Update #11: Leadbelly is not singing the blues
A classic spring week has come and gone, and some teams struck it really big, with 'rare-but-popular-enough-to-be-a-difference-maker' riders like Higuita and Girmay scoring big, and a flurry of decent-point races both of the one-day and stage-race variety. Spoiler alert for the very next section of this update - 11 teams broke the 1000 point barrier for the week!
This Week's Top Scorers
In fact, the best teams this week broke 1200 points! Leadbelly scores a narrow victory, thanks primarily to the two riders I name-dropped in the intro: Biniam Girmay's first ever two days on the cobbles netted 316 points on the week for his 17 team owners, and Sergio Higuita's consistency combined with audacity got 327 points for his 30 owners. As well, Leadbelly got an even 200 points from Joao Almeida, a rider picked by only two teams, and then 139 from the highly regarded Juan Ayuso, who was picked by considerably more teams (57 to be exact). EvansIsTheBest, a familiar name in these updates so far this year, has another incredible week, just behind at 1238 points. EITB of course had the big two of Higuita and Girmay, as well as Ayuso, but in place of Almeida their team contained Ben Tulett (105 points, 22 teams) and Kaden Groves (93 points, 13 teams). Lortnoc ends up in third with the same marquee combo as EITB, swapping out Groves for Marc Hirschi (99 points, 33 teams).
Green Jersey Competition
The rich got richer this week, as 4 of the top 5 in this ranking scored points this week (meaning they were in the top 15 on the week; and of course being high on this list means you've had some good weeks). EvansIsTheBest scores 35 points for 2nd on the week, but ray10 was well ahead after the last few weeks and scored 10 points this week to boot. Lortnoc and Jakob747 scored 30 and 20 this week respectively (and kabete in 6th place overall was also in the top 5 of the week).
Top 10 Overall
Well, when the top 10 teams overall have about 4000 points and a bunch of teams scored over 1000 points this week, things are gonna shake up. Last week's leader Eyeballs Out, while scoring a decent-sounding 425 points on the week, gets overtaken by the supercharged scorers this week and falls all the way to 14th overall. Everything else gets shaken up in the top 10 save for the remarkably consistent Squire in third; EITB takes back the top spot, ray10 comes back to the podium, and the top 3 are quite a bit ahead of the rest. Nakazar, Lortnoc, triley36 and kabete leap into the top 10, while on top of the aforementioned Eyeballs Out, laarsland, tobydawq and repre slide outta the top 10.
This week is a bit less action packed in terms of volume of races, but of course it makes up for that with high profile racing in the Ronde on Sunday. Dwars Door Vlaanderen is a mid-week appetizer, while 1-day races in France and Spain on the weekend act as counter-programming. Unlikely we get scores as high as this week without a stage race, but it should be fun!
spreadsheet at dropbox
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