Update #39: SafeBet goes out swinging but Salvarani is the 2025 CQ Game champion
The cycling season came to a well-calibrated end this week, with two stage races (Tours of Holland and Guangxi) and 3 one-day races (Japan Cup, Chrono des Nations, Veneto Classic) finishing on Sunday. There was some typical end-of-season surprises (like Paul Double and Sakarias Loland beating more established riders), redemption stories (Laporte finally getting right after a horror season, Victor Lafay without a win but similar), and some deja vu (Magnier and Del Toro winning again and again). In the end, quite an eventful week!
This Week's Top Scorers
SafeBet ends in style, winning the final two weeks of the season and almost cracking 1000 points on the last week. This was headed by the two season-long superstars driving their team, with Paul Magnier (221 points, 37 teams) dominating Guangxi stages to crack 1500 points for the year, and Isaac Del Toro (130, 8) winning one more race to crack 3000 (!) for the season. As well, Victor Lafay (165, 36) and Jorgen Nordhagen (97, 52) got season-best results, and Cian Uijtdebroeks (84, 80), Josh Tarling (80, 14) and Florian Vermeersch (78, 74) pitching in too.
In second, triley36 is not far behind at 951 points, with a similar top group of Magnier/Del Toro/Lafay/Uijtebroeks/Tarling but the slightly lower scoring Hayter (52, 82) and Nerukar (52, 52) in place of Nordhagen and Vermeersch. Game founder Hugo Koblet rounds out the last podium of the season, cracking 900 with all of the above sans Del Toro.
This Week's High Movers
It's hard to move up the standings very much by week 39, but Crevaison manages an end-of-season push that brings their team up double digit places at the end, moving up 10 spots on 817 points from Magnier/Del Toro/Lafay as well as Lenny Martinez (130, 4) closing out the season with a win in Japan. Longtime game player karaev lands in 2nd moving up 7 spots, while DJW has sole possession of 3rd, moving up 6.
Green Jersey Competition
SafeBet's end-of-season surge (the maximum 90 points in the last 2 weeks for two wins, 110 points in the last 3 weeks) isn't quite enough to move higher than 3rd, as Salvarani ends up winning this ranking by almost 50 points, and Squire holds firm in 2nd by scoring 22 more this week. I believe this is the first year that the 3 teams on the Green Jersey podium are the same as the overall podium, speaking to the value of consistently high-scoring rare picks (eg Del Toro, Almeida) as team engines in this year's game. Speaking of the overall...
Top 10 Overall
In the end, it was closer than it looked like it would be for the last few months, but Salvarani is officially the winner of the 2025 CQ Game! SafeBet made it tight though, gaining a huge 572 points this week on Salvarani, but it wasn't enough. Salvarani had a big enough buffer to end up holding on by 253 points, but given that their team's lead was over 1300 on SafeBet three weeks ago, it was surprisingly close. Squire finishes yet another solid season in third - as was mentioned on this thread, their team is essentially a pre-2018 Valverde at the Worlds, nailing down every placing position but first in this game. So it's worthwhile remembering that Valverde eventually got his!
Further down, triley36 finishes strong to leap into 5th behind Devil's Elbow, former winner and perennial high-placer EvansIsTheBest lands in 6th, and Earns1985, Berflamand, 18-Valve and postmanhat make up the rest of the top 10. Nobody falls out of the top 10 on the last week, although HoudiniCycling made a mad dash towards the top 10, gaining over 500 on postmanhat but landing a mere 16 points back in the end.
Congratulations to Salvarani, and thanks to all who participated in the game and in discussion here, for making another edition of the CQ Game a fun time! Time to start working on next year's team...
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