The 2024 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[Squire]

The past few weeks have been a bit of a rollercoaster for my prospects for the remainder of the season.

Now I'm pretty sure Pidcock won't score any more meaningful points this season, so it's not looking too great despite a very good Renewi Tour for my guys and some Vuelta stage points here and there.

 

[skidmark]

Update #32: escartin wins a close week

Note: this is the update for the week of August 19th-25th; I'm catching up on updates and will have the 26th-Sept 1st update out in a few days.

As a reminder, the week going into this update included the first week of the Vuelta, GP Bretagne, Deutschland Tour, and Poitou-Charentes. With all those races, there were a lot of places to draw scores from, and that resulted in decent-but-not-huge totals, and a very close race at the top.

This Week's Top Scorers

Rank	Team	Points this week
1	escartin	575
2	JumboVismaFan	566
3	pman	557
4	slow_climber	533
5	EvansIsTheBest	527

The weekly win goes to escartin, who wins by a mere 9 points thanks to the following riders: Paul Magnier (132 points, 21 teams), Tobias Johannessen (107, 7), Thibau Nys (86, 28), Luke Lamperti (91, 39), and a few others. JumboVismaFan ended in 2nd with Magnier and Lamperti as top scorers, as well as Arnaud De Lie (96, 3). pman is in third, another 9 points back, with Magnier as the common denominator, but racking up points from Wout Van Aert (198, 6), Jonathan Milan (91, 9), and Archie Ryan (80, 56).

This Week's High Movers

Rank	Team	Up/down
1	JumboVismaFan	(+5)
1	oliveira	(+5)
3	pman	(+4)
3	LosBrolin	(+4)
3	Crevaison	(+4)
3	laarsland	(+4)

It's getting to the point of the season where movement in the standings is at a premium. JumboVismaFan shares the win in these standings with oliveira (whose team is powered by Magnier/Lamperti/Nys/Ryan), as they move up 5 whole spots in the overall. There's a 4-way tie for third with teams moving up 4 places.

Green Jersey Competition

Rank	Team	Total
1	Googolplex	294
2	Jakob747	261
3	Amethyst	242
4	shalgo	226
5	JumboVismaFan	215

Jakob747 gets 4 points for 14th on the week to close slightly on the lead. JumboVismaFan moves into the top 5 with the high placing on the week, while there's no other scoring in the top 5.

This week, the last team yet to finish in the top 15 on the week did so, and so every participating team now has points in the Green Jersey competition.

Top 10 Overall

Rank	Up/down	Team	Points
1	(-)	shalgo	13809
2	(-)	Earns1985	12234
3	(-)	EvansIsTheBest	12226
4	(-)	adamski101	11912
5	(-)	HoudiniCycling	11886
6	(-)	MADRAZO	11781
7	(-)	Squire	11746
8	(-)	skidmark	11731
9	(+5)	JumboVismaFan	11646
10	(-1)	Nakazar	11596

Not much movement in the top 10 and shalgo's lead is as unassailable as ever, but EvansIsTheBest parlays a top 5 on the week into pulling within 8 points of Earns1985 for second overall. Most of the rest of the top 10 got within about 100 points of each other for the week, although JumboVismaFan translated a huge week into a leap into the top 10 overall, at the expense of Total Package whoo slid out.

The next update will cover the 2nd week of the Vuelta and the Renewi Tour, most notably, as well as perhaps a few rare picks in this game in Hainan.

spreadsheet link

 

[Jumbo Visma Fan :)]

It seems like my unconventional choice of Mas will pay off right when I expected it to, happy to in late with a realistic possibility of a top 5.

 

[ingsve]

I was looking at the results so far for the most expensive picks in the game and it seems like there is essentially no picks over the cost of 600 in the game that will end up being excellent picks. Best right now is Matteo Jorgenson with a return of 1.43 so that is at least well into profit. Other than that most other picks are hovering at between 1,05 to 1.20 in returns.

The Vuelta, Championships and remaining WT races can of course improve things but I bet none of the riders will reach a benchmark of 2.00 in return.

This does of course not mean that one shouldn't pick riders over 600 cost but what it does say is that it doesn't matter as much which rider you have backed whether it's Ayuso, Rodrigues, Mas or as in my case Vlasov and Alaphilippe. It will likely only be a few hundred points difference in the end I suspect unless one of these riders goes on to win Worlds or something.

It will end up being far more impactful on the outcome of the game to miss out on a rider like Del Toro, Martinez, Bernal or Girmay than who exactly you picked for your most expensive riders.

 

[Earns1985]

I was looking at the results so far for the most expensive picks in the game and it seems like there is essentially no picks over the cost of 600 in the game that will end up being excellent picks. Best right now is Matteo Jorgenson with a return of 1.43 so that is at least well into profit. Other than that most other picks are hovering at between 1,05 to 1.20 in returns.

The Vuelta, Championships and remaining WT races can of course improve things but I bet none of the riders will reach a benchmark of 2.00 in return.

This does of course not mean that one shouldn't pick riders over 600 cost but what it does say is that it doesn't matter as much which rider you have backed whether it's Ayuso, Rodrigues, Mas or as in my case Vlasov and Alaphilippe. It will likely only be a few hundred points difference in the end I suspect unless one of these riders goes on to win Worlds or something.

It will end up being far more impactful on the outcome of the game to miss out on a rider like Del Toro, Martinez, Bernal or Girmay than who exactly you picked for your most expensive riders.

Yeah, it´s unlike 2023 with Roglic as a must pick and 2022 with Evenepoel.
I feared in the beginning of the season (as I don´t have him), that Ayuso would also become a must pick this year. Fortunately, the last few months have not confirmed my fears. Unfortunately there is still a month with a lot of one-day races left, so hopefully he will stay under 1500 points in the end.
First good sign: He is not scheduled for the GP Industria (low field, but 130 points to get there). So I assume, he wil ride now the two Canadian Classics with Pogacar, than the Worlds and most likely the remaining Italian classicsin October then..

 

[Squire]

This does of course not mean that one shouldn't pick riders over 600 cost but what it does say is that it doesn't matter as much which rider you have backed whether it's Ayuso, Rodrigues, Mas or as in my case Vlasov and Alaphilippe. It will likely only be a few hundred points difference in the end I suspect unless one of these riders goes on to win Worlds or something.

Yeah, I wrote something similar a few months back. Interestingly Mas, who has lagged behind many of the others for a long time, might end up being among the best expensive picks. But him getting a good chunk of his points from Vuelta was of course always on the cards. Unfortunately for me, Pidcock might be among the worse expensive picks. At least he's not so bad that it makes a huge difference, unless Ayuso or Rodriguez really pop off post-Vuelta. And he has finally made a profit. Barely.

Looking forward to the next delayed update! Segaert and Hagenes might be enough to get me a mention. A shame Sheffield collapsed, but was still a good week.

Also, Aaron Gate is a crazy good unique pick for @hayneplane!

 

[shalgo]

Ayuso’s season, at least so far, is the mirror image of last year. Then, he didn’t score any points until the end of April. This year, almost all of his points come from January-April. So early on, it looked like he was on track to double his score, but it obviously didn’t turn out that way.

 

[hayneplane]

Yeah, I wrote something similar a few months back. Interestingly Mas, who has lagged behind many of the others for a long time, might end up being among the best expensive picks. But him getting a good chunk of his points from Vuelta was of course always on the cards. Unfortunately for me, Pidcock might be among the worse expensive picks. At least he's not so bad that it makes a huge difference, unless Ayuso or Rodriguez really pop off post-Vuelta. And he has finally made a profit. Barely.

Looking forward to the next delayed update! Segaert and Hagenes might be enough to get me a mention. A shame Sheffield collapsed, but was still a good week.

Also, Aaron Gate is a crazy good unique pick for @hayneplane!

Sadly that has been balanced out by my calculated gamble on dedicating a huge chunk of my budget to Wout Van Aert and him having good form but keeping on crashing out.

Appreciate the tip of the hat.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Come on Magnier. Only 68 more stage wins in Britain before the end of the week to close the gap to shalgo.

 

[RedheadDane]

Come on Magnier. Only 68 more stage wins in Britain before the end of the week to close the gap to shalgo.

1 down.
Only 67 to go!

 

[ingsve]

This is the issue with having former superstars in the CQ game, they simply don't care about minor placings. On like 4 different stages Alaphilippe has basically just sat up in the last kilometers or so, not really caring about finishing with the peloton but instead coming in like 12 seconds after it. In total if he had just stuck with the peloton for the sprints he would have been 47 seconds better and finished 6th instead of 14th giving me 40 more points.

I should just go full Pro Tour next season. At least those teams are hunting for points.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Come on Magnier. Only 68 more stage wins in Britain before the end of the week to close the gap to shalgo.

This season in a nutshell...

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

This is the issue with having former superstars in the CQ game, they simply don't care about minor placings. On like 4 different stages Alaphilippe has basically just sat up in the last kilometers or so, not really caring about finishing with the peloton but instead coming in like 12 seconds after it. In total if he had just stuck with the peloton for the sprints he would have been 47 seconds better and finished 6th instead of 14th giving me 40 more points.

I should just go full Pro Tour next season. At least those teams are hunting for points.

If you want to go full Pro Tour next year to avoid that issue, can I suggest Tudor's new french leader ?

 

[RedheadDane]

Skjelmose becomes my only rider the break the 1000 points barrier. However, he's still just under 500 points short of going into profit.

 

[Earns1985]

So Vuelta done and I am staying 2nd overall. Great!

Unfortunately now the time begins, where for me it's all about damage limitation. My rarer high scoring riders (Nys, C. Rodriguez) likely won´t score anymore this season, while guys like Ayuso (if in form) could potentially gain a lot more points still.

Also JumboVismaFan (now lying in 5th overall) with De Lie in their team and only 300 points to second place, pretty dangerous..

 

[ingsve]

The Vuelta was less detrimental to my position than I feared. I manage to stay 13th overall. With Tiberi not finishing and Rodrigues only finishing 10th and not too many Mas owners near me in ranking it helped to keep things afloat even with my more unique picks like Vlasov and Alaphilippe scored worse than I hoped.

Then again I got some nice help from Nordhagen scoring 33 points this week.

 

[manafana]

Certainly an angle worth looking at certain teams are going be pitching for there riders to chase UCI points

Saw it with Kern Pharma this Vuelta, sprinting for 7ths and hanging on during harder stages to pick up pts left on the table

 

[skidmark]

Update #33: hayneplane squeaks out a win by a single point

This update is for the second week of the Vuelta, as well as the Renewi Tour. I should get caught up on this week's update in the next 48 hours.

This Week's Top Scorers

Rank	Team	Points this week
1	hayneplane	612
2	zigzag_wanderer	611
3	Senderos	574
4	Squire	500
5	pman	490

It was the closest of finishes this week, with hayneplane taking it from zigzag wanderer by a single point. hayneplane got all their team's points from 5 riders, with some interesting symmetry at the top. Alec Segaert (231 points, 16 teams) had a breakout performance in the Renewi Tour, while unique pick Aaron Gate got the exact same 231 points from winning the Tour of Hainan. Beyond that, hayneplane got sadly some of the last points of the season from Wout Van Aert (120, 6), then 20 points from unique pick Milan Menten, and 5 points for finishing a WT race from Quinn Simmons. Those 5 points were crucial in getting past the second place team, as zigzag wanderer spread things out a bit more between Segaert, double stage winner Pablo Castrillo (140, 2), Ben Turner (89, 54), Max Poole (65, 16) and a few others. Senderos winds up in third with Segaert/Turner/Poole as well as Per Strand Hagenes (142, 20).

This Week's High Movers

Rank	Team	Up/down
1	pman	(+7)
2	Senderos	(+6)
3	Berflamand	(+5)
4	hayneplane	(+4)
4	tobydawq	(+4)
4	bminchow	(+4)
4	Leadbelly	(+4)
4	Fivezzz	(+4)
4	Eric10	(+4)
4	ingsve	(+4)

The movement in the standings is getting quite minimal by the end of August, and pman ends up on top of this ranking, moving up 7 spots this week with Hagenes/Van Aert/Turner and a few others.

Green Jersey Competition

Rank	Team	Total
1	Googolplex	294
2	Jakob747	261
3	Amethyst	242
4	shalgo	226
5	JumboVismaFan	215

No scoring by anyone in the top 5 this week, so it's an easy summary as there is no change.

Top 10 Overall

Rank	Up/down	Team	Points
1	(-)	shalgo	14145
2	(-)	Earns1985	12441
3	(-)	EvansIsTheBest	12412
4	(+3)	Squire	12246
5	(-1)	adamski101	12091
6	(-1)	HoudiniCycling	12000
7	(+3)	Nakazar	11964
8	(+1)	JumboVismaFan	11941
9	(-3)	MADRAZO	11919
10	(+2)	Salvarani	11908

The podium remains the same, with Earns1985 and EvansIsTheBest still quite close (Earns gained 21 points this week). Further down, Squire makes a big leap with 500 points on the week, Nakazar similarly rises 3 spots, while Salvarani enters the top 10 at the expense of team skidmark (sob sob).

Okay the next update will have Vuelta GC points! I'll get it out sometime Wednesday this week and then we'll be back on schedule.

spreadsheet link

 

[bminchow]

Woohoo! A little bit closer to my (revised) goal of getting a top 50. Too bad Segaert couldnt hold on, but still a nice performance. And Turner goes into profit. Keep it up buddy! I need to make up for my hayter pick. Unfortunately I have almost nobody racing this week. I guess I am never good at building for fall races.

Arensman at CC time trial? - good luck
Covi in Italy? - maybe
Girmay in Canada? - top 10 maybe

That's it. Unless you count Leonard in Canada, which would be a nice story, but not going to happen. Oh well, I still have my star ladies team to keep me excited.

 

[RedheadDane]

My riders for - the rest of - the week:

Asgreen
Bjerg
Changizi
Foldager
Honoré
Kragh
Lund
Norsgaard
Valgren
Wandahl
Würtz

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

@Earns1985 stop scoring please and thank you.

 

[Panda Claws]

Van Aert's going to be an interesting possibility next year at 1259.

 

[skidmark]

Update #34: Jon Ezeitza comes out on top as more than a dozen teams crack 1000 on the week

The Vuelta GC points are in the bag, and with the closing of the final Grand Tour of the year, the end is in sight. While the overall result has not been in question for some time, there are still weekly wins and minor placings to fight for. Kind of a fitting metaphor for this season of Pogi dominance now that I think about it. Anyway, let's see who reaped the most from the GT GC points, as well as the WT level Hamburg race!

This Week's Top Scorers

Rank	Team	Points this week
1	Jon_Ezeitza	1404
2	kingcycling	1234
3	PandaClaws	1126
4	nbfc1962	1108
5	Blues in the bottle	1097

Long time game participant Jon Ezeitza has never met a rare pick their team didn't like, and that high variance strategy hits well this week. Their team wins by a fair clip, with 1404 points thanks to the likes of: Popular pick Richard Carapaz (283 points, 69 teams), Mattias Skjelmose (229 points, 2 teams), Cyclassics winner and unique pick Olav Kooij (220), DSM sophomores Oscar Onley (123, 17) and Max Poole (109, 16), as well as almost a dozen other riders scoring more minor points.

Second on the week goes to kingcycling, with a very fine 1234 (that number makes a very fine PIN, hot tip) from the go-big-or-go-home unique pick of Primoz Roglic (726 points), Eddie Dunbar (195, 3), Paul Magnier (98, 21), Steven Kruijswijk (71, 8) and a few others. PandaClaws wins a much closer race for third, nabbing 1126 thanks to Carapaz, Enric Mas (384, 14), Jonathan Milan (132, 9) and Biniam Girmay (112, 48).

This Week's High Movers

Rank	Team	Up/down
1	PandaClaws	(+15)
2	Blues in the bottle	(+13)
3	vladimir	(+12)
4	Jon_Ezeitza	(+11)
5	Riverside	(+10)

The 1000+ scores are enough to move some teams double digits even this late in the season, and PandaClaws comes out on top here, moving up 15 in the overall. Last year's winner Blues in the Bottle has had a relatively quiet year but makes a late-season surge to show up here, while vladimir takes the last podium spot.

Green Jersey Competition

Rank	Team	Total
1	Googolplex	294
2	Jakob747	261
3	Amethyst	242
4	JumboVismaFan	231
5	shalgo	226

JumboVismaFan scores 16 points on the week to move past shalgo (who I'm sure is heartbroken) to 4th in this standing; no other scoring in the top 5.

Top 10 Overall

Rank	Up/down	Team	Points
1	(-)	shalgo	14824
2	(-)	Earns1985	13306
3	(-)	EvansIsTheBest	13246
4	(-)	Squire	13010
5	(+3)	JumboVismaFan	13006
6	(+3)	MADRAZO	12968
7	(-1)	HoudiniCycling	12730
8	(-1)	Nakazar	12721
9	(-4)	adamski101	12709
10	(+1)	skidmark	12596

shalgo actually scores 9th out of the top 10 this week (aside from a Carapaz-less adamski101) but it hardly matters, with a 1500 point buffer to second. Earns1985 once again gains a few dozen on EvansIsTheBest to draw out a still-small difference between them, so the podium order remains the same. JumboVismaFan and MADRAZO are the only top 10 teams to top 1000 on the week and move up 3 each accordingly, while lower down, team skidmark claws it's way back into the top 10, edging out Salvarani by 5 points.

This week is a bit of a breather after the Vuelta and before the Worlds start, but there's still some action, with the European championships and the Canadian WT races the big ones.

spreadsheet link

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

It's hardly a shalgo specific phenomenom considering nobody can make a dent into that huge gap but the pace has completely dropped since the Tour. After the record setting totals to start the year, it's a bit disappointing to see everybody fizzle out and limp to the finish line.

As a reminder, shalgo was virtually tied with skidmark's 2012 pace after the Tour (12621 vs 12657 points) but now the gap is about 2,500 points (14824 vs 17333 points). The team is even behind BITB's pace (14917 points) from last season which wasn't a really high scoring year.

 

[ingsve]

Certainly an angle worth looking at certain teams are going be pitching for there riders to chase UCI points

Saw it with Kern Pharma this Vuelta, sprinting for 7ths and hanging on during harder stages to pick up pts left on the table

Not sure Kern Pharma were after UCI points really. They are well within the top 40 they need for next season to be eligible for Wild Cards for GTs and not high up enough for anything else. They were likely riding for prize money more than anything would be my guess.

Next season they would be more eager though since you will need to be top 30 in the rankings in 2026 to be eligible for Wild Card invites so some teams currently getting invited might have trouble sticking within that limit. Euskaltel is currently 34rd and finished 34rd last season so they are still eligible for 2025 as it stands but they would need to do better next season to still be eligible in 2026.