomas with 347 and Tom Pidcock's elite road coming out party giving him 338. Wout Van Aert compiled another 298 in his sterling season, while Mark Cavendish showed everyone his career wasn't dead in Turkey, netting 210 points on the month.

18-Valve had Alaphilippe, Thomas, Pidcock and Cavendish, but none of them were their team's high scorer, as they were one of the two teams to benefit from Tadej Pogacar's otherworldly season - he got 521 points on the month, bringing him to 1339 on the season well before dominating the Tour and winning Lombardia. PremierAndrew rounds out the podium with the same big four shared by 18-Valve and Galpedal, with Adam Yates scoring 181 and a smattering of support from smaller scoring riders making it close.

Top 10 at the end of April

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

Not quite making the monthly podium was Bicycle Boy, but 4th on the month with a starting position of 6th overall at the end of March leads the charge to the top. Their team's three riders costing over 1000 points lead the way, with Van Aert scoring 1308 by the end of April, and MvdP and Alaphilippe both with 95. Northerner was close behind and Hugo was still lurking close to the top in third. Six of the ten teams on this list were in the top 10 in March and all of the top 5; notably, eventual winner Object sneaks back into the top 10.

check out the spreadsheet

 

[skidmark]

Year in Review: May

May was a month dominated by the Giro, which was won by the most popular rider in the game. As such, baseline scores were pretty high, although there was still some strong variation. Beyond the Giro, there were actually no other WT level races in May (aside from the Dauphine which started on May 30), and several PS-level races from the regular (4 Days of Dunkirk, Boucles de Mayenne) to the rescheduled (Algarve, Andalucia).

May's Top Scorers

Rank	Team	Points this month
1	postmanhat	2879
2	Londonpat	2640
3	vladimir	2434
4	Mellow Velo	2366
5	comodoro	2360
6	mineralJ	2343
7	Nicosix	2289
8	just_some_guy	2244
9	Rakim	2243
10	Squire	2237

The top score of the month went to postmanhat with 2879 points; 1031 were from Bernal, so the other 1848 were the ones that differentiated postmanhat from the majority of teams. Their team had another very good Giro scorer in Simon Yates, who took in 434 for the month for his 14 owners, and other good performers included Bardet with 253, Sagan with 230, and unique pick Jonathan Lastra with 212 from high placings in both Algarve and Andalucia.

Londonpat managed second, although a few hundred back. Aside from Bernal, their team had a similar makeup with Yates/Bardet/Sagan, as well as MA Lopez with 211. So although their top end was nearly identical to first place, but the undercard makes the difference in that postmanhat had 7 riders score between 55-115 points whereas Londonpat had only 5. vladimir is also a bit back in third, lacking Yates from the top riders but having strong support lower down from riders like Bettiol (123 points), Gaviria (114 points, which is 114 more than I remember him scoring this year), Viviani (99), Formolo (92), and Kristoff (90).

Top 10 at the end of May

Rank	Team	Points
1	Total Package	9082
2	Northerner	8991
3	Squire	8878
4	Otoxiep87	8830
5	Hugo Koblet	8781
6	Armchair cyclist	8748
7	Boris98	8731
8	Fivezzz	8680
9	Object	8582
10	manafana	8549

Bicycle Boy, the leader after April, was one of the few teams in the game without Bernal, and it only could hold for so long. Their team only managed 645 points in May and fell to 34th overall. Northerner had been second and had a great month to stay there, but was leapfrogged by Total Package, who takes the lead by 91 points. Squire continued an impressive run up the table into a podium position, and the entire final podium is in the top 10 by this point. Eight of the top 10 teams at the end of May were also in the top 10 at the end of April, and eventual winner Object stays steady lurking down in 9th.

spreadsheet for your perusal

 

[skidmark]

Year in Review: June

Continuing our casual look back at the past season, we've made our way to June. Most cycling fans know the drill for June - Dauphine, Suisse, nationals, start of the Tour. And those are the big hits, for sure. But of course there are the 'lots of riders need to do races before the nationals and Tour' races, including three 2.PS races and one 2.1 race that took place on the exact same dates - Tour of Belgium, Slovenia, and ZLM Tour (although that ended up being cancelled) all happened from the 9th-13th, and the 2.1 Occitanie on the 10th-13th, all concurrent with Suisse (6th-13th). Thrown in was the usual mix of 1.1 and .2 races. All told, especially with nationals it was likely that most riders on most teams were riding somewhere and therefore there were lots of chances for varied point totals.

June's Top Scorers

Rank	Team	Points this month
1	del1962	2228
2	Object	2130
3	Bonimenier	2073
4	Koronin	2056
5	Galpedal	2034
6	tobydawq	2031
7	Tigerion	1940
8	search	1929
9	Riverside	1916
10	PremierAndrew	1912

del1962 came out on top for the month, clearing 2k with 25 riders scoring points sometime in the month. The top scorer of their team was Tour of Belgium winner Remco Evenepoel, whose 39 owners must have heaved a sigh of relief after his disastrous Giro led into him claiming 336 points for June. del1962 also saw strong months from Matej Mohoric (306 points, 5 teams), Alexey Lutsenko (256 points, 31 teams), Rigo Uran (251 points, 8 teams), Ben O'Connor (221 points, 5 teams), and Geraint Thomas (211 points, 32 teams). If you remember who was in the top 10 at the Tour, you might be thinking that del is probably going to have a good July as well. We shall see next week.

Object made a mark in June as a real contender, landing in second 98 points back. This was thanks to Evenepoel, Lutsenko and Thomas as well, with Cavendish (233 points, 19 teams) joining them over 200 points. But Object had good support from lower-scoring riders, with 9 more scoring over 50 points. Bonimenier rounds out the podium, with the same triumvurate on both previously named teams, as well as 347 from Colbrelli who seems to score that amount every month in 2021.

Top 10 at the end of June

Rank	Team	Points
1	Object	10712
2	Total Package	10696
3	Squire	10608
4	Otoxiep87	10440
5	Northerner	10352
6	Boris98	10253
7	Armchair cyclist	10157
8	Bonimenier	9991
9	tobydawq	9982
10	Jon_Ezeitza	9977

Well well well, look who's on top. Object jumped into a very narrow lead on the first update in July, with Total Package and Squire close behind. You may recall that, with a switch of order of 2nd and 3rd place, this ended up being the final podium of the season. So the die was cast even in the first days of the Tour. Looked at with only those starting and ending points, it is interesting to note that Object led Squire by 104 points after Update 23, and led Squire by 114 points after Update 39, the final update four months later. Of course, there was a bit of a roller coaster between that, but somewhat fascinating that their final score differential only varied by 10 points ultimately between the first week of July and the last week of the season.

spreadsheet link

 

[skidmark]

Year in Review: July

Let's see, July, July... what happened in July? Ah, yes. The Sibiu Cycling Tour from July 6-9, the national championships of Algeria and Lebanon, the 2.1 Settimana Ciclista Italiana (I genuinely don't recall this happening even though I was following cycling results obsessively)... okay okay, it was the Tour and the Olympics. With San Sebastian thrown in at the end as well as the Tour de l'Ain (which had a bit less stacked of a lineup than last year when it was a key covid restart tuneup race). Lots of points from those two biggest races (okay three if you count the RR and ITT separately at the Olympics), who got 'em?

July's Top Scorers

Rank	Team	Points this month
1	Otoxiep87	2592
2	Object	2565
3	BlueRoads	2554
4	Nakazar	2427
5	del1962	2415
6	Galpedal	2357
7	Bicycle_Boy	2113
8	JPettersen	2099
9	rote_laterne	2098
10	18-Valve. (pithy)	2095

Pretty close at the top, and comparable to top scores from other months, as the Tour does have a schedule-clearing effect that depresses overall scores even if it gives a ton on its own. The top 2 of the month were both already in the top 4 overall coming into July, so it got even better for them. Otoxiep87 had the best month, grabbing almost 2600 points, more than half of which were from mega-meal-ticket Tadej Pogacar, who took 1301 for his 2 teams in an utterly dominant Tour de France. Obviously, that meant that Otoxiep87's other riders were relatively muted by comparison, with the only other real notable being Bauke Mollema's 416 points (which I totally forgot about his great July despite him being on my team) for 4th in the Olympics, 10th at San Sebastian, 20th in the Tour with a stage win, a typically consistent and solid performance. Otoxiep87 got over 100 from Alaphilippe and Pollitt.

Second on the month was the ever-present Object, whose team was a bit more spread out but still concentrated, with Vingegaard getting 684 for his 9 teams with a full breakout performance, Mollema's 416, Cavendish with 295 for his dramatic resurgence, and Lutsenko with 258 for his best GT performance. Rounding out the podium was BlueRoads only 38 points from first, thanks to Vingegaard, Mollema and Lutsenko as well as a breakout performance by Neilson Powless (248 points), which was much appreciated by his two owners.

Top 10 at the end of July

Rank	Team	Points
1	Object	13277
2	Otoxiep87	13032
3	Total Package	12527
4	Squire	12521
5	Galpedal	12298
6	Nakazar	12234
7	JPettersen	11885
8	Northerner	11849
9	rote_laterne	11781
10	Armchair cyclist	11761

Some change in the top 10, but the very top got more stratified, with Object 200 ahead of Otoxiep87, and then a gap of over 500 to the rest. The die was fairly cast for the end game by this point, with one GT, two monuments, the Worlds and a bunch of smaller races still to come but 2/3 of the season over with.

spreadsheet link

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

Sorry to interrupt the review of the year, but to build upon what DJSprtsch has started above, I have had to beginning and end of last year lists open for trying to create my team, and the best I can come up with forsakes his two top scorers to enable a higher total

	Cost	Score
COLBRELLI Sonny	347​	1823​
BERNAL GOMEZ Egan Arley	450​	1736​
YATES Adam	592​	1414​
PHILIPSEN Jasper	645​	1346​
MOHORIC Matej	302​	1310​
GAUDU David	484​	1288​
WOODS Michael	666​	1275​
VINGEGAARD RASMUSSEN Jonas	107​	1254​
MOLLEMA Bauke	310​	1190​
MERLIER Tim	483​	1140​
ASGREEN Kasper	543​	1136​
STUYVEN Jasper	502​	1126​
HAYTER Ethan	228​	1106​
CAVENDISH Mark	15​	990​
LAPORTE Christophe	136​	952​
VAN POPPEL Danny	290​	948​
TRENTIN Matteo	370​	914​
O'CONNOR Ben	218​	857​
HONORE Mikkel Frølich	170​	855​
HERMANS Ben	168​	719​
PIDCOCK Thomas	57​	708​
CATTANEO Mattia	153​	687​
POLITT Nils	89​	630​
MOSCON Gianni	69​	569​
SWIFT Connor	61​	556​
EIKING Odd Christian	33​	545​
SKJELMOSE JENSEN Mattias	0​	344​
GESBERT Elie	6​	330​
JOHANNESSEN Tobias Halland	0​	237​
MOREIRA GUARINO Mauricio Jose	0​	208​
WILLIAMS Stephen	5​	198​
HERMANS Quinten	0​	186​
WALLS Matthew	0​	185​
TOTAL	7499​	28762​

It may well be possible to top this selection, but I wish I had chosen them.

 

[skidmark]

Year in Review: August

Whoops! I totally dropped this recap project in December. I got distracted with Omicron and then only remembered a couple of days before the 2022 game deadline. Well, it's slow in the early season, so I'll do the last 3 months of 2021 in the next week for the completists among us (it bugs me to leave it unfinished even though it was entirely my fault).

August was definitely a dip after the high profile combo of the Tour and Olympics, as the main race of the month (the Vuelta) didn't end until the 5th of September. Aside from that, only two WT races took place (Pologne and Bretagne Classic, with the cancellation of the Hamburg race), but there were a fair amount of PS races including Burgos, Denmark, Norway, Deutschland, and Brussels. So it was low-key, but there was some racing!

August's Top Scorers

Rank	Team	Points this month
1	vladimir	2153
2	R_O_Shipman	2053
3	Sneekes	1927
4	Object	1904
5	skidmark	1838
6	Eyeballs Out	1813
7	Gigs_98	1750
8	Nyssinator	1736
9	Riverside	1735
10	search	1728

This is our lowest high-score for the month since February, but comparable to some of the other months! A couple of teams clear 2000 points, and atop them all is vladimir. Their team was one of the 39 owners who breathed a sigh of relief at the Remissance (sure, I'll go with it) in August, as Evenepoel beat up on the competition in some smaller races to make up for his lacklustre season thus far, winning Denmark, a 1.PS and a 1.1 race to nab 426 on the month. Mike Teunissen (214 points, 34 teams) had a sneaky good August and Alexander Kristoff (208 points, 14 teams) somehow cleared 200 points in August even though I don't recall this at all despite owning him. Politt (194 points), Bardet (190, could have been more if not for crashing in Burgos) and Cort (165, an early sign of his good form for the Vuelta for his 5 owners) were vladimir's other top riders.

R O Shipman also cleared 2000 points thanks to Evenepoel, but with a different undercard of Mohoric (237 points, 5 teams), Odd Christian Eiking (256 points, 3 teams) and Rein Taaramae (182 points, 7 teams), because of course the Vuelta stage and jersey points accumulated in August even if the GC ones didn't. Sneekes, well, sneaks into 3rd for the month, without a marquee showing like Evenepoel but with points from 25 of 33 riders, led by a breakout month by Mikkel Honore (272 points, 4 teams) and a resurgent and frankly inspiring month by teammate Fabio Jakobsen (220 points, 3 teams). Add in some scores close to 200 from the likes of Politt, Bardet, and Dylan Teuns, and you've got a good month.

Top 10 at the end of August

Rank	Up/down	Team	Points
1	(-)	Object	15181
2	(-)	Otoxiep87	13968
3	(-)	Squire	13854
4	(-)	Nakazar	13494
5	(+1)	Total Package	13492
6	(-1)	Galpedal	13377
7	(-)	JPettersen	13327
8	(-)	Northerner	13043
9	(+2)	laarsland	12984
10	(+6)	Jon_Ezeitza	12973

After having a 250ish point lead at the end of July, Object followed that up by finishing 4th in the month of August to extend that lead to over 1200 points! So at this point it looked pretty set, which made it quite remarkable that Squire made it so close in the end. Six of the teams in the final top 10 were in the top 10 here, so there was still some movement in the final months, but the very top was looking pretty clear at this point.

spreadsheet link