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Thanks!
Yeah, it's still very close in the Top10.
I remember looking at Total Energies roster when putting my team together and thinking Jeannière had the perfect profile for the random French sprinter that scores a million more points than he should due to a stupidly easy schedule. I should have acted upon that instinct but whatever it's not like I'm deadlocked in a virtual tie for second place and could have used a few extra hundred points.
| Rank | Team | Points this week |
| 1 | Amethyst | 612 |
| 2 | Armchair cyclist | 479 |
| 3 | firefly3323 | 476 |
| 4 | Googolplex | 398 |
| 5 | hfgon1 | 396 |
| Rank | Team | Up/down |
| 1 | Amethyst | (+13) |
| 2 | Googolplex | (+5) |
| 2 | Armchair cyclist | (+5) |
| 4 | firefly3323 | (+3) |
| 4 | nbfc1962 | (+3) |
| 4 | hfgon1 | (+3) |
| Rank | Team | Total |
| 1 | Googolplex | 355 |
| 2 | Amethyst | 332 |
| 3 | Jakob747 | 324 |
| 4 | JumboVismaFan | 243 |
| 5 | shalgo | 229 |
| Rank | Up/down | Team | Points |
| 1 | (-) | shalgo | 16257 |
| 2 | (+1) | Squire | 14580 |
| 3 | (-1) | EvansIsTheBest | 14536 |
| 4 | (-) | Earns1985 | 14416 |
| 5 | (+1) | MADRAZO | 14397 |
| 6 | (-1) | Salvarani | 14376 |
| 7 | (-) | JumboVismaFan | 14343 |
| 8 | (-) | Gotland | 14338 |
| 9 | (+1) | HoudiniCycling | 14243 |
| 10 | (-1) | adamski101 | 14021 |
Yeah in my original comment I kicked the can down the road saying I'd 'have to think about it', but I forgot about that conversation so I haven't thought about it, so I guess now's the time.
I see no similarities at all between Nibali and Quintana. Getting thrown out of a race happens all the time. Tarling in Roubaix for example, or Sagan in the 2017 Tour. Quintana first got points, then had them taken away post-race due to a doping violation. I can't think of any other types of violations where you are stripped of results a significant amount of time after the race. Any other relegations/DQs happen pretty much instantly. And I agree with you that the spirit of the rule is to affect doping cases (and other 'morally problematic' things as you mention). In any case, Quintana was a non-factor in the game anyway following that DQ. And I agree with not making any weird rule exceptions to have him not be available for 50 points for this season.
That's very much in line with the default cost being the official CQ score (for the right year):
This was also the case for Contador, who originally scored 2373 points in 2011, but who was stripped of results and points when he was banned, so his cost for the 2013 game was his 2009 score (2272 points).
I'm not sure if I understand you right. You think Quintana's DQ was a doping violation, but you agree with the decision not to handle it as a doping case? (The same was the case for Baudin, also treated as a non-doping case).
Oh, I was under the impression that he was made to cost 758 due to the 'medical violation' and subsequent DQ. Which I would have agreed would be sort of in keeping with the 'spirit' of the rule. But turns out he wasn't. However, I also don't really have a huge problem with him costing 665, considering he wasn't suspended for any period. I do see it as quite different from a normal race DQ though.
Despite me thinking it was the case for ages, EITB appears to not have Laurance in his team. It's MADRAZO who has him (and also Shalgo). And MADRAZO is a bit too far back. So now I feel very secure in my 2nd place.
Can confirm I only pick Laurance in seasons where he sucks. A bit rude to celebrate finishing in second place when Bruttomesso slashed 7 whole points off your lead today. He'll reel you in before the end of the week.In other news, today might be the most important day for mine and @EvansIsTheBest's battle for second place. If Laurance doesn't get a huge result, it's pretty much over for EITB I think. But with two suitable 1.Pro races for him to score big in if he has the form, there's definitely a Laurance shaped road to 2nd place for EITB. It's of course also dependent on Poole/Onley/Plapp not doing much for me in Guangxi, but as Laurance is the key, today is kinda D-day.
Edit: Nevermind, my brain is not functioning today.
I'm also liking how the final week of the game is quite a big one, and that we won't have one of those drawn out 'waiting-for-one-1.1-race-to-be-ridden-two-weeks-after-all-other-races' kinda finish.
I did notice Bruttomesso!
@Shakes Just to offer my reflections on the website - I think it's great, thanks for putting it up. I didn't go on it too much myself, but in the earlier days of this game I certainly would have (when I had more time to obsess). But as game host, I like it for a variety of reasons. For one, it allows people to engage with the game as frequently as they like. For two, I think that engagement is probably likely to drive even more conversation on this thread. For three, it takes the pressure off me to provide updates quite as urgently, as there are some weeks where it's quite hard for me to get it done the day the CQ download is posted. And for four, to me it feels to be enhancing and complementary to the updates - like, I feel like what I write up weekly has value as a narrative summary of the week, and without having the restrictive bottleneck of being the only source of stats for the week, that has made me think of the updates in a bit of a different light actually.
For next year: but if you want I can probably get an export function with data you need. Of any given date you want. Not sure if helpful for your updates but if so, let me know.
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.
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.
Plapp and Narvaez both out of the race. So much for my late surge into the top 20.
That's interesting... would definitely be potentially helpful in those weird weeks where CQ doesn't have an update or gets one out on Monday with the Monday races included. At the same time, it has always been the "CQ Game" so it might be weird to shift official updates off-platform. Will have to think on that one.
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