The 2026 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[Panda Claws]

I finally sent in my squad too. Put in way more effort than in previous editions so I'm really looking forward to following this team. In the past I always had a lot of random names I didn't care about, could hardly remember and had zero clue about what races they might even attend.
This year I'm definitely more invested in them so hopefully that'll also mean some better results.

Preparing for this game can really be exhausting. There are just so many possible picks and you get the craziest FOMO about ones you might've missed.

Hoping for a lot of participants and may your teams be free of crashes

 

[ingsve]

...so I'm really looking forward to following this team.

This really is the beauty of this game. Hopefully it mainly coincides with a competitive team as well so that the points for various riders actually matter. I remember some of the years where I just phoned in a quickly made team and it quickly fell below in the 50s, 60s or 70s in the rankings then that took away from it a bit but for example in the past couple of years since I've followed the sport much more closely again it has really added something to the year.

I always scour through the start lists for each coming week to get a sense of if I have any riders active and I follow the early reports on PCS to see if I happen to have any riders in the break of the day and then at the end of the day it's looking through the results (other than watching the races) to see where my riders finished, if that was good or bad by them and what it would mean for the rest of the season. It can really get a bit obsessive at times.

 

[del1962]

I have submitted my team, and I think this team's highest priced rider is the lower than any previous highest priced riders in any of my teams before.

There was two over 1000 riders I liked the look of, but I think after I picked the initial riders I wanted didn't have the budget for.

 

[Panda Claws]

Spoiler: Winners and their 1000+ points picks

Salvarani 2025: none (Almeida at 988 was really close)
shalgo 2024: Ayuso (1023 -> 1276)
Blues in the Bottle 2023: Roglic (1240 -> 2744)
EvansIsTheBest 2022: Evenepoel (1325 -> 3154)
Object 2021: none (but post Covid season with fewer options in that range and Evenepoel at 918 came close)
bminchow 2020: none (but obviously the season didn't play out as usual)
fauniera 2019: Bernal (1130 -> 2214)
Ruvu75 2018: Alaphilippe (1011 -> 2085)
fauniera 2017: none
skidmark 2016: none
Cykeltyven 2015: Rodriguez (1150 -> 1750)
Pentacycle 2014: Contador (1228 -> 2543)
SteelyDan 2013: Sagan (1963 -> 2673), Gilbert (1086 -> 949)
skidmark 2012: none
ingsve 2011: none

8 winners with at least one 1000+ points rider and 7 without. Both pathways seem equally valid historically.

Funny how SteelyDan won with that Gilbert pick given that Sagan wasn't too hot either.