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The 2022 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

Hi all, and welcome to the 2022 CQ Ranking Manager Game! This is the twelfth edition of the game! Please see below for some history, basics, and more specific rules related to dates, dopers, etc.

History

The game was launched on December 8th 2010 by cyclingnews forum poster Hugo Koblet. His idea was to have a game where you build a cycling team from the website cqranking.com and its comprehensive numerical rankings of riders. What was originally meant to be a 25-team max competition that Hugo reserved the right to cancel if there was lack of interest became the most successful game in cyclingnews forum history, and has expanded to velorooms forums as well.

Hugo successfully ran the game for 3 years, and it bred various offshoots, such as a youth game, seasonal games (classics and GTs), emerging riders and riders in decline games. I took over organizing the main game for 2014 when Hugo got too busy, and have done so for the past seven years. See the second post in this thread for a roll of honour of yearly champions.


That is it for preamble. Let’s go through the more comprehensive set of rules:

Basics

The game is based on the point system developed by the website www.cqranking.com. Based on this system you will have to select a team of between 25 and 33 riders whose combined value doesn’t exceed 7500 points. 7500 points is normally under the mean for the ProTour teams; the mean for 2020 is 7830. 7500 is closest to the amount of points team Israel Start-Up Nation made this season, the 7th ranked of the 19 WT teams.

Your aim then is to select a team of riders who will increase their 2021 score the most during the 2022 season. The winner of the game is the one who has selected the team with the highest combined value when the game ends.


1. How the game works

1.1. Start & Finish

The season starts when the first major race (.1 or higher) giving CQ points is held* and ends when the last major race is held. The winner will be crowned when the next update after the last major race is out.**

*normally, the game season starts when the first race giving out points is held, which is usually the Aussie nationals soon after the new year. Coronavirus pushed those back in 2021, but this is back at the top of the calendar with the TT race scheduled to be the first one up on January 12th. There is currently one 2.2 race scheduled before then, but any points scored by riders in those races will be reflected in the first update.



**An extension will be granted to the end of season if it is very close at the top. If any teams are within 100 points of the leader after the last major race, the season will be automatically extended until the final race of the year unless all teams within 100 points explicitly concede. As well, anyone in the top 10 can extend the season by PMing me a request to do so before the last major race starts.

(The reason for this second rule is that although minor races go through December, it is rare to have a rider in the game participate in these races, so it is sensible to end the season when people are still generally watching cycling. But if it's a very close race, it's important to crown the person who picked the best team for the year.)

1.2 Updates
Each week we will publish an update with a top 10 and a list of the high scorers and high jumpers. This will sometimes be by me, and sometimes by others – I will be setting a tentative schedule based on volunteers.

2. On doping

2.1. On ex-dopers

All riders are available to choose, except for riders who are provisionally suspended by the UCI (as of their most recent list).

Riders who have been suspended for doping and had that affect their 2020 score will not be available simply for their 2020 score. Instead, a rider’s value will be equivalent to that of his last full season; or, if he has more recently had a (not full, due to suspension) season in which he has earned more points, that season represents his value. Riders who have been suspended by the UCI (ie. Not merely provisionally suspended) are on this list.

Therefore, you can pick any rider you like, but if you want to take Jaime Roson, for example (his suspension ends in 2022), he got 0 points in 2017-2021 due to his suspension and backdated annulment of results. His suspension dates back to 2017, meaning his last 'full' season was 2016, in which he scored 178 points. The length of suspensions (and relatively low profile of positive athletes) means that hopefully the complicated rules around doping won’t be an issue this season.

Hopefully the lists I've provided and the rules are clear enough, but if you make an error I will try to let you know if any of your submissions fall into this category.

**NOTE: I have made a specific rule to deal with the unique case of Dylan Groenewegen, who has faced a long suspension for a non-doping offense. Briefly, he is to be treated the same as dopers, available for his 2019 cost for both the 2021 and 2022 editions of the game.

2.2. Riders getting caught during the season

If you include a rider in your team who gets caught with his hands in the cookie jar, nothing happens right away. Your rider keeps his points unless the cqranking.com deletes his results before the end of the game.

Basically, the value of a rider on cqranking.com always stands.

3. Submitting your team

3.1. How do I?

You pick between 25 and 33 riders whose combined value doesn’t exceed 7500 points and send the list to me.

As I will manually have to copy/enter the teams into the Microsoft Excel file which keeps track of the scores, please be careful that you send your team to me based on the correct formula. I don’t take any responsibility for any error you might make. If I spot an error I will do my best to contact you but I can’t guarantee anything. Of course, if you have any questions feel free to ask either here in this thread or by sending a personal message.

The layout you need to use is this:

ROGLIC Primoz
POGACAR Tadej
Etc.

Nothing else. No point scores after the name. Also, be careful that there is no “space” after the name, because I will have to delete it manually, but can't always detect these things in time for the game. If there is an error that isn't discovered until after the game starts, and that error makes your team ineligible (eg. if it puts your team over the limit) the rider will simply be deleted from the team without replacement.

To make things easier for both you and me I will link to a file for you to download in which you can type in your team and it will automatically show you the value of each rider as well as the aggregated value of your team. Then you will just have to copy your team (names only) directly from this file and send it to me.

Hopefully this clears any misunderstandings of a rider’s value as well as reduces the number of errors made in a team sent to me.

3.2. When do I?
The first race of the season will start January 12, so I want to have your team in hand on January 10 at the latest.

There are two deadlines: a submission deadline and a revision/publication deadline, spaced 24 hours apart. This is to address the issue brought up in recent years about whether it is 'fair' to allow changes after teams have seen the teams of other players, and for 'late' submissions. I would like to make this a game that is accessible to as many people as possible, yet preserve that element of fairness. So, the submission deadline will be when I want to have received all the teams. The revision and publication deadline is to allow a 24-hour period for me to look over the teams and allow a chance to people to change their team in case of error, before having access to a list of riders that other teams picked. If you get mixed up with the time zone or unexpectedly don't have internet access around the submission deadline, I will accept teams up to the revision deadline at my discretion, but if allowed those teams will not have the chance to revise in case of error.

The submission deadline is 23:59 (CET) January 9th, so early January 10th for Aussies and sometime earlier on January 9th for North Americans. The revision and publication deadline is 24 hours later; I would ask that people refrain from posting the riders on their team until after that, so midnight CET on the start of January 11th.

Please note that even though the racing season is over, it is always possible that CQ will adjust points for an earlier season race for whatever reason (eg. readjusting points for suspended dopers) Be mindful of these changes.

cqranking.com usually uploads the final update of the season on December 31, and the values in this update are the ones we’re using. However, the changes are usually very small so there’s no reason why you can’t start selecting your team already today!

Disclaimer: ensuring your team is full of eligible riders and is on budget is your responsibility. If I notice you are over budget or have an ineligible rider I will send you a message, but if you don't get back to me in time, or I don't catch it before the deadline, I will simply remove one rider to make your budget work. Obviously it is to your advantage to be able to choose all your riders, so please be diligent.

Create Your Team


Hugo created a very helpful file in 2012, referred to above, that helps avoid any errors in calculation and helps ensure you are formatting your rider names correctly. I would encourage everyone to use this option, especially if you are not confident in your spreadsheet creating skills. Please use the file attached here to create your team, then copy and paste the rider names to send to me by PM once you have it correct. Thank you.

note: the 'create your team' file has not yet been manually updated to include different scores for dopers as per rule 2.1, so it is currently wholly your responsibility to account for this.

I think that about covers everything. If you have any questions or if I forgot to add or explain anything, please let me know.
 
I'm going to reserve the second post in the thread for a list of teams who have submitted, as they come in, as well as list an honour roll of top finishers throughout the years.

As of 4:00 CET on January 9th, the following 55 teams have been received:

1Mayomaniac
2comodoro
3vladimir
4Jon Ezeitza
5zaka_fan
6Bonimenier
7Salvarani
8Panda Claws
9Berflamand
10repre
11Riverside
12vsd88
13EvansIsTheBest
14Leadbelly
15Jspear
16search
17armchairclimber
18Jumbo Visma Fan
19triley36
20Koronin
21Martin
22Sneekes
23oliveira
24scrooll007
25Total Package
26BlueRoads
27firefly3323
28Hugo Koblet
29NielsB
30Eric10
31adamski101
32PremierAndrew
33Kazistuta
34LaFlorecita
35trackstand
36Rakim
37Hakkie2
38Earns1985
39will10
40Object
41ray10
42rote_laterne
43Otoxiep87
44Lortnoc
45Armchair Cyclist
46Jpettersen
47bminchow
48escartin
49edkDeus
50LosBrolin
51Mellow Velo
52Amis Velo
53DJ Sprtsch
54NorthAmericanScum
55MADRAZO

Role of Honour:

2011 – 87 participants

ingsve – 13897 points
Waterloo Sunrise – 13450
mc_mountain – 12670

2012 – 129 participants

skidmark – 19345 points
Kvinto – 18087
Nyssinator – 17761

2013 – 132 participants

SteelyDan – 13094 points
Geraint Too Fast – 13074
will10 – 12986

2014 – 150 participants

Pentacycle – 14367 points
Cykeltyven – 13693
Ruudz0r - 13609

2015 – 155 participants

Cykeltyven – 16209 points
skidmark - 15616
snccdcno - 15412

2016 – 144 participants

skidmark – 15392 points
jeroenk - 14707
abbulf – 14448

2017 – 131 participants

fauniera – 15867 points
the asian - 15698
GP Blanco - 15217

2018 – 129 participants

ruvu75 – 16513 points
Squire - 16099
trackstand - 15832

2019 - 114 participants

  1. fauniera - 14579 points
  2. karaev - 14339
  3. Hakkie2 - 14260
2020 - 113 participants

  1. bminchow - 10010 points
  2. Wallenquist - 9520
  3. Object - 9173
2021 - 93 participants

  1. Object - 19129 points
  2. Squire - 19015
  3. Total Package - 18676
 
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With Covid scuppering most of my plans for the upcoming weeks, at least I'll have a lot of time to put together a mediocre team.

On a brighter note, the early-season calendar looks a lot less thin than last year for the time being. San Juan, Saudi Tour and Tour of Antalya are still set to go ahead, Volta ao Algarve and Tour du Rwanda have gone back to February, and Spain takes the cake with everything back in its usual slot in addition to a fifth day for Challenge Mallorca, a new one-day race in Jaén and a new four-day stage race in Galicia. A fair few of these have announced (part of) the route too. Let's hope things stay that way.
 
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A look at some of the record-setting riders in the previous editions

Most Improved

1​
BOONEN Tom
2011​
2012​
502​
2202​
1700
2​
POGACAR Tadej
2020​
2021​
2044​
3656​
1612
3​
ROGLIC Primoz
2018​
2019​
1709​
3235​
1526
4​
COLBRELLI Sonny
2020​
2021​
347​
1823​
1476
5​
YATES Simon
2017​
2018​
858​
2261​
1403
6​
WIGGINS Bradley
2011​
2012​
1323​
2687​
1364
7​
FROOME Chris
2012​
2013​
1427​
2766​
1339
8​
GILBERT Philippe
2010​
2011​
1843​
3180​
1337
9​
CONTADOR VELASCO Alberto
2013​
2014​
1228​
2543​
1315
10​
BERNAL GOMEZ Egan Arley
2020​
2021​
450​
1736​
1286

Most Improved (<100 cost)
1​
COBO ACEBO Juan Jose
2010​
2011​
0​
1048​
1048
2​
KITTEL Marcel
2010​
2011​
60​
1041​
981
3​
CAVENDISH Mark
2020​
2021​
15​
990​
975
4​
MOSER Moreno
2011​
2012​
78​
1036​
958
5​
HENAO MONTOYA Sergio Luis
2014​
2015​
92​
916​
824
6​
BETTIOL Alberto
2018​
2019​
50​
781​
731
7​
COQUARD Bryan
2012​
2013​
33​
742​
709
8​
DE BUYST Jasper
2016​
2017​
50​
710​
660
9​
PIDCOCK Thomas
2020​
2021​
59​
708​
649
10​
QUINTANA ROJAS Nairo Alexander
2011​
2012​
60​
707​
647
 
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I've updated the "Create Your Team" spreadsheet with the final 2021 CQ rankings (December 31st download came out). So you can check with confidence whether your team is under budget by using that spreadsheet, before submitting. All of the teams submitted so far are still under budget, so that's good news!
 
Thanks! I see I forgot about the Groenewegen rule. But after updating I like my team better now actually.

Yes Groenewegen rule in place this year as per the OP - I updated the "Create Your Team" spreadsheet with his corrected cost so hopefully people will notice through that! If anyone reading this is thinking of choosing Groenewegen and didn't notice in the middle of the lengthy first post where it was mentioned, he costs 1207 points this year (his 2019 score), not 287 points (his 2021 score), due to his ban costing him time in both 2020 and 2021 and thus lowering his score both those years.
 
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I can't fit Evenepoel into my team without seemingly making it worse. I had PogChamp last year, but now I struggle to fit a single 1000+ point rider in.

Truth is, I don't know what to expect. He'll be racing bigger races , like Liege, T-A, and, I guess, Tour de Suisse. And, of course, La Vuelta. He's probably not a must pick if he doesn't easily clear 2000 points. But he might, especially if they add on smaller races to his schedule.

Back to the drawing board.
 
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Reactions: Squire
Hey all, so teams are trickling in with 5 days to go (27 so far!) and I've noticed an issue with the formatting for several teams... I think the new (as of last year) CN forum is creating some issues. To avoid any issues, if people want to just use the 'paste as text' option when sending me your team by PM, that would be helpful. Cheers!
 
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You all know that feeling of "Great, lot's of time! This year I'll really do my research and get the perfect team together!", right? Well, you probably also all know the feeling "***, this is so soon, the deadline is almost here, I have no time to finish my team!". I've had both of these this year, but now I've submitted my team because I won't have time to work on it the next few days anyway. It's quite different to how I tend to approach this game, so let's see how it plays out! :D
 
I have also submitted my team. It seems to me that there are relatively few 'must have picks' this year (hopefully I haven't overlooked some obvious riders), which would mean we could see some very diverse teams. Looking forward to the team reveals!
 

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