Vingegaard better score some more points though. I don't wanna use such a big chunk of my budget on something that requires zero thinking or analysis.
-
The Cycling News forum is still looking to add volunteer moderators with. If you're interested in helping keep our discussions on track, send a direct message to
In the meanwhile, please use the Report option if you see a post that doesn't fit within the forum rules.
Thanks!
At the same time if a lot of people spend a big chunk of budget on obvious picks it becomes a game about really finding next years Del Toro and his like.Vingegaard better score some more points though. I don't wanna use such a big chunk of my budget on something that requires zero thinking or analysis.
Which I am usually much better at than picking the next Girmay or Cosnefroy. So it might be good for me. But I still enjoy puzzling together a full 7500 points team like this year. Was a fun off-season this time with very few super-obvious picks and a lot of promising young riders available.
It's obviously a bit early to be looking at next year's team, but I feel like next year's picks no. 25-33 in the team won't feel like they have as much potential upside as basically the 40 possible picks I was left with at the end for the 2024 team.
After not picking Ayuso in 2024, Roglic in 2023 and Evenepoel in 2022 for barely over 1k, we are supposed to believe that you would pick Vingegaard for nearly 2k. Who are you trying to fool ?Vingegaard better score some more points though. I don't wanna use such a big chunk of my budget on something that requires zero thinking or analysis.
Yeah, that's another problem. You can pretty much guarantee that the first 1k+ rider I pick will promptly give up his cycling career and move to a monastery in the Himalayas.
I do have a list already of about 40 riders but for every week some of them get less attractive.
I have to say though, before the Vuelta there is a surprising number of Visma riders who have all underperformed this season. If the season ended last week then I could easily have picked 7 Visma riders for next years team. Though now Vingegaard scored big in Poland so him at 1750 if he ends his season now is a lot less appealing than 1400. Also Van Aert will likely keep scoring in the Vuelta so he'll also be less and less appealing. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets a couple more wins and the points jersey overall. Same with Sepp Kuss who with a good Vuelta makes himself a lot less automatic.
I will not break my head about next season before the last race of this season ended. Otherwise too much frustration..
Coming back to the present, are your riders also that busy this week as mine? I checked the startlists and no less then 27 out of my 33 riders are scheduled to race this week.
Didn´t know, if this had been the case once..
The only ones not riding are Bernal, Plapp, Ackermann, L. Hayter, Girmay and S. Bennett.
Coming back to the present, are your riders also that busy this week as mine? I checked the startlists and no less then 27 out of my 33 riders are scheduled to race this week.
Didn´t know, if this had been the case once..
The only ones not riding are Bernal, Plapp, Ackermann, L. Hayter, Girmay and S. Bennett.
Coming back to the present, are your riders also that busy this week as mine? I checked the startlists and no less then 27 out of my 33 riders are scheduled to race this week.
Didn´t know, if this had been the case once..
This week is pretty calm for me.
Last week, otoh... of course; last week PNDKR happened.
Update #31: Cort-ing success
With action in Poland, Denmark, France, and the first couple of Vuelta stages, there were points to go around, and it was a good week to have a nationality-themed team in one of the countries with a race!
This Week's Top Scorers
RedheadDane rides a wave of unique and rare picks scoring in Denmark to take the top spot this week - notable scorers were unique picks Magnus Cort (155 points) and Soren Kragh (88), as well as rare picks Anders Foldager (98, 2), Mikkel Honore (68, 13) and Tobias Lund (79, 7). Yellow Knight is close behind with a differently constructed team, having only Foldager in common and highlighted by Poland-scoring Gregoire (119, 6) and Sheffield (108, 22) as well as unique pick Burgadeau scoring 76 in Limousin. Josedin comes in 10 points behind with yet another teambuilding approach, headlined by De Lie (209, 3), Thibau Nys (83, 28), and unique picks Kaden Groves (70) and Tim Merlier (69).
This Week's High Movers
search finishes just off the podium in the Top Scorers ranking but is on top of the High Movers as the only team to move up double digits this week with their Kelderman-led team (174 points, 3 teams). Yellow Knight is twice a bridesmaid, while JumboVismaFan makes the podium here thanks to De Lie.
Green Jersey Competition
No scoring this week for the top 5, although JumboVismaFan scores 22 on the week to land in 6th only 3 points below DJ Sprtsch.
Top 10 Overall
shalgo is no closer to being caught, and in fact gains 26 points this week on 2nd place. EvansIsTheBest ekes back onto the podium, and there is some jockeying further down the top 10. Salvarani enters the top 10 at the expense of Gotland.
This week sees the Vuelta continue apace, with the Deutschland Tour and Tour Poitou-Charentes taking place as well.
spreadsheet link
With action in Poland, Denmark, France, and the first couple of Vuelta stages, there were points to go around, and it was a good week to have a nationality-themed team in one of the countries with a race!
This Week's Top Scorers
| Rank | Team | Points this week |
| 1 | RedheadDane | 490 |
| 2 | Yellow Knight | 477 |
| 3 | Josedin | 467 |
| 4 | search | 428 |
| 5 | JumboVismaFan | 426 |
RedheadDane rides a wave of unique and rare picks scoring in Denmark to take the top spot this week - notable scorers were unique picks Magnus Cort (155 points) and Soren Kragh (88), as well as rare picks Anders Foldager (98, 2), Mikkel Honore (68, 13) and Tobias Lund (79, 7). Yellow Knight is close behind with a differently constructed team, having only Foldager in common and highlighted by Poland-scoring Gregoire (119, 6) and Sheffield (108, 22) as well as unique pick Burgadeau scoring 76 in Limousin. Josedin comes in 10 points behind with yet another teambuilding approach, headlined by De Lie (209, 3), Thibau Nys (83, 28), and unique picks Kaden Groves (70) and Tim Merlier (69).
This Week's High Movers
| Rank | Team | Up/down |
| 1 | search | (+10) |
| 2 | Yellow Knight | (+9) |
| 3 | JumboVismaFan | (+6) |
| 4 | Jon_Ezeitza | (+5) |
| 4 | pman | (+5) |
| 4 | rote_laterne | (+5) |
search finishes just off the podium in the Top Scorers ranking but is on top of the High Movers as the only team to move up double digits this week with their Kelderman-led team (174 points, 3 teams). Yellow Knight is twice a bridesmaid, while JumboVismaFan makes the podium here thanks to De Lie.
Green Jersey Competition
| Rank | Team | Total |
| 1 | Googolplex | 294 |
| 2 | Jakob747 | 257 |
| 3 | Amethyst | 242 |
| 4 | shalgo | 226 |
| 5 | DJ Sprtsch | 183 |
No scoring this week for the top 5, although JumboVismaFan scores 22 on the week to land in 6th only 3 points below DJ Sprtsch.
Top 10 Overall
| Rank | Up/down | Team | Points |
| 1 | (-) | shalgo | 13493 |
| 2 | (-) | Earns1985 | 11851 |
| 3 | (+1) | EvansIsTheBest | 11699 |
| 4 | (-1) | adamski101 | 11675 |
| 5 | (-) | HoudiniCycling | 11633 |
| 6 | (+1) | MADRAZO | 11439 |
| 7 | (+2) | Squire | 11424 |
| 8 | (-2) | skidmark | 11411 |
| 9 | (-1) | Nakazar | 11386 |
| 10 | (+2) | Salvarani | 11210 |
shalgo is no closer to being caught, and in fact gains 26 points this week on 2nd place. EvansIsTheBest ekes back onto the podium, and there is some jockeying further down the top 10. Salvarani enters the top 10 at the expense of Gotland.
This week sees the Vuelta continue apace, with the Deutschland Tour and Tour Poitou-Charentes taking place as well.
spreadsheet link
So first mountain stage at the vuelta done and the first shape of the vuelta GC is done and there are a few popular picks in the top ranks in our game:
So Mas, Tiberi and van Eetvelt will be riders to watch, also Riccitello, who was strong on the first mountain, although his current GC suffers still a bit from his poor TT.
| Popularity Top20 | Popularity overall | |
| ROGLIČ Primož | 0 | 1 |
| ALMEIDA João | 0 | 0 |
| MAS Enric | 3 | 14 |
| TIBERI Antonio | 7 | 15 |
| VAN EETVELT Lennert | 3 | 10 |
| GALL Felix | 0 | 0 |
| MCNULTY Brandon | 0 | 0 |
| SKJELMOSE Mattias | 0 | 2 |
| LANDA Mikel | 0 | 1 |
| VLASOV Aleksandr | 1 | 2 |
| SIVAKOV Pavel | 0 | 0 |
| RICCITELLO Matthew | 7 | 22 |
| KUSS Sepp | 0 | 0 |
| HAIG Jack | 0 | 2 |
| GAUDU David | 0 | 2 |
| BENNETT George | 0 | 1 |
| DEL TORO Isaac | 15 | 47 |
| RODRÍGUEZ Carlos | 5 | 24 |
| KRON Andreas | 0 | 2 |
| LIPOWITZ Florian | 0 | 0 |
So Mas, Tiberi and van Eetvelt will be riders to watch, also Riccitello, who was strong on the first mountain, although his current GC suffers still a bit from his poor TT.
I have 24 rider in action this week so also a substantial amount. Would have even been 25 if Staune-Mittet hadn't DNSed in Germany.I will not break my head about next season before the last race of this season ended. Otherwise too much frustration..
Coming back to the present, are your riders also that busy this week as mine? I checked the startlists and no less then 27 out of my 33 riders are scheduled to race this week.
Didn´t know, if this had been the case once..
The only ones not riding are Bernal, Plapp, Ackermann, L. Hayter, Girmay and S. Bennett.
Still waiting on Theodor Storm to ride this season who I kneejerk added to my team from hype before the season.
I have 3 of this guys ( Van Eetvelt , Tiberi and Del Torro)
All of them are really young but Tiberi already proved he can hang on in Giro and Van Eetvelt was amazing all season long when he was not injured. Really excited to watch them on this Vuelta with my team being 5th in the standings! Hopefuly I can improve on my 5th place last edition.
This year was the first I went with a team that had no 500+ riders and so far it worked well! Does anyone else have no riders over 500 or is my team unique?
Next year won"t chose this strategy most likely tho... There are at least 3 1000+ riders that looks really attractive so I may end up going with a totally different type of team.
Right now I would say, you have the best cards to be in 2nd position overall after the vuelta. Good for you is, that Martinez doesn´t seem to be in Spain to score.
I have Riccitello, del Toro and C. Rodriguez out of that list. Bummer, that C. Rodriguez doesn´t seem to be in form. Seems for GC points I mostly have to hope for Riccitello and otherwise for Stage points out of the breakaway from guys like Teuns, Meintjes and LeCerf...
Damn you Israel! Should have been the first good result for Vergallito this season. That's 40 points lost for me because of them chasing just to get Bennett a 16th place. Hopefully Vergallito will be equally strong in some other breakaway stages. He really took his time to show something this year, but this is promising.
Should have been the first good result for Vergallito this season. That's 40 points lost for me because of them chasing just to get Bennett a 16th place. Hopefully Vergallito will be equally strong in some other breakaway stages. He really took his time to show something this year, but this is promising.
I did a breakdown of teams according to their most expensive riders at the beginning of the year:
https://forum.cyclingnews.com/threads/the-2024-cq-ranking-manager-thread.39370/page-14#post-2946055
https://forum.cyclingnews.com/threads/the-2024-cq-ranking-manager-thread.39370/page-14#post-2946061
You did indeed pick the least expensive top rider (tied with vsd88). Skidmark didn't pick a 500 points rider either in 2012 when assembling the best team ever so it's certainly a perfectly valid strategy to score a ton of points.
It's a really tight battle between 2nd and 5th. Houdini and myself probably have an edge for the rest of the Vuelta because of Tiberi. Then it's going to come down to Rodriguez vs Van Eetvelt. The latter is probably in better form but the former is a lot more experienced over three weeks and almost peerless when it comes to grinding his way up a GC even when the legs aren't great.
Yo! I'm offended by the lack of faith!
I'm getting more and more optimistic for a possible late podium charge. Now that Rodriguez, Blobloblo and Riccitello aren't really doing the business in the Vuelta (and Ayuso is a bit of a mess), my team looks ok in relation to quite a few of the others above me. But I need some stuff to happen outside of the Vuelta as well, like Pidcock or Sheffield to score a bit tomorrow.
I didn't include shalgo's team in the fight for second and that doesn't mean I lack faith in their team. No but more seriously, I wouldn't be shocked if you scored more points than teams #2 through 5 until the end of the Vuelta. I'm just not seeing where you make up the entire gap when Tiberi is your only significant Vuelta GC threat. Sheffield doing something tomorrow would be nice, no arguments there.Yo! I'm offended by the lack of faith!
I'm getting more and more optimistic for a possible late podium charge. Now that Rodriguez, Blobloblo and Riccitello aren't really doing the business in the Vuelta (and Ayuso is a bit of a mess), my team looks ok in relation to quite a few of the others above me. But I need some stuff to happen outside of the Vuelta as well, like Pidcock or Sheffield to score a bit tomorrow.
Vuelta is mostly about not being outscored too much for me. And the prospects for that is looking better than expected, as we could end up with Tiberi being the biggest scorer by far among the CQ relevant riders.
Other than that, I've noticed that there's the odd missing Archie Ryan in the top 10, a few missing Jan Christens and so on, which gives me some hope. Also, I'll laugh if Ethan Hayter ends up being the rider putting me just above your team!
Edit: I forgot that MADRAZO has Mas. But at least they don't have Tiberi.
Okay, I take back everything I said. Tiberi gone and Rodriguez looking at a high GC position after all.
This is the kind of week I was expecting would happen more often when Magnier and Lamperti were tearing it up early season. Add in Rodriguez back into the Vuelta mix and things are actually going decent for once this year.
Tiberi gone but I think it's still a positive day overall. Carapaz and Rodriguez look better than they did at the start of the Vuelta. Magnier, Nys and Sheffield get a big chunk of points in Plouay and Lamperti and Ryan do the same in Germany.
TRENDING THREADS
-
Il Lombardia 2024, one day monument, October 12, farewell to Domenico Pozzovivo- Started by Lequack
- Replies: 880
-
World Championships 2024: Men's Road Race (September 29)- Started by Devil's Elbow
- Replies: 2K
-
Teams & Riders The Remco Evenepoel is the next Eddy Merckx thread- Started by DNP-Old
- Replies: 28K
-
-
Coppa Bernocchi Oct 7/Tre Valli Varesine Oct 8/Gran Piemonte Oct 10- Started by Berniece
- Replies: 286
-
Teams & Riders The Great Big Cycling Transfers, Extensions, and Rumours Thread
- Started by RedheadDane
- Replies: 11K
-
Teams & Riders Tadej Pogačar discussion thread- Started by Lequack
- Replies: 21K
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram