The 2025 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[RedheadDane]

You don't want people to reveal too much?
Okay...
I have 33 riders who are taller than I am.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

You don't want people to reveal too much?
Okay...
I have 33 riders who are taller than I am.

Well you've already revealed a lot more on a previous page though.
You're probably the person who has now posted the most info about their team.

 

[RedheadDane]

Well you've already revealed a lot more on a previous page though.
You're probably the person who has now posted the most info about their team.

And I have been trying to convince people to take a similar approach to mine.
So far, they seem to not listen...

 

[ingsve]

Well, I think we all could predict RedhairDanes team long before it was even submitted. At least 90% of it.

 

[Wvv]

I have 33 riders who are taller than I am.

So you either don't have pocket climbers or you're really tiny for a Danish person.

Edit: Oh wait, all Danes. So their mustn't be any rather small Danish pro cyclist. Vingegaard probably one of the smaller ones.

 

[adamski101]

team submitted yesterday evening. resisted the tempatation to go with the more obvious/popular 1000 plus riders, my 1000 plus is a bit more of a risk i suspect. After finishing to 10 last year, I suspect I may be somewhat further down the standings this time.

 

[Anderis]

You don't want people to reveal too much?
Okay...
I have 33 riders who are taller than I am.

That made me curious if there's someone taller than me in my own team and yes, there are two such riders, I think.

 

[ingsve]

I just checked and there are 11 riders taller than me. Not gonna say if that's a surprise or not.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

So you either don't have pocket climbers or you're really tiny for a Danish person.

Edit: Oh wait, all Danes. So their mustn't be any rather small Danish pro cyclist. Vingegaard probably one of the smaller ones.

RhD claims to be 160 cm, so it's not easy for her to find 33 shorter riders of any nationality.

 

[Squire]

I just checked and there are 11 riders taller than me. Not gonna say if that's a surprise or not.

I have zero riders taller than me.

I don't think we need super specific rules for this, just the collective understanding that we don't do sneak peeks from which someone else can (more or less) glean individual picks as opposed to the broadest strokes. So if we can avoid posting how many 1000+-point riders you have (although I guess that one won't be equally important every year), mentioning you have 1 rider from Luxembourg/Eritrea/Ecuador/[insert other country with a tiny amount of pro cyclists here], and detailed rider descriptions, then I think we'd have a better balance between the anticipation of pre-game talk and the risk of giving late submitters a little bit of a leg up.

I agree. The 'unwritten rules' about general teasers allowed but not explicit naming or very obvious hints have worked pretty well now for many years.

I remember people did quite specific breakdowns of age, nationality, price range and even sometimes teams of their riders some years ago, and I can fully understand why people would find that too much, even though I thought it was quite fun and interesting to see if I could identify a lot of the riders based on that information. But then again, I usually do some decent research myself every year, and the participants whose picks maybe could have swayed some of my decisions don't tend to post a lot of teasers. But I can see how such breakdowns can easily influence people who didn't go too deep with the research and might have missed some great picks from certain uncommon nations etc.

I'm somewhat dreading submitting my team as always, even though I like it very much. I have a possible swap I can do which adds a probably very popular rider to my team alongside a zero-pointer, as replacements for the two picks I'm least confident about. That would also bring my team up to exactly 7500 points, so there's that. The likely popular rider really doesn't fill me with much enthusiasm though. But he could also do well and then it would be stupid not to have him. I'm a bit torn.

 

[Hugo Koblet]

All of these pre-reveal peaks made me realize that my concern probably was unwarranted. I feared that my team would be way too similar to everyone else's which is why I decided to participate with a team that wasn't optimal but at least would be fun to follow. However, I've now completely revamped my team and sent in one I feel much more confident about has a fighting chance.

 

[RedheadDane]

I have zero riders taller than me.

Are you very tall, or do you have a team of only pocket climbers?

 

[skidmark]

Okay I've finally been able to catch up to the backlog of messages so you should have heard from me if you sent a message.

I have to step away from the computer for a few hours but of course the submission deadline is in just over 90 minutes. I mentioned a couple of pages ago, but just a reminder that the publication deadline is a further 24 hours after that, so please refrain from posting your teams until then. And if you missed the submission deadline, just send your team anyway, I'll accept teams right up until publication.

Up to 87 teams, just need 7 more to match last year's participation, and there are still a few prominent participants I've yet to hear from...

 

[postmanhat]

Team submitted after some fairly significant last-minute changes, including a 1000+ pointer who am fairly certain will not be that widely selected, given the other options. Heart over head with a lot of choices as usual, but it's now a team I'm much keener on following than I thought would be the case a few days ago.

 

[hayneplane]

Got a team that by and large I will be happy to cheer on during races.

Realised this time about the zero pointers which could be good news.

Main concern is whether a couple of riders who had good years last year have the growth left on a likely bigger level of race programme in 2025 to be as astute a pick as I hope.

Got roughly 17 different nations represented so a nice spread.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

For me the difficulty in this game indeed remains that you also need to be willing to gamble on young riders who lack the track record but could have a breakout season. ...
Hopefilly that'll translate to a first half finish.

Sounds like you should be entering the Emerging riders game if you have identified good picks in that category...

 

[skidmark]

Phew, so after a busy day, there are only a few teams that I've processed that I'm waiting to hear from with corrections to their teams. Still time for new teams, but as of now it looks like we'll have slightly more than 90 teams this year again.

Just starting on the popularity tab a bit this evening (it's after 10pm in Canada right now), and it seems like it'll be interesting this year with diverging strategies depending on which headlining rider(s) people decided to choose. After 4 teams entered into the popularity tab, there was only one unanimous rider, and it's someone who wasn't even on my longlist

I've entered 12 teams now, and there are three riders on 10 teams as the most popular. And one of them is another rider that wasn't even on my longlist! I'm going to choose to believe that means there are a lot of different strategies rather than that I've missed out big time

See you all tomorrow for the big reveal!

 

[DJ Sprtsch]

Sounds interesting! Looking forward to the reveal.

 

[ingsve]

Phew, so after a busy day, there are only a few teams that I've processed that I'm waiting to hear from with corrections to their teams. Still time for new teams, but as of now it looks like we'll have slightly more than 90 teams this year again.

Just starting on the popularity tab a bit this evening (it's after 10pm in Canada right now), and it seems like it'll be interesting this year with diverging strategies depending on which headlining rider(s) people decided to choose. After 4 teams entered into the popularity tab, there was only one unanimous rider, and it's someone who wasn't even on my longlist

I've entered 12 teams now, and there are three riders on 10 teams as the most popular. And one of them is another rider that wasn't even on my longlist! I'm going to choose to believe that means there are a lot of different strategies rather than that I've missed out big time

See you all tomorrow for the big reveal!

Ya, that sounds like what I was suspecting .In the 500+ cost bracket there are many candidates but no real clear no brainer choices so it will come down to personal opinions and preferences which will spread everyone out to lots of different picks.

 

[Shakes]

I have updated the database behind https://www.savius.at/CQGame/cqgame.php

Teams are not visible yet but, if ok with @skidmark, will open it soon after deadline. Then popularity list etc. should all be populated immediately. If I am awake I will do it at midnight tonight.

 

[Riverside]

oh, my favourite "how could I've missed this guy" day is coming...

 

[ingsve]

oh, my favourite "how could I've missed this guy" day is coming...

With the work I've put in this year I don't think I can have missed anyone at least like I missed Capiot last year. At best I might have dismissed someone for whatever reason that I shouldn't have.

 

[Panda Claws]

Watching this thread for more of Skidmark's trademark sneak peeks in what riders were picked

 

[Riverside]

With the work I've put in this year I don't think I can have missed anyone at least like I missed Capiot last year. At best I might have dismissed someone for whatever reason that I shouldn't have.

you know... I've spend dozens of hours on creating last year's team and ended up nowhere close to what my goal was. So this year I took a different approach - create team in 24 hours from the scratch. Lets see how it goes but its like an early breakaway attempt in monument race - no chance there will be any success

 

[Squire]

At best I might have dismissed someone for whatever reason that I shouldn't have.

I have omitted two guys from not very elevated countries who I presume will be very popular. I ended up not swapping in the one I was pondering about yesterday before sending my team. Wonder how that turns out, and how popular those two actually end up being. The decisions could come back and bite me, but then I would hope that the ones I picked in their stead will also get some points.

My team has way more baguette eaters than usual for me, and way fewer pasta eaters than I tend to go for. There are also only 13 nationalities, so I might not be the biggest scorer during national championship week.