The 2025 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[Squire]

I just really like to discuss game strategy from a theoretical point of view and discuss what's optimal and not. But strategy is one thing, picking the right riders for that strategy is another. And there are so many variables to account for, which makes it very difficult to make an assessment. If you have two combinations of riders to choose from, choosing the one you think will give the highest return can never be a bad idea.

Very much on the same page here, too. Discussing the meta things is really interesting, but I don't really conciously think about all those things when picking my teams. Though you can also say I do roughly follow those principles in some way or another with how I intuitively assess picks. But what's also involved is a bit of personal attachment to riders due to having had someone on previous teams or just being a fan of a rider, and some other sentimental things. Part of the reason why I love my team so much this year is that riders I like and riders who will be fun/interesting to follow aligned really well with riders who are good picks.

I myself don't exactly live and die by this way of looking at the game. If that was the case, my team would be a lot more polarized, a lot more top and bottom heavy.

Not so sure about this though. That risk management thing we've been discussing requires the EV for sets of riders in that discussion to be equal. And it's not always that you have someone expensive with as few downsides as Vingegaard.

Oh, and by the way, I was on the Ricco-train back then as well 😁

Oof, that Ricco comeback was one of the biggest 'what could have been' moments in cycling. Would REALLY have loved to see how that would have panned out.

 

[Earns1985]

This is the part of the season where I complain about how many points are distributed during the Australian summer because I never pick any Australian riders.

Same for me this year! Last year I had Plapp, but this year it´s more about damage limitation the first month.

Because I have many Visma riders, I had been also concerned, that they skip a lot of these february prep races. Good sign for that is, that they will ride again in Oman this year..

 

[Hugo Koblet]

Not so sure about this though. That risk management thing we've been discussing requires the EV for sets of riders in that discussion to be equal. And it's not always that you have someone expensive with as few downsides as Vingegaard.

No, not in general terms, but I meant my team specifically. As mentioned, I actually think that Almeida would have been better than some combination of Nerurkar/Hagenes/Penhoët, and honestly I could even see dropping Morgado and Magnier as well to make room for Van Eetvelt also. I just included these over Almeida (and Van Eetvelt) because I really wanted them on my team.

When is Ricco coming back anyway? 😅

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

CQ Cycling Game - 2025: GC

(Also added it as an option in navigation bar).

Only allow up to four choices but should suffice.

Only 5 teams with the Vingegaard/Magnier/Riccitello combo but that includes half of last year's top 8.

 

[Shakes]

@firefly3323 was above 7500 points at the start. Excel sheet had Oxenberg at 0 points while in reality he had 47 points last year. Removed that rider from the team for the website to bring it back in line. Assuming that's the standard course of action! @skidmark ?

 

[ingsve]

See it but why do they handle this differently from WU and MU. MU cycles 28.8 km while ME cycles 38.4 km. WU and WE cycle the same distance, so this is the reason for CQ points. They can easily merge the rides. Stupid anyway

Well, I don't think it's done on CQrankings end. Isn't it down to the Autralian cycling federation that the results for U-23 women also counts in the womens competition or something like that?

 

[HoudiniCycling]

Last year I went with a more unorthodox strategy and only picked under 500 points riders for my team finishing 4th in the process. I decided to stay with a more rare strategy and pick 3 riders over 1200 points this time. (Vingegaard , Van Aert and Ayuso) Not sure if anyone else have 3 riders over 1000 or 1200 this year but pretty sure not a lot of people went this route.

Something that I would like to discuss is the Ayuso pick. In my mind he was at least as obvious as Van Aert as a pick but way less people chose him. Last season he only scored 35 points in Grand Tours ( DNFed Tor de France and did not participated in the other2) Two years ago he started his season in Romandie(late april) and still got over 1000 points. This year he should at least podium Giro if Pogacar decide not to go and with his TT abilities he is a favorite to win any 1 week races. In my opinion he is the best climber/grand tour cyclist in the world behind Pogacar, Vingegaard, Evanepoel and Roglic. In an interview he gave this December he said that his long term objective is to be better than his teammate Pogacar so he clearly does not lack confidence. Did you guys also considered him or it was clear for you that Van Aert and Vingegaard are better options?

 

[Shakes]

You are the only one with those three.

Ayuso, I had him last year. Did not consider him this year. He could have a year where he suddenly gets much more points due to one week races combined with finishing at GT in a proper spot. However, for me Van Aert and Vingegaard are more likely to increase in points in absolute terms, compared to Ayuso. Did not want another expensive rider! Time will tell what is correct though. He very well could score a lot in one week races as well as one or two GT. If so, he'd get a monster score.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Well, I don't think it's done on CQrankings end. Isn't it down to the Autralian cycling federation that the results for U-23 women also counts in the womens competition or something like that?

I don't think so, cause they usually rank the riders differently in Luxembourg, too, for instance. There are few female riders there, but they have to register as an elite rider to win the elite ITT, even though they're all starting within a few minutes of each other.

Nina Berton became U23 champion in 2023, but she rode faster than Christine Majerus. Majerus got the elite NC jersey, but Berton still got the full points in the CQ database.

 

[Earns1985]

Last year I went with a more unorthodox strategy and only picked under 500 points riders for my team finishing 4th in the process. I decided to stay with a more rare strategy and pick 3 riders over 1200 points this time. (Vingegaard , Van Aert and Ayuso) Not sure if anyone else have 3 riders over 1000 or 1200 this year but pretty sure not a lot of people went this route.

Something that I would like to discuss is the Ayuso pick. In my mind he was at least as obvious as Van Aert as a pick but way less people chose him. Last season he only scored 35 points in Grand Tours ( DNFed Tor de France and did not participated in the other2) Two years ago he started his season in Romandie(late april) and still got over 1000 points. This year he should at least podium Giro if Pogacar decide not to go and with his TT abilities he is a favorite to win any 1 week races. In my opinion he is the best climber/grand tour cyclist in the world behind Pogacar, Vingegaard, Evanepoel and Roglic. In an interview he gave this December he said that his long term objective is to be better than his teammate Pogacar so he clearly does not lack confidence. Did you guys also considered him or it was clear for you that Van Aert and Vingegaard are better options?

Last year Ayuso had a really good start and me as not-owner already thought ok that´s it for the season...
But since may then he nearly didn´t score at all.

The cost of him is quite high. (1276 points). I agree, that he can podium at the giro. But riding the giro normally means, that he will not ride a lot of one-week races before that. And if Vingegaard or Roglic participates in one of these races, that surely means, that he will be not the favourite to win. Can still see him 1500-2000 points, if he stays in form for the whole season.

If there wouldn´t be a lot of better alternatives this year, I would have perhaps thought about him.

 

[ingsve]

I don't think so, cause they usually rank the riders differently in Luxembourg, too, for instance. There are few female riders there, but they have to register as an elite rider to win the elite ITT, even though they're all starting within a few minutes of each other.

Nina Berton became U23 champion in 2023, but she rode faster than Christine Majerus. Majerus got the elite NC jersey, but Berton still got the full points in the CQ database.

But surely it's not CQranking combining the results from two different competition? It likely comes from whereever they take their result lists from, no?

 

[Samu Cuenca]

But surely it's not CQranking combining the results from two different competition? It likely comes from whereever they take their result lists from, no?

I don't know. Blanka Vas became Hungarian time trial champion in 2023, but she was beat by Petra Zsanko who became U23 champion, but CQ also gave Zsanko the full points on that occasion.

That is usually not an issue with the men, because the elites and U23 riders are riding different courses and/or at different times of the day/seperate dates.

I also now spot that Ricarda Bauernfeind got full points from the German ITT in 2022, but she rode in the U23 field which started earlier in the day, and it was Lisa Brennauer who won the elite title. It was the same case again in 2023 when Mieke Kröger became German elite champion. Antonia Niedermaier rode faster in the U23 race, but was also given the full points by CQ.

 

[Squire]

Last year I went with a more unorthodox strategy and only picked under 500 points riders for my team finishing 4th in the process. I decided to stay with a more rare strategy and pick 3 riders over 1200 points this time. (Vingegaard , Van Aert and Ayuso) Not sure if anyone else have 3 riders over 1000 or 1200 this year but pretty sure not a lot of people went this route.

Something that I would like to discuss is the Ayuso pick. In my mind he was at least as obvious as Van Aert as a pick but way less people chose him. Last season he only scored 35 points in Grand Tours ( DNFed Tor de France and did not participated in the other2) Two years ago he started his season in Romandie(late april) and still got over 1000 points. This year he should at least podium Giro if Pogacar decide not to go and with his TT abilities he is a favorite to win any 1 week races. In my opinion he is the best climber/grand tour cyclist in the world behind Pogacar, Vingegaard, Evanepoel and Roglic. In an interview he gave this December he said that his long term objective is to be better than his teammate Pogacar so he clearly does not lack confidence. Did you guys also considered him or it was clear for you that Van Aert and Vingegaard are better options?

Your team looks scary with the full four-digit trident, which I noticed when checking out some of my potentially biggest rivals in the spreadsheet yesterday. There's enormous potential in that trio.

I think CQ managers have a tendency to not double down on expensive riders who don't improve much in the first year when they're popular (except me with Pidcock over the past years ). But I also think Vingegaard is clearly a better pick, and I would also take Van Aert over Ayuso. And few people seem willing to go all-in with all the expensive picks. You may well be correct in ranking an in-form Ayuso as the 5th best GT rider, but Almeida wouldn't be far off, and I think Almeida is the better CQ pick due to race program and reliability. But I can absolutely see the appeal in Ayuso and I did give him a good think. If the Visma duo weren't 'available' this year, he would probably be much more popular.

 

[repre]

This is the part of the season where I complain about how many points are distributed during the Australian summer because I never pick any Australian riders.

i love to pick some, so you get early lead and also score some green jersey points.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

@firefly3323 was above 7500 points at the start. Excel sheet had Oxenberg at 0 points while in reality he had 47 points last year. Removed that rider from the team for the website to bring it back in line. Assuming that's the standard course of action! @skidmark ?

Although it would mean that he is below the stipulated 25 riders. Not sure if there is a sanction for self-penalisation like that.

(Other than Firefly's entry of 25 names, I see a handful of teams with 32: miscounting, or not believing that there are any zero pointers capable of getting something on the board?)

 

[Panda Claws]

(Though I think you're just stating an interesting observation)

If there was I'd not enforce it. The reason for it needing to be 25 riders isn't clear to me.

Let's not set a sanctions for self-penalisations lest the CQ Manager elite use it to keep the plebs out of the Hall of Fame.

 

[Kazistuta]

It was to make the teams look like the real WT teams, which had to include 25-33 riders... but I agree, no need to penalise a guy with small team even more

 

[Hugo Koblet]

Technically the 25 rider rule doesn't matter, because you could just spend your whole budget on 4 riders and fill up with 21 zero pointers. Since firefly is only putting himself in a worse position, I see no need to do anything.

 

[MADRAZO]

Your team looks scary with the full four-digit trident, which I noticed when checking out some of my potentially biggest rivals in the spreadsheet yesterday. There's enormous potential in that trio.

I think CQ managers have a tendency to not double down on expensive riders who don't improve much in the first year when they're popular (except me with Pidcock over the past years ). But I also think Vingegaard is clearly a better pick, and I would also take Van Aert over Ayuso. And few people seem willing to go all-in with all the expensive picks. You may well be correct in ranking an in-form Ayuso as the 5th best GT rider, but Almeida wouldn't be far off, and I think Almeida is the better CQ pick due to race program and reliability. But I can absolutely see the appeal in Ayuso and I did give him a good think. If the Visma duo weren't 'available' this year, he would probably be much more popular.

Almeida might be more reliable and has the Mou-improvement hype joker factor also this year, but do you really think most likely riding 2 GTs as helper, is a better race programe than Ayuso being captain in 1 GT that will be the easiest to win next year and with him generally never riding with Pogacar so he will be captain in almost all races he rides and likely also riding more lucrative 1-day races than Almeida

I think both will be pretty good picks though, but for me Almeidas race programe, was one of the reasons he was never really close to my team, and that Ayuso was more tempting for me as a alternative to WVA and or Vingegaard .

Of course Almeida might do great results even as helper in the 2 GTs like this years Tour, but I would think there would be a clear risk he would have to do some compromising work, especially wth Visma likely back to full strenght next year.

 

[Netserk]

Almeida might be more reliable and has the Mou-improvement hype joker factor also this year, but do you really think most likely riding 2 GTs as helper, is a better race programe than Ayuso being captain in 1 GT that will be the easiest to win next year and with him generally never riding with Pogacar so he will be captain in almost all races he rides and likely also riding more lucrative 1-day races than Almeida

I think both will be pretty good picks though, but for me Almeidas race programe, was one of the reasons he was never really close to my team, and that Ayuso was more tempting for me as a alternative to WVA and or Vingegaard .

Of course Almeida might do great results even as helper in the 2 GTs like this years Tour, but I would think there would be a clear risk he would have to do some compromising work, especially wth Visma likely back to full strenght next year.

I don't think Almeida's GC was affected by being a helper in the Tour last year, and riding the Giro is often costly for GC riders who then don't score as much in the spring.

 

[manafana]

Nobody says he is foolish pick. I had a long thought about him, but his schedule scared me off. Ardennes classics don't scream like a lot of point to me and GT can be both good or completely wasted race days for him. I would've picked him if he was going to race more one-week stage races and classics, not a GT.

But i can clearly see him being good pick, dude has CQ game all over him.

Yeah I nearly left him out with fear he blanks wasting days at a GT race, he could go banana's in some these lesser stage races

 

[manafana]

I think (hope) Blackmore may turn out o be a bit of an anomaly. Fairly outlandish score last year for someone who started the year on a dev team. And watching youtube clips of him, I saw he was smoking the likes of Torres, and duking it with Remco. He is a racer. He'll be fun I suspect.

His composure was something else too, so tactically he seems pretty advanced. In Rwanda he was isolated but never panicked and knew to save his attacks

 

[bminchow]

Lineup for TDU

PLAPP Luke
VINE Jay
JOHANSEN Julius
TORRES Pablo
PESCADOR Diego
VAN BAARLE Dylan
BRENNAN Matthew
GLOAG Thomas
WITHEN PHILIPSEN Albert
BAGIOLI Andrea

That is a nice way to start

 

[bminchow]

Lineup for TDU

GLOAG Thomas - The GC lead? May get a top ten
WITHEN PHILIPSEN Albert - Get some experience young Albert
PITHIE Laurence - If he can get over some of these hills, then many points are mine (and 14 others)
TEUTENBERG Tim Torn - If he can get over some of these hills, then many points are mine (and 16 others)
TORRES ARIAS Pablo - No long climbs so here for experience?
VAN BAARLE Dylan - Lead Gloag up those hills!
VINE Jay - GC winner?

 

[repre]

I have 8-man squad for Aussie races

PLAPP Luke
TORRES Pablo
ISIDORE Noa
SHEFFIELD Magnus
ANDRESEN Tobias Lund
VAN BAARLE Dylan
GLOAG Thomas
BAGIOLI Andrea

Again, love to start strong and patriculary curious about my rare picks in Sheffield and Andresen. Was impressed by Tobias at Cro Race, he climber really well there and almost won whole race. If Sheffield is gonna be great pick he needs to be in contentions in the races like this. Plapp is the favourite for GC i guess.

So TDU will be preview of my team this season as my rare expensive picks are there.