Part 2 of my team writeup from most to least popular:
Andrea Bagioli (314, 36) – I had him in his first pro year, the truncated 2020, and he got 377 points in 40 race days across varying terrain, 1-day and stage race alike. Then in 2021, he wins a 1.PS race in his second race day, crashes in his third and suffers a big knee injury, misses almost 5 months, and has a respectable enough end of the season including his first GT. He’s fast and punchy, and most importantly, he’s with QuickStep, which can pull a win out of the hat in virtually every race. Lots of scenarios where he can be the guy who gets away while everyone’s marking his teammate, or conversely, gets pulled back to sprint for the win because his teammate is too dangerous up the road.
Alberto Bettiol (257, 35) – He does share a few similarities with the other Italian A.B. mentioned above, although with a proven engine for long races and less of a kick. “Ulcerative colitis” sounds serious even if you don’t know what it is, and worse if you do. Not fun. But even though it’s a fairly unpredictable issue, he made it work when he could race last year, and he has the potential to get that one big result that’ll make it worthwhile alone.
Remco Evenepoel (1326, 34) – I had a big long writeup for him on my team last year that got lost before I could post it, but essentially what I said was “I’ve never seen a rider who I could legitimately imagine rivalling Merckx until this guy, so damn right I’ll snap him up for <1000 points even if he’s got a broken hip”. My boldness in that statement has been slightly muted after a year (and after seeing Pogacar progress for another year), but I haven’t been convinced otherwise yet either. His collapse in the Giro could have the reasonable explanation of “he’s still a kid who had zero race days for 8 months before starting his first GT, which he was on the podium of for two weeks anyway”, his lacklustre Olympics could be written off as a dip in form that lasted a badly-timed week, and his Lombardia was the end of a trying season for a still-developing rider (his ‘wtf is this’ showing in Chrono de Nations would serve as evidence that he was running on fumes by season’s end). And the Worlds – well, that’s been discussed ad nauseum, attacking from >200km out was fun at least.
Still, it is notable that his unspectacular results came in his biggest races. But, it is also notable that I’m citing literally the only races in the year where he didn’t do spectacularly well (okay, Benelux too). I’m convinced he can do what he regularly does in the biggest races too – when he crashed over the bridge on the Sormano, he was with the final 6 selection deep into a Monument. I can’t forget his 2020 Pologne win – I know, second-tier WT race, but look at the names in the top 25 of the stage he ripped apart, and look at the time gaps. He made a selection of the world’s best riders look like juniors, that was nuts. Either way, it’ll be fun to see what he can do this year, and I’m convinced it’ll score a ton of points. 2000-3000 is my expectation, with the midpoint of that most likely.
Giulio Ciccone (343, 34) – if he has exhausted his supply of ‘dropping out of a GT in the third week while in a high placing’, he will certainly improve. On the one hand, the fact that he seems prone to such misses and missteps is concerning, and is always a risk in CQ (see: anyone who picked Geraint Thomas other than in 2018 thinking if he just stopped crashing he’d score a ton). On the other, he has shown some versatility, squeezing in some high one-day race placings and smaller stage-race placings in his career, alongside his precocious early career Giro stage wins and the stint in yellow at the Tour. He’s got a diverse CQ portfolio. So if he can stay in it long enough to get GT GC points, 700-1000 is a pretty reasonable expectation.
Henri Vandenabeele (15, 30) – the last addition to my team; when I decided to shuffle a more expensive rider out for a higher cost one, I had to drop about 120 points to get under budget, so I turfed Mauro Schmid and looked around the sub-40 point riders and he seemed like the best option. I don’t have a ton of confidence – his results in U23 have been good, and I can convince myself of the narrative of “he was consistently good in 2020, then same in first part of 2021, then he got toxoplasmosis” and forecast a few hundred points. But I’m always skeptical of Lotto with neo-pros, apart from the ultimately tragic Bjorg Lambrecht (RIP) they either take a few years to figure it out on their own (Tim Wellens) or they end up being fool’s gold (Louis Vervaeke).
Olav Kooij (249, 26) – It’s interesting to consider Jumbo’s sprinting possibilities this year with Groenewegen leaving. Aside from WvA who is their first choice for anything important that needs someone fast, there’s a homegrown youth movement with Dekker, Kooij and Van Dijke. All have their appeals in this game – Dekker and Kooij might have the advantage of having a year of WT experience in them, Dekker is quite a bit cheaper, and Van Dijke seems like he can get over some bumps to contend in short stage races that offer GC points for sprinters who can make the selection. In the end, though, the results all seem to suggest that Kooij is the fastest of them, and he’s more consistent than Dekker. He's also the youngest, which is not insignificant when it comes to potential for development. His PCS page is a string of single-digit placings for his whole career thus far. Jumbo had a great intro programme for him first season, with just two WT races in Pologne and Benelux, and maybe this year if they throw in a Dauphine or Tirenno to step it up a notch while keeping a good calendar of .Pro and .1 races, he’ll become more well rounded and score a ton of points. Maybe it’s recency bias, but a 19-year old crashing in Piemonte and chasing back to nab third showed a good amount of fight, and was a good exclamation point on a first year narrative of growth.
Carl Fredrik Hagen (21, 26) – his early-season injury sounded so awful, I’m glad he managed to come back before the end of the year. I did have some hesitation since I passed on him at a cheap price last year, and I still haven’t found any info on why his 2020 was so blah. But also last year there were so many affordable riders that seemed to have clear upside, so in a normal context he’d be a no brainer as his engine is clearly there from his impressive neo-pro year (whoops, there’s a neo-pro that proves as a counterpoint to what I said above about Lotto I guess). And his interviews seem to paint him as determined, motivated and confident for 2022. So that seems like good enough upside at a squad that seems fairly open on the GC leader front.
Ivan Sosa (211, 25) – Movistar and its prior iterations have quite the mixed history with mercurial Colombian talent. Recency bias would suggest this may be a disaster, with the thudding end of Lopez’s stint still hanging around in the air and the Betancur project mercifully sputtering to its end a couple of years back. But this is also the team that brought in Quintana and really established Uran (oh, what could have been, Unibet), and I’m of the mind that it’s a great landing spot for Sosa, at least a much better one than the Ineos setup. But that might be because I can’t really seem to find any good info on Sosa to determine what happened and what he’s thinking, so I’m forced to go off of the “he won a .PS race early in the season and was basically benched” to project his potential for CQ points. Or it might even be more lizard brained than that, basically “he wins the Vuelta a Burgos, and Movistar targets the Vuelta a Burgos, what a great fit”. I dunno.
Filippo Baroncini (184, 22) – Obviously a Worlds U23 win is a high pedigree result, but the Bystroms and Ledanois’ of this world will have you know that’s not all you need to be a good CQ pick. I picked him for his whole portfolio, which includes good placings across a variety of races, a decent TT, and respectable showings in the 1-day pro races he participated in as a stagaire. That he can hang in the pro races is a good sign, and his skillset can result in a good CQ haul, given the right programme. I think Trek does an alright job of that, and I can see him getting a good result in a .1 or .PS one-day race, the same in one of those stage races with a few punchy stages and a short TT, or even a well-timed attack to get a stage of a WT race to announce himself.
Andrea Piccolo (49, 17) – he’s had an odd path that is difficult to decipher, as in 2021 he was signed by Astana, never raced for them, was dropped midway through the season, and raced a few races independently at the end of the year. Prior to that, his 2020 was trash with 12 race days in a pandemic-ravaged calendar. But bookending that stretch, his pedigree from 2018-19 clearly shows at the level he was racing, and his late 2021 showed some promise, with 1st, 2nd and 8th in his 3 U23 races, and one top 10 and some okay finishes in the 6 pro 1.1 races he did, and a couple of DNFs. So ultimately, you’ve got a WT talent on a PCT team probably doing a PCT calendar with lots of upside. But also at Gazprom, which has traditionally been a place where decent CQ picks on paper go to die (that is: be anonymous and score no points). So, hmm what do you do with that… sold for 49 points!!