The 2025 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[Shakes]

Dylan van Baarle with broken collar bone.

Ouch for all those, including me, that have him. Hoping for injury free season and he breaks something in the first race. Won't do his confidence much good either nor his calendar going forward.

 

[Salvarani]

Dylan van Baarle with broken collar bone.

Absolutely horrible timing for a classics rider to get injured now and miss a few weeks.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Well at least Van Baarle was quite cheap, but for selfish reasons I would still rather have seen Gloag be the one to continue his streak of bad luck.

 

[search]

When are they announcing the UAE routes?
Last year they did it on the 17th, but the races are starting two days earlier this time around.

Courses for the UAE Tour have been announced today

https://twitter.com/x/status/1881658005860778109

View: https://x.com/ammattipyoraily/status/1881658005860778109

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Courses for the UAE Tour have been announced today

https://twitter.com/x/status/1881658005860778109

View: https://x.com/ammattipyoraily/status/1881658005860778109

Ok, so the same route as last year, but with a different "climb" on stage 4 to keep the riders from falling asleep.

 

[Squire]

So maybe leaving Brennan out (too many Vismas already) was a mistake.

Bring on the hilly stuff

Sure, these first races really highlight the riders you don't have, but I have for some time now already thought that I probably misjudged Brennan when picking my team (and not picking him). I've realized just how many cheap points he will get chances at with how lacking Visma is in the sprinter department for everything but the biggest races. Brennan doesn't even need to be that good to score many points, probably. And him being quite popular makes it even more dangerous.

He was of course close to making it into my team, but I was also thinking that I had the best 100-something priced picks already. I realize I maybe should have made room for one more. At the end I was trying different combos instead of Kajamini/Bisiaux, but mainly with a view to maybe getting Widar in there. I couldn't find any really attractive cheap picks to pair him with, but maybe I should have prioritized getting Brennan in and made do with someone like Pescador, Pickering or Bouchard, although they weren't such attractive propositions in and of themselves. But then Bisiaux is also a bit of hit'n'hope.

 

[search]

Ok, so the same route as last year, but with a different "climb" on stage 4 to keep the riders from falling asleep.

Stage 1 is now an uphill sprint to the mosque at sth like 5% average. But yeah, basically the same route as usual.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Stage 1 is now an uphill sprint to the mosque at sth like 5% average. But yeah, basically the same route as usual.

Credit where it's due then, when they have actually thought of something new.

 

[Earns1985]

Team tactics won't matter much, I think. What matters is what riders are in shape and motivated to ride for GC. It won't be up to Visma to make the race, so it's not like Graat is going to throw away GC chances he would otherwise have by pulling for Gloag (unless Gloag by some miracle ends up as race leader). They will probably both try to hang on as long as possible.

For most teams in most stage races, team hierarchy doesn't really matter that much for who scores how many GC points. Most teams won't be riding at the front. Which is part of why GC riders are often quite safe and preditctable picks for this game.

I don't generally disagree with your statement, but tomorrow for example, it can happen, that Visma will try to drop Welsford on the last climb to get a better opportunity for Brennan to win the stage. Of course, they have to decide, which riders they will use to make the race hard (and therefore perhaps sacrifise their own GC).

Not that I know a lot about Brennan's climbing level, but I think here team tactics can play a role also for the final GC..

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Not that I know a lot about Brennan's climbing level

It's very good. His Orlen Nations Grand Prix showing (fourth on GC in a race with pretty much only hilly and mid-mountain stages, including a 4.2k at 8.3% MTF where he was fourth behind Rondel, Rolland and Verstrynge) was especially impressive, but his U23 Giro stage win and Avenir third place behind the break weren't exactly on Mareczko-type stages either. There's a reason why Visma describe him as more of a Matthews type...

 

[will-10]

Absolutely horrible timing for a classics rider to get injured now and miss a few weeks.

(this is copium, I also have DVB and the poor guy can't catch any luck this last two years)

 

[Salvarani]

(this is copium, I also have DVB and the poor guy can't catch any luck this last two years)

Boonen not winning that against Hayman, Stannard and Vanmarcke is too funny.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

We all knew he would be half-decent already. Especially in this weak field. You're not regretting not picking Walls (who's already almost on par with last season) either, are you?

Let me explain.
Matthew Brennan is on my team, therefore this is all I need to see to confirm he will be a superstar.
Matthew Walls isn't on my team, therefore I will need to see a bigger sample size.

 

[zigzag wanderer]

@Shakes - something strange going on with your spreadsheet. Lorenzo Rota (picked by Boris98 and Laurens147) has 11 points showing from yesterday. He's not at the TDU, and CQ hasn't awarded him any points.

 

[DJ Sprtsch]

I suspect that Lorenzo Rota has received the points from Emily Dixon.
They have the same CQ rider number, 21958.
And there are no male riders with 11 points in 2025.

 

[Shakes]

I suspect that Lorenzo Rota has received the points from Emily Dixon.
They have the same CQ rider number, 21958.
And there are no male riders with 11 points in 2025.

Good catch @DJ Sprtsch & @zigzag wanderer !

Did not know they would re-use rider identifiers across men and women. Disabled the data gathering for women now (sorry women!) and deleted the data gathered thus far. As this would require separating everything for males and females in the data. While I just separated them by gender for the points assuming rider id's would be unique.

Assumptions are the mother of all f*ck ups.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

Now that yellow cards are applied meaningfully for the first time (they carried no threat of a suspension last year), their effect on pricing in this game becomes a potential issue. They can lead to riders being suspended for 7, 14 or 30 days : presumably it is the intention of the UCI that that has some impact on the rider's season, therefore by extension on his CQ points. Doping suspensions are not the only ones that have had an impact on prices in the game (Groenewegen, IIRC, was charged at his 2019 price for the 2022 game after a 9 month ban which bridged across two seasons).

If Danny van Poppel picks up a second yellow this week that will have zero effect on his CQ score this year (he wouldn't have been racing anyway), but if Jonej Pogagaard were to pick up a suspension that included the first stage of the Tour de France, that could be quite significant.

Any thoughts @skidmark as to whether there is to be an overall principle on this, or will it be case by case assessment?

 

[Netserk]

Now that yellow cards are applied meaningfully for the first time (they carried no threat of a suspension last year), their effect on pricing in this game becomes a potential issue. They can lead to riders being suspended for 7, 14 or 30 days : presumably it is the intention of the UCI that that has some impact on the rider's season, therefore by extension on his CQ points. Doping suspensions are not the only ones that have had an impact on prices in the game (Groenewegen, IIRC, was charged at his 2019 price for the 2022 game after a 9 month ban which bridged across two seasons).

If Danny van Poppel picks up a second yellow this week that will have zero effect on his CQ score this year (he wouldn't have been racing anyway), but if Jonej Pogagaard were to pick up a suspension that included the first stage of the Tour de France, that could be quite significant.

Any thoughts @skidmark as to whether there is to be an overall principle on this, or will it be case by case assessment?

The answer last year when I asked was this:

I don't think I see suspending someone for a yellow card type violation affecting the CQ game score. The spirit and intent of that rule as Hugo Koblet created it was to eliminate the similar tension that some fans found distasteful, of being incentivized to pick a doper. My sense is that the temperature has gone down on that moral disgust in general post-Armstrong suspension, so that is maybe not as much of a consideration as it was in the early 2010s when this game was formed. Either way, someone being suspended for doping for significant parts of a season can impact this game to a decent degree.

 

[Shakes]

https://www.savius.at/CQGame/Files/CQIdentifiers.csv

Direct link to csv. Just the Identifier plus FullName

I forgot Mancebo was still riding his bike. Kelme cyclists are real lovers of pro cycling. I miss that team...

Mancebo won a race again ! (I was corrected at time of comment that he never rode for Kelme*)

 

[tobydawq]

Albert into profit.

I pity the people who didn't pick him.

 

[Squire]

Nobody picked Romo, luckily. He was one of my 200-300 guys that I debated putting in my team, but went with Dunbar instead. Hope I won't regret it come the end of the season. Romo really had the right profile for a potential big breakout.

 

[RedheadDane]

Is this some kind of record for the earliest point of the game where a non-insignificant number of players have gotten a rider into profit?

Of course, it helped that said rider came free of charge.

 

[Squire]

Is this some kind of record for the earliest point of the game where a non-insignificant number of players have gotten a rider into profit?

Of course, it helped that said rider came free of charge.

I present to you Matthew Lloyd 2012.

 

[skidmark]

Now that yellow cards are applied meaningfully for the first time (they carried no threat of a suspension last year), their effect on pricing in this game becomes a potential issue. They can lead to riders being suspended for 7, 14 or 30 days : presumably it is the intention of the UCI that that has some impact on the rider's season, therefore by extension on his CQ points. Doping suspensions are not the only ones that have had an impact on prices in the game (Groenewegen, IIRC, was charged at his 2019 price for the 2022 game after a 9 month ban which bridged across two seasons).

If Danny van Poppel picks up a second yellow this week that will have zero effect on his CQ score this year (he wouldn't have been racing anyway), but if Jonej Pogagaard were to pick up a suspension that included the first stage of the Tour de France, that could be quite significant.

Any thoughts @skidmark as to whether there is to be an overall principle on this, or will it be case by case assessment?

Yeah I think I mostly am still on board with what netserk quoted me on for last year's thread. I've thought a bit more about it now that the contours of the suspensions are a bit more fleshed out (or are more apparent to me because the violations are actually starting to happen), but generally I hew towards thinking that a ban of 30 days or less should not impact a rider's score, because it's pretty minor. Of course if it's like a prime classics rider getting suspended the day before E3 (and therefore being out for all the main point opportunities in their wheelhouse through Liege) it'd impact the game more maximally, but I'm inclined to shrug at that possibility. You can't cover all scenarios.

There are two levels I think of this on: gameplay and fairness/moral considerations. On the level of gameplay, I think the worry with discounted riders is that they'll be so obvious everyone would pick them, which is boring. There aren't many scenarios where a 30 day suspension will significantly impact a rider's potential, normally they should make up those race days elsewhere and even if they didn't it'd be less of an impact than, say, a 6-week collarbone recovery, which is quite frequently a factor in this game. On the level of morality, I've said before that the case of Groenewegen (and Bos, if it had happened when the CQ game existed, or something like Moscon/Reichenbach if he actually got suspended) is really the unique case where the non-doping violation was so egregious that it felt distasteful to make him eligible for a discounted price. I feel like yellow card accumulations are more likely to be a collection of things like riding in the aero tuck, getting rid of a bidon outside the regular zone, etc etc, which feels below the threshold where too many people would be disinclined to pick a rider because they're morally opposed. Plus it'd be administratively annoying to have to manually pick out what edge cases cross a threshold that many people would gauge differently, to be honest.

Anyway we've got the best part of a year to figure that out so I'm open to hearing any strong feelings one way or the other, as always.

 

[Hugo Koblet]

Nobody picked Romo, luckily. He was one of my 200-300 guys that I debated putting in my team, but went with Dunbar instead. Hope I won't regret it come the end of the season. Romo really had the right profile for a potential big breakout.

I didn't consider him, but actually he was already quite good last year so could definitely be in for a breakthrough. But like, he's 26 year's old going into his fifth season as a pro, so it wasn't exactly written in the stars that he would suddenly explode this season.