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The 2024 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

Page 45 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
And now for a giant list of potential riders. Please note, that the majority of those are still preliminary, so might change.

Samyn
Amdi Pedersen
Bendixen
Blume Levy
Nielsen
Wallin

Laigueglia
Gregaard

Trofej Umag
Jørgensen
Søjberg

Strade Bianche
Asgreen
Cort
Foldager
Honoré
Kamp

Criquielion
Andersen
Bendixen
Blume Levy
Changizi
Gudnitz
Jørgensen
Larsen
Sander Hansen
Wallin

Ster van Zwolle
Amdi Pedersen
Stokbro

P-N
Charmig
Kragh
Lund
Norsgaard
Pedersen
Skjelmose
Valgren

Monseré
Bévort
Blume Levy
Changizi
Gudnitz
Larsen
Salby
Sander Hansen
Stokbro
Wallin

Trofej Porec
Søjberg

T-A
Asgreen
Cort

So, yeah... hopefully I'll be able to scrape up at least a few points in the upcoming weeks...
 
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Am not worried yet about Turner. With no Ganna, Sheffield or Pidcock riding the cobbles, he's the de facto team leader (unless Tarling monsters them). Hoping he's just riding himself into form for Roubaix after a relatively light early season schedule.
Turner could be either boom or bust.

After PR, and the classics are over, his chances of scoring more points are slim or will be diminishing quite a lot... therefore opening weekend was not very convincing from him or the team for that matter. Still over a month or so to go but a good start would have been better, of course. Turner is quite a popular pick, so his impact is less severe than Wright who could be a completely wasted one. You can only hope they pick up some pace and are riding themselves into form.

It is still early days, and I am being a bit facetious, but these classics guys are often boom or bust.

Right now, Tratnik for example would have been a way better pick than Turner and he was cheaper. Naesen, who has not done anything of note for years had a good opening weekend, also cheaper.

The game is the game.
 
Update #6: Shakes takes the cake

Opening Weekend has passed, with a busy slate of Het Nieuwsblad and KBK, the not-to-be-underestimated-for-CQ-game-purposes double 1.Pro races in France, as well as stage races in UAE, Rwanda, and 2nd place points were up for grabs in O Gran Camino behind Vingegaard.

This Week's Top Scorers

RankTeamPoints this week
1Shakes821
2repre762
3oliveira720
4Popchu699
5Mushroom680

Shakes is the only team cracking 800 points this week, thanks to great performances by a couple of riders, and good performances from more. Leading the way was Juan Ayuso, who got 208 points for his 39 owners for a 1st and 2nd in France. Jan Tratnik got 180 points for an unsurprising surprise win in Het Nieuwsblad for the 9 teams that had the foresight to pick him. Shakes also had good scores from Lenny Martinez (90, 11), Jay Vine (86, 2), Max Poole (77, 16), and 52 points from unique pick Bart Lemmen.

repre lands in 2nd place thanks to Ayuso and a big contribution from Lennert van Eetvelt, whose win in UAE Tour was worth 244 points to the 10 teams that have him. oliveira rounds out the podium with 720 with the same big 2 headlining things.

This Week's High Movers

RankTeamUp/down
1oliveira(+29)
2pman(+26)
2Mushroom(+26)
4Popchu(+23)
5SafeBet(+18)

oliveira moves up almost a third of the rankings to take top spot in the High Movers ranking, while pman (headlined by 222 points as one of the 6 teams to pick Wout Van Aert) and Mushroom (Ayuso, Tratnik) tying for second.

Green Jersey Competition

RankTeamTotal
1Jakob747120
1shalgo120
3repre69
4Boris9861
5Squire55

We have a tie at the top! Jakob747 gets 14 points for 9th place on the week and draws level with shalgo, who finally doesn't score in a week*. repre's 35 points this week vaults them into 3rd in this competition.

*shalgo finished 16th place, one spot out of the points.

Top 10 Overall

RankUp/downTeamPoints
1(-)shalgo3153
2(+2)Jakob7472736
3(-1)DJ Sprtsch2675
4(+1)skidmark2597
5(-2)Squire2587
6(+6)repre2579
7(-)JumboVismaFan2445
8(+10)Gotland2365
9(-)vsd882353
10(+7)Salvarani2318

Despite Jakob's big week, shalgo still holds a 400+ point lead. There's a little jostling in the top 5 with skidmark and Squire only 10 points apart, and down lower in the top 10 there's some bigger movement, with repre, Gotland and Salvarani all moving up a bunch to enter the top 10. This was a sink or swim week with some big scoring riders, and it showed in the standings, with Boris98, Nevs, and del1962 all falling double digit spots out of the top 10.

Whether you moved up or down in the standings, the season keeps churning and a new week is a new opportunity to score some points! This week is a little quieter in terms of races spanning the globe, as it's mostly 1-days concentrated in Europe. Still, the cycling fan can't help but be excited by some of these races and what they harbour. There are two 1.1 races in Belgium, the 1.Pro Trofeo Laigueglia (argh I swore I wouldn't have to look up how to spell that anymore) an appertif for the main event, Strade Bianche on the weekend. And we get a little nibble of the storied top level European stage races when Paris-Nice has its first stage on Sunday.

spreadsheet at dropbox
 
If Ayuso is gonna continue on the Hirschi calendar, us who don't have him can just pack it in. He's really starting to look like this year's Roglic.

Lecerf, despite a disappointing end to a race he was leading, really saved my week. Was expecting to tumble way further than I did.
I think you can still be competitive without him, if you have more rare picks performing.

"Only" 4 out of the top 10 have Ayuso, as of now, which could of course increase.
 
Turner could be either boom or bust.

After PR, and the classics are over, his chances of scoring more points are slim or will be diminishing quite a lot... therefore opening weekend was not very convincing from him or the team for that matter. Still over a month or so to go but a good start would have been better, of course. Turner is quite a popular pick, so his impact is less severe than Wright who could be a completely wasted one. You can only hope they pick up some pace and are riding themselves into form.

It is still early days, and I am being a bit facetious, but these classics guys are often boom or bust.
I'm concerned about Turner.

Last year at this point he already had 1st in Murcia and 2nd in Jaen. This year he rode the same races again and nowhere to be seen near the front.
 
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If Ayuso is gonna continue on the Hirschi calendar, us who don't have him can just pack it in. He's really starting to look like this year's Roglic.
Yeah, good thing is that his main goal will be the tour de France, so mainly ride low competition one day races (like Hirschi las year) as preparation doesn´t make much sense. But yeah, he is for this week also scheduled for Laigueglia and is also the favourite there. Hopefully then he switches to stage races with bigger competition. In Tirreno for example he will face Vingegaard.
 
I think you can still be competitive without him, if you have more rare picks performing.

"Only" 4 out of the top 10 have Ayuso, as of now, which could of course increase.
Nobody has ever finished a season with 67% (or more) of the score of the optimal team so in theory no pick is truly a must have considering the margin for error we are all playing with. Realistically if you share like 20 riders with another team but they have a 1k rider that goes off and you don't, I just don't know how you make the math work to close that gap.

In squire's case, there are four teams that have spent at least half of their budget on the same riders as them (Lortnoc, Salvarani, skidmark and myself) and those teams all have Ayuso. So in those instances, he has to outscore a successful Ayuso pick with less than half of the original budget which gets really dicey. Especially against someone like skidmark that's not going to have a lot of bad picks. Can't even rely entirely on a monster Pidcock or Sheffield season to close that gap because at least one of the other 4 teams has picked that guy as well. So you have to start looking at hitting on a number of non obvious cheap guys and that's tough (although Lecerf and Piganzoli have provided some promising early returns on that front).

Of course all this is wildly premature and Ayuso has to deliver first.
 
Van Eetvelt saved my week!
What's up for this week then? The first race today was not bad.

Le Samyn, 1.1
Result: 2th, 9th, 15th. Can't complain.

Trofeo Laigueglia, 1.Pro
COSNEFROY Benoît
BUSATTO Francesco
RAFFERTY Darren
RYAN Archie
PESENTI Thomas

Strade Bianche, 1.UWT
ARENSMAN Thymen
HERMANS Quinten
MARTINEZ Daniel
COSNEFROY Benoît
CARAPAZ Richard
BUSATTO Francesco
VAN EETVELT Lennert
VERMAERKE Kevin

Grand Prix Criquielion, 1.1
Grote Prijs Jean-Pierre, 1.1

CHRISTEN Fabio

Paris - Nice
BENNETT Sam
VALGREN Michael
PLAPP Lucas

Team DJ Sprtsch focuses on T-A in 2024...
 
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I'm concerned about Turner.

Last year at this point he already had 1st in Murcia and 2nd in Jaen. This year he rode the same races again and nowhere to be seen near the front.
As I said above, for the first time he's probably the de facto leader for Ineos on the cobbles this year, so his form curve is likely to be different. Last season he still might have been expected to support Pidcock/Ganna through the classics so peaking in February wasn't an issue. That's being a bit optimistic perhaps and he could just have become an average rider. But even when he was on fire in 2022 he didn't really get a result till the end of March.
 
As I said above, for the first time he's probably the de facto leader for Ineos on the cobbles this year, so his form curve is likely to be different. Last season he still might have been expected to support Pidcock/Ganna through the classics so peaking in February wasn't an issue. That's being a bit optimistic perhaps and he could just have become an average rider. But even when he was on fire in 2022 he didn't really get a result till the end of March.
That's a pretty optimistic take and I hope you're right, but these days peaking just for a specific part of the season is rather rare. Good riders are mostly good for an entire year. Especially for someone like Turner there's little reason to hold back because most of the races he can get a result in are between February and April.
 
That's a pretty optimistic take and I hope you're right, but these days peaking just for a specific part of the season is rather rare. Good riders are mostly good for an entire year. Especially for someone like Turner there's little reason to hold back because most of the races he can get a result in are between February and April.
I mean, even in recent years it's not exactly rare to do a good main cobbles block off the back of an anonymous opening weekend (and vice versa). So the jury is out until E3 at the earliest.
 
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That's a pretty optimistic take and I hope you're right, but these days peaking just for a specific part of the season is rather rare. Good riders are mostly good for an entire year. Especially for someone like Turner there's little reason to hold back because most of the races he can get a result in are between February and April.
I'll take it if he is bad rider who peaked for the month and scores a lot in march
 
Woohoo! At least a weekly win. As I was near the bottom of the standings in previous weeks. But hey, cycling did not really start until the Omloop does and then my team started to score. Only way is up! I hope. :+)

Thanks for all the work Skidmark !
 
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