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The 2024 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

Page 93 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
Just to be clear; you mean riders you made then you would still have made for the 2011 team. Not riders you'd have made for the team for this year?

And now I wonder, what would be the best possible - of potentially not really good - team of riders eligible in 2011 still eligible this year?
Ya, I mean for the 2011 competition, Would I still have chosen the same riders or would any of them be riders that I would immediately dismiss today based on their profile and previous record from the years leading up to 2011.
 
I was looking through my own team from the 2013 version of the CQmanager game.

What a terrible team I came up with that year. I have no idea what I was thinking. I must have just thrown something together at last minute or something. Out of 33 picks there were max like 7-8 picks that were actually reasonable picks at the time. I ended up scoring 10600 points that year which confirms how poor the team was.
Hmm, it doesn't look that terrible, really. I think way more than 7-8 were reasonable picks at the time. You had most of the popular picks from that year. 2013 was the first year where I somewhat knew what I was doing (and was actually trying to do well instead of fanboy-picking Valverde in 2012 :D ), and I finished 12th with only 1200 more points than you. Coquard making up a lot of that difference, and I also did well to be one of 3 people with Herrada and one of 15 with Rebellin in the only year of his career where he was a great CQ pick.

Your impression of yours being a bad team might be because the linear progression of neo-pros wasn't that common back then, so most teams would have some uninspiring cheap guys like your Wagner and Van Leijen. Hitting the jackpot with the likes of Coquard or with Moser the year before was a bit more of a gamble. My Fraile pick in 2013 would probably have been a good one now, but then it took him a couple more years to actually break through. And you had Alaphilippe as a unique pick! Just a year too early.

Looking at the top teams from 2013, it was quite an interesting year actually. There were a lot of viable expensive picks, where some were a bit of a bust (the very popular Gilbert), some were okay (Cancellara) and some did really well (Cavendish, Sagan, Quintana). The winner SteelyDan really won it by betting hard on a couple of big-name young riders to continue their rise (Sagan, picked 3 times, and Quintana, picked 25 times) and not missing out on important cheap guys like Hushovd, Roux, Thomas, Coquard. There was also the random monument winner Ciolek (picked 13 times) in the team, just for good measure.
 
Just to be clear; you mean riders you made then you would still have made for the 2011 team. Not riders you'd have made for the team for this year?

And now I wonder, what would be the best possible - of potentially not really good - team of riders eligible in 2011 still eligible this year?
POGACAR Tadej
EVENEPOEL Remco
PHILIPSEN Jasper
HIRSCHI Marc
O'CONNOR Ben
VINGEGAARD HANSEN Jonas
ROGLIC Primoz
VAN DER POEL Mathieu
DE LIE Arnaud
GIRMAY HAILU Biniam
PEDERSEN Mads
MCNULTY Brandon
JORGENSON Matteo
MERLIER Tim
YATES Adam
AYUSO PESQUERA Juan
VAN AERT Wout
MAS NICOLAU Enric
SKJELMOSE JENSEN Mattias
MILAN Jonathan
COSNEFROY Benoit
ULISSI Diego
VAN GILS Maxim
RODRIGUEZ CANO Carlos
VLASOV Aleksandr
CARAPAZ MONTENEGRO Richard Antonio
WELLENS Tim
KOOIJ Olav
VAN EETVELT Lennert
PIDCOCK Thomas
ALMEIDA Joao Pedro Gonçalves
LANDA MEANA Mikel
WILLIAMS Stephen
 
I don't think he was eligible in 2011...

Well, I suppose technically you could have picked him, if you knew about his existence, but... people might have questioned your decision.

(Is there a rule stating we can't pick random 10-year-old kids? Apart from the Rule of Common Sense?)
You can pick Lance Armstrong, or you can pick Eddy Merckx, or you can pick Vingegaard's kid. Or you can enter whatever combination of letters you want.

What would have been a more interesting question is what would be the current best team of riders who were pros in 2011, or riders who were picked for the game in 2011. But I suspect that figuring those out would be the same as finding the 33 highest-scoring current riders who were also pros in 2011, or finding the 33 highest-scoring riders who were picked for the game in 2011. No budget considerations are likely to enter the picture here.
 
POGACAR Tadej
EVENEPOEL Remco
PHILIPSEN Jasper
HIRSCHI Marc
O'CONNOR Ben
VINGEGAARD HANSEN Jonas
ROGLIC Primoz
VAN DER POEL Mathieu
DE LIE Arnaud
GIRMAY HAILU Biniam
PEDERSEN Mads
MCNULTY Brandon
JORGENSON Matteo
MERLIER Tim
YATES Adam
AYUSO PESQUERA Juan
VAN AERT Wout
MAS NICOLAU Enric
SKJELMOSE JENSEN Mattias
MILAN Jonathan
COSNEFROY Benoit
ULISSI Diego
VAN GILS Maxim
RODRIGUEZ CANO Carlos
VLASOV Aleksandr
CARAPAZ MONTENEGRO Richard Antonio
WELLENS Tim
KOOIJ Olav
VAN EETVELT Lennert
PIDCOCK Thomas
ALMEIDA Joao Pedro Gonçalves
LANDA MEANA Mikel
WILLIAMS Stephen
That's selected at 2011 prices, I guess. If only we could...
 
That's basically what I was asking.
Or, well, wouldn't have had to be a pro, could have been a conti-rider, or wouldn't have had to have been picked back then.
If you want less strict cut-off rules, then the only one that really makes sense is riders who were older than juniors in 2011. You can go to the CQ website, compose your own subranking and select riders born in 1992 or earlier. There are enough high-scoring riders that budget becomes a thing, but you can take away the expensive guys who didn't break even this year, like Roglic, Yates brothers, Laporte, Bilbao etc. and then you start getting an idea how it would have looked like. Merlier, Tratnik and Gate would have been great picks for such a team.
 
Hmm, it doesn't look that terrible, really. I think way more than 7-8 were reasonable picks at the time. You had most of the popular picks from that year. 2013 was the first year where I somewhat knew what I was doing (and was actually trying to do well instead of fanboy-picking Valverde in 2012 :D ), and I finished 12th with only 1200 more points than you. Coquard making up a lot of that difference, and I also did well to be one of 3 people with Herrada and one of 15 with Rebellin in the only year of his career where he was a great CQ pick.

Your impression of yours being a bad team might be because the linear progression of neo-pros wasn't that common back then, so most teams would have some uninspiring cheap guys like your Wagner and Van Leijen. Hitting the jackpot with the likes of Coquard or with Moser the year before was a bit more of a gamble. My Fraile pick in 2013 would probably have been a good one now, but then it took him a couple more years to actually break through. And you had Alaphilippe as a unique pick! Just a year too early.

Looking at the top teams from 2013, it was quite an interesting year actually. There were a lot of viable expensive picks, where some were a bit of a bust (the very popular Gilbert), some were okay (Cancellara) and some did really well (Cavendish, Sagan, Quintana). The winner SteelyDan really won it by betting hard on a couple of big-name young riders to continue their rise (Sagan, picked 3 times, and Quintana, picked 25 times) and not missing out on important cheap guys like Hushovd, Roux, Thomas, Coquard. There was also the random monument winner Ciolek (picked 13 times) in the team, just for good measure.
Ya, looking at it again and given that I would most likely pick all the 6 cheapest picks I had again I end up with 16 out of 33 that I would have no problem picking again. Then there are 10 question marks for riders that have big red flags for me today that I would have to assess based on what was going on at the time and also what other options there might have been. Some of these were perhaps the best options available despite the red flags. Then there are 7 picks that I likely would not have picked today at all.

So perhaps not as terrible as it looked at first glance.
 
If you want less strict cut-off rules, then the only one that really makes sense is riders who were older than juniors in 2011. You can go to the CQ website, compose your own subranking and select riders born in 1992 or earlier. There are enough high-scoring riders that budget becomes a thing, but you can take away the expensive guys who didn't break even this year, like Roglic, Yates brothers, Laporte, Bilbao etc. and then you start getting an idea how it would have looked like. Merlier, Tratnik and Gate would have been great picks for such a team.
The best scoring 33 riders aged 33+, so 19 or more in early 2011 (excluding Roglic, who wasn't really cycling in 2011) had a total cost of more than twice the budget, so budget certainly enters into it. Best possible team on that basis seems to be

costpoints won
TRATNIK Jan121592
ULISSI Diego7191145
WELLENS Tim6231012
GATE Aaron177522
HIRT Jan52344
NAESEN Oliver144431
KELDERMAN Wilco324607
SKUJINS Toms668919
ZOIDL Riccardo33269
MATTHEWS Michael633865
BENNETT Sam302534
KRISTOFF Alexander726921
QUINTANA ROJAS Nairo Alexander50232
MOLLEMA Bauke242417
TRENTIN Matteo583743
PRADES REVERTER Eduard89240
CIMOLAI Davide76219
DE LA CRUZ MELGAREJO David136270
VAN ASBROECK Tom362485
ABERASTURI IZAGA Jon72180
BENNETT George275382
HALLER Marco155260
GESCHKE Simon85186
LAGAB Azzedine40135
POZZOVIVO Domenico189273
WARBASSE Larry86157
HAGEN Carl Fredrik71141
MARCHAND Gianni2989
PERNSTEINER Hermann72140
SWIFT Ben60126
VERMOTE Julien753
BRAMBILLA Gianluca207263
GRUZDEV Dmitriy89127
749713279


I didn't look up what all of them were doing in 2011.

That team would have come 25th.
 
Last edited:
Anyone else done with their team for next season?

I guess there can still be changes made. I'm gonna pay attention to the news to see if there are any red or green flags that can force a different decision but as of now I have 33 riders that I'm happy with for next year.

Currently the team is much more diverse than this year. I have riders from 17 teams instead of just 11 teams this year.
 
If people want to see how our 2011 teams would have fared in 2024, the answer is not well at all. Although surprisingly only 4 out of 88 teams would get a 0 for the year. @Jakob747 would have finished first with Brambilla as their third best scorer and I would have finished second with just six riders scoring points (one of which is in single digits but would still return a profit, shout out Geoffrey Soupe).

It's still would have been a more interesting battle for first than the one we actually had this season. Similar analysis from last season

Rank
Team
Points
1​
2772​
2​
2739​
3​
2137​
4​
1916​
5​
1871​
6​
1854​
7​
1781​
8​
1621​
9​
1611​
10​
1605​
11​
1580​
12​
1571​
13​
1557​
14​
1463​
15​
1443​
16​
1436​
17​
1426​
18​
1420​
19​
1376​
20​
1333​
21​
1319​
22​
1289​
23​
1283​
24​
1266​
25​
1250​
26​
1195​
27​
1164​
28​
1135​
29​
1102​
30​
1055​
31​
1030​
31​
1030​
33​
1003​
34​
1001​
35​
922​
36​
921​
37​
906​
38​
891​
39​
871​
40​
767​
41​
721​
42​
696​
43​
642​
44​
617​
44​
617​
46​
610​
47​
543​
48​
510​
49​
495​
50​
467​
51​
431​
52​
402​
53​
399​
54​
393​
55​
371​
56​
367​
57​
366​
58​
299​
59​
285​
60​
270​
61​
259​
62​
246​
62​
246​
64​
230​
65​
205​
66​
190​
67​
175​
68​
155​
68​
155​
68​
155​
71​
154​
72​
136​
73​
126​
74​
99​
75​
93​
76​
80​
77​
60​
77​
60​
79​
51​
80​
35​
81​
15​
81​
15​
83​
10​
84​
6​
85​
0​
85​
0​
85​
0​
85​
0​
 
Yeah I think what I was getting at was that Groenewegen and Bos are two rare exceptions I can think of that I'd consider for the doping price rule as applied to clearly non-doping suspensions. Both of those cases were serious enough to be viscerally upsetting, and felt weird to have to revisit/calculate those feelings in the context of this numbers-based game. But also, they were the only non-doping suspensions I can think of that were longer than like a race or two. So what I was getting at was that maybe I could just make a rule that if someone is suspended for more than a couple of months in a year, they'd be ineligible at that year's cost. That would cover virtually all doping violations, and it's likely the non-doping suspensions would be only the most serious racing incidents that would probably cause me to make an exception anyway.

Of course someone could miss time due to an investigation and later be cleared (Sergio Henao is the only example I can think of atm that was relevant to this game), but whatever, that'll just happen sometimes.

Thanks for digging up all those examples from former games, that's helpful. And yeah for Stannard I just blanked because I was reading his CQ page which said in 2024 he was retroactively suspended from 2018-22, so I thought by a strict reading he'd be available at 2023 price (or 2024 price). But I forgot he was provisionally suspended - they just moved the official suspension to dates outside of the provisional suspension. That may be confusing for some as that's not usually the case, and kind of falls through the cracks of the game rules as usually it's provisionally suspended riders at the start of the current CQ game year that aren't available for selection at all, and riders formally suspended last year aren't available for last year's price. But in 2025 he'll be neither, so I'll have to flag that explicitly.
So as I am working on my 2025 team now, did we decide how we treat Robert Stannard for next year yet?
 
So as I am working on my 2025 team now, did we decide how we treat Robert Stannard for next year yet?
Heßmann will also need to be addressed.

Rider Comment​
Michel HESSMANN tested positive for Chlortalidon in an out-of-competition control on 14 June 2023. He was suspended by the German anti-doping agency NADA for 4 months from 23 March until 22 July 2024. WADA filed an appeal against this decision and the suspension was extended until 13 March 2025.​
 
So as I am working on my 2025 team now, did we decide how we treat Robert Stannard for next year yet?
Has been discussed a little bit. Pretty sure he'll be available for 367 points. But I guess skidmark could confirm.
Heßmann will also need to be addressed.

Rider Comment​
Michel HESSMANN tested positive for Chlortalidon in an out-of-competition control on 14 June 2023. He was suspended by the German anti-doping agency NADA for 4 months from 23 March until 22 July 2024. WADA filed an appeal against this decision and the suspension was extended until 13 March 2025.​
How is this not covered by the 'last full season' rule?
 
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Starting to think about next season. But first a reflection upon this season's game.
As usual I had some great picks, some pretty rare, that I am very happy with.
The good:
Fretin
Ryan
Del Toro
Pellizzari
Tiberi
Onley
Poole
Herzog
Sintmaartensdijk
Beloki
Nordhagen
Nerurkar
Morgado
Schachmann
Lamperti
Martinez
Alaphilippe

and a few others that did OK.

Where I failed was with my more expensive picks... all in the 500 to 1000 bracket. Some just MEH. One or two disasters.
So I hope to learn from that with my 2025 selection.

It was an enjoyable season though, and great to be in the top 3 at the beeginning.
 
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As it turns out, yes. But then I have done well with similar picks before. But I do know what to look out for as red flags now better than I did.
That's probably one of the hardest things to do though, to find someone who has just reached the 700 point mark who will move on and improve on that once again. That's exceedingly rare I'd think. The 600-900 region is the ceiling for a lot of riders so probably not even 1 in 10 who get 700 points will ever even break 1k. I much prefer picks that have at least shown some indication that they are a 1500 points rider rather than taking the chance on someone who hasn't really shown that.