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The 2025 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

Page 24 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
Yeah Plapp's issue has never been scoring during the Australian summer. He' clearly the best rider at those national championships and anything less than domination would have been deeply concerning considering his track record in that event. It's what he does once racing returns to Europe that will make or break his season. I'd love to hear @skidmark's thoughts on including Tarling.
 
Yeah Plapp's issue has never been scoring during the Australian summer. He' clearly the best rider at those national championships and anything less than domination would have been deeply concerning considering his track record in that event. It's what he does once racing returns to Europe that will make or break his season. I'd love to hear @skidmark's thoughts on including Tarling.
Plapp was close to score big in Europe couple of races last year and that's why he is semi-popular again this year even with stagnating scores for the three years. People who watch races know it's not lack of ability, but the pure luck.
 
I remember this time last year discussions about how the most important riders in the game are not necessarily those that are the most expensive, not the most popular or rarest picks, but those on nearest to 50% of the teams. (obviously, at the end of the year, the most important are those that most over/under performed according to their cost, and were on the winning team but not the one that came second, but at this speculative stage...)

So I have applied to each selected rider a formula of (cost + 200) * (50-absolute(48-picks))
200 because that seems to be the minimum expected profit for a rider to be deemed successful, and so that freebies are not excluded entirely
48 because there are 96 teams, so that represents selection by half the players

I have then normalised the scores so that the apparently most relevant pick, whether he is in your team or not, is on a score of 100.


So the most important 20 riders by that calculation seem to be:
VINGEGAARD HANSEN Jonas
100.0​
VAN AERT Wout
80.8​
MAGNIER Paul
34.4​
GANNA Filippo
33.2​
NYS Thibau
28.9​
AYUSO PESQUERA Juan
28.0​
HAYTER Ethan
27.0​
NORDHAGEN Jørgen
24.5​
GALL Felix
23.1​
BEHRENS Niklas
22.0​
PITHIE Laurence
22.0​
LAFAY Victor
21.2​
HEALY Ben
20.7​
WIDAR Jarno
20.6​
YATES Simon
20.3​
PLAPP Lucas
20.0​
HINDLEY Jai
19.8​
CAVAGNA Rémi
18.8​
BAGIOLI Andrea
18.7​
JAKOBSEN Fabio
18.7​
So it looks like whether you have the correct Visma guy is definitely the key.
 
The more I look at my team, the more I am convinced it's not quite good enough to be in the top10 this year.
I was skeptical of Yates, thinking that he was mainly going to be a domestique at Visma but now that it looks like he will be captain at the Giro and even at a bunch of one week races he doesn't seem as bad anymore. He still has to show the good form of the past though and he won't get the free points he has gotten from TDU the past years and I wonder if he is even going to defend his win in Alula Tour or whether he actually starts the season with Tirreno as it's listed now on PCS.

I personally don't have much hope for Jai Hindley though but anyone can have a resurgence I suppose.
 
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Yeah Plapp's issue has never been scoring during the Australian summer. He' clearly the best rider at those national championships and anything less than domination would have been deeply concerning considering his track record in that event. It's what he does once racing returns to Europe that will make or break his season. I'd love to hear @skidmark's thoughts on including Tarling.
I never considered Tarling tbh. Also last year I didn´t understand, why he was so popular. I see him as a rider, who mostly scores in ITT. One day races in that discipline are very limited and the stage points for a win in an ITT in a stage race doesn´t count that much in this game.

For him, being a good pick at his price from 484, he has to convert in a rider who scores big either in cobble classics or in CG´s or even both. But I didn´t see that for this season, that he could be a good pick. If he doesn´t convert and stays as an ITT specialist he will get his 400-600 points this season, but not more..
 
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2. On doping

2.1. On ex-dopers

All riders are available to choose, except for riders who are provisionally suspended by the UCI (as of their most recent list).

Riders who have been suspended for doping and had that affect their 2024 score will not be available simply for their 2024 score. Instead, a rider’s value will be equivalent to that of his last full season; or, if he has more recently had a (not full, due to suspension) season in which he has earned more points, that season represents his value. Riders who have been suspended by the UCI (ie. Not merely provisionally suspended) are on this list.
While he isn't and wasn't on either list (at the relevant time), the reporting on his suspension has been mixed, so I think it was unclear if he was available.
 
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I think Tarling does still have a lot of potential although I decided against retaining him mainly because, like a lot of riders, he doesn't seem to be thrilled with life at Ineos. He seemed to have a race schedule last year which was aimed at giving him experience in different types of races rather than getting the best results but still looked capable of major points on the cobbles and was also climbing well in the Dauphine. I think on another team he'd be a points machine.
 
While he isn't and wasn't on either list (at the relevant time), the reporting on his suspension has been mixed, so I think it was unclear if he was available.
The literal reading of the rules is that he was available because he wasn't provisionally suspended by the UCI at the time of the deadline, but instead was provisionally suspended by his NADO. If the latter is instead treated as equivalent to a provisional suspension by the UCI, then he wasn't available for this game.
 
The literal reading of the rules is that he was available because he wasn't provisionally suspended by the UCI at the time of the deadline, but instead was provisionally suspended by his NADO. If the latter is instead treated as equivalent to a provisional suspension by the UCI, then he wasn't available for this game.
difficult to say, as he is also still banned till March, although not on the UCI list.

So literally reading, he should be available, yeah. But not at 0 points, of course. More likely at 94.
 
I was skeptical of Yates, thinking that he was mainly going to be a domestique at Visma but now that it looks like he will be captain at the Giro and even at a bunch of one week races he doesn't seem as bad anymore. He still has to show the good form of the past though and he won't get the free points he has gotten from TDU the past years and I wonder if he is even going to defend his win in Alula Tour or whether he actually starts the season with Tirreno as it's listed now on PCS.

I personally don't have much hope for Jai Hindley though but anyone can have a resurgence I suppose.
I saw room for huge improvement in Yates. His 2024 was already some 300-400 points below his average from the previous few years but he's moving to a better and more GT focused team (and it's the first team change in his entire pro career) so I can see a potential stimulus that would make him improve, just like his brother had the best season of his career right after he moved to UAE or how Laporte and Jorgenson exploded when joining Visma. Guess I was hoping this pattern would repeat with Simon and that he could even score some 1500-2000 points.
Perhaps there were riders out there more likely to bring some improvement but when you want to win, you just have to find someone who will make a very big step. I guess I liked the odds with Yates.
 
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Beside from the two top most expensive picks (Vingegaard, van Aert) I think we have this year a really interesting distribution in the price range from 400+

I remember this time last year discussions about how the most important riders in the game are not necessarily those that are the most expensive, not the most popular or rarest picks, but those on nearest to 50% of the teams. (obviously, at the end of the year, the most important are those that most over/under performed according to their cost, and were on the winning team but not the one that came second, but at this speculative stage...)

So I have applied to each selected rider a formula of (cost + 200) * (50-absolute(48-picks))
200 because that seems to be the minimum expected profit for a rider to be deemed successful, and so that freebies are not excluded entirely
48 because there are 96 teams, so that represents selection by half the players

I have then normalised the scores so that the apparently most relevant pick, whether he is in your team or not, is on a score of 100.


So the most important 20 riders by that calculation seem to be:
VINGEGAARD HANSEN Jonas
100.0​
VAN AERT Wout
80.8​
MAGNIER Paul
34.4​
GANNA Filippo
33.2​
NYS Thibau
28.9​
AYUSO PESQUERA Juan
28.0​
HAYTER Ethan
27.0​
NORDHAGEN Jørgen
24.5​
GALL Felix
23.1​
BEHRENS Niklas
22.0​
PITHIE Laurence
22.0​
LAFAY Victor
21.2​
HEALY Ben
20.7​
WIDAR Jarno
20.6​
YATES Simon
20.3​
PLAPP Lucas
20.0​
HINDLEY Jai
19.8​
CAVAGNA Rémi
18.8​
BAGIOLI Andrea
18.7​
JAKOBSEN Fabio
18.7​
So it looks like whether you have the correct Visma guy is definitely the key.

Beside from the two top most expensive picks (Vingegaard, van Aert) I think we have this year a really interesting distribution in the price range from 400+. There are not a lot of very popular picks, but a lot of riders, who are picked between 10 and 25 times, which can make the difference for a player, who have them in their team.

van Aert
1259​
60​
Vingegaard
1760​
33​
Magnier
405​
37​
Ganna
644​
25​
Gall
459​
22​
Nys
702​
20​
Plapp
423​
20​
Hindley
553​
16​
Morgado
411​
16​
Penhoet
415​
15​
Pithie
689​
15​
HEALY
637​
15
YATES S.
620​
15
TARLING
484​
14
CHRISTEN
547​
14
PELLIZZARI
484​
12
AYUSO
1276​
11
LIPOWITZ
676​
11
VINE
464​
11
JOHANNESSEN
559​
10
 
I saw room for huge improvement in Yates. His 2024 was already some 300-400 points below his average from the previous few years but he's moving to a better and more GT focused team (and it's the first team change in his entire pro career) so I can see a potential stimulus that would make him improve, just like his brother had the best season of his career right after he moved to UAE or how Laporte and Jorgenson exploded when joining Visma. Guess I was hoping this pattern would repeat with Simon and that he could even score some 1500-2000 points.
Perhaps there were riders out there more likely to bring some improvement but when you want to win, you just have to find someone who will make a very big step. I guess I liked the odds with Yates.
Ya, that makes perfect sense given how things are looking with his schedule at least. Visma seems to know he still has high potential. To me, him moving to a team with Jonas and given his age now, it just screamed domestique to me but I think that is likely a too hasty conclusion. I guess we'll see where it actually lands points wise.
 
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I never considered Tarling tbh. Also last year I didn´t understand, why he was so popular. I see him as a rider, who mostly scores in ITT. One day races in that discipline are very limited and the stage points for a win in an ITT in a stage race doesn´t count that much in this game.

For him, being a good pick at his price from 484, he has to convert in a rider who scores big either in cobble classics or in CG´s or even both. But I didn´t see that for this season, that he could be a good pick. If he doesn´t convert and stays as an ITT specialist he will get his 400-600 points this season, but not more..
I considered Tarling because last year he was honestly rather disappointing in most TT's. If he can actually start winning them there is T. Martin potential imo.
 
Ya, that makes perfect sense given how things are looking with his schedule at least. Visma seems to know he still has high potential. To me, him moving to a team with Jonas and given his age now, it just screamed domestique to me but I think that is likely a too hasty conclusion. I guess we'll see where it actually lands points wise.
I mean- if you look at last year's TdF, "domestiques" finished 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th in GC and the year before, Pogacar's domestiqe was on the podium, so I wasn't really afraid of Yates being in one team with Vingegaard. You don't really hire someone like Yates to tank half an hour in every race he rides and 32 is not that old.
 
The literal reading of the rules is that he was available because he wasn't provisionally suspended by the UCI at the time of the deadline, but instead was provisionally suspended by his NADO. If the latter is instead treated as equivalent to a provisional suspension by the UCI, then he wasn't available for this game.
When making my team, I went to the UCI provisional suspensions list and looked for Piccolo just for fun. He was not listed there, so technically he'd be available for 29 points if anyone wanted to take a punt on him going free and joining Corratec or something. But that would not really be in the spirit of the CQ game rules, I'd say. Although the likelihood of someone benefitting from that loophole in this particular case would be basically zero.

I looked at Hessmann too, and figured he'd be available at 94 without thinking too much about it. But as he had no team announced, he was not gonna be selected for my team anyway. Considering he was actually suspended (not just provisionally) with a finite date (according to CQ website), I'd think he would be quite a clear-cut case? Don't think he'll be a great pick for the collective ignorance team anyway.
 
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Suggestion by @Armchair Cyclist has been added to the site. On each team page you can compare similarities to all other teams, in terms of overlap in number of riders or point overlap. Clicking column header sorte by that column:

On Teams Ranking you can click to your own team, above is of Armchair Cyclist just fyi
Thanks for doing that, but that is @armchairclimber's team data. But works just as well as an example.
 
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Ya, that makes perfect sense given how things are looking with his schedule at least. Visma seems to know he still has high potential. To me, him moving to a team with Jonas and given his age now, it just screamed domestique to me but I think that is likely a too hasty conclusion. I guess we'll see where it actually lands points wise.
I think it was well-known that he would be a leader in the Giro and in a few other races before his schedule was officially announced, but I opted against him anyway. For him to be a good pick he has to score, say, 900 points (depends how you look at it I guess, but what was roughly my estimate). Does he do that on average? I think that's approximately on the line, but I just found other options to be more intriguing.
 
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I mean- if you look at last year's TdF, "domestiques" finished 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th in GC and the year before, Pogacar's domestiqe was on the podium, so I wasn't really afraid of Yates being in one team with Vingegaard. You don't really hire someone like Yates to tank half an hour in every race he rides and 32 is not that old.
Still, being leader will probably give you a few hundred points more over the year than just being domestique in every race like I had assumed. Also Jorgenson and Kuss will be there in the Tour for example so it also comes down to their individual roles as support. I would probably bet on Jorgenson finishing higher than Simon in the Tour at least.
 
I think it was well-known that he would be a leader in the Giro and in a few other races before his schedule was officially announced, but I opted against him anyway. For him to be a good pick he has to score, say, 900 points (depends how you look at it I guess, but what was roughly my estimate). Does he do that on average? I think that's approximately on the line, but I just found other options to be more intriguing.
I'm very much a glass-half-empty kind of guy when making my CQ picks, so I want even a rather average season for my picks to be an almost guaranteed improvement/break even. With Yates, even if you could argue he has big potential, there is also a decent chance that he'll just continue his decline. Even if it's not the most likely outcome, there's an unattractively high percent chance that he'll have an injury-free season and still score less than last year.

You'll notice that even with my up-and-coming picks, with very few exceptions there was something preventing them from scoring as much as they should have done last year. The average boost in score for a developing rider going from an issue-free season to another issue-free season is generally not high enough for this game, I think (which is also pretty much the essence of my complaints about EITB's Piganzoli pick). For Yates, improving enough on a not-too-disturbed 2024 just by having a better season doesn't strike me as the safest bet I can make. And the 'Visma effect' is also no guarantee.
 
Thanks for doing that, but that is @armchairclimber's team data. But works just as well as an example.

Thanks from me too. It does illustrate how far I deviate from the norm with the way I select riders. In the past it has served me quite well with Pogacar, De Lie. Lambrecht ... and a few others in their big profit early years. Last year hardly anyone had Fretin.
I've bookmarked it anyway, so ta very much.
 
I picked Tarling btw. For a couple of reasons.

He's still very young, already an established TT'er but also with some potential for the northern classics. As shown in last year's Dwars door Vlaanderen, de Ronde and maybe even Roubaix without that jury penalty. In his first pro year he got more points (!) than last season, and we even had an olympic time trial. And one of his biggest rivals against the clock, Evenepoel, will be MIA during the first part of the season.
 
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