The 2026 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[Squire]

no Surf Crap Classic either, by the look of it, which somehow got a 1.pro promotion.

My Van Poppel regret has officially increased slightly.

 

[Ilmaestro99]

My tour down under team;

Fiorelli
Dihnam
Zambanini
Dainese
Shiffer

We are aiming to peak later in the season

 

[RedheadDane]

My Van Poppel regret has officially increased slightly.

I dunno... as things are standing right now, things are looking very good for Van Poppel in the Surf Coast Classic.

Startlist for Surf Coast Classic - Men 2026

Competing teams and riders for Surf Coast Classic - Men 2026. Top competitors are Danny van Poppel, Brady Gilmore and Danny van Poppel.

www.procyclingstats.com

(Just to be clear; it is Danny Van Poppel you've picked, right? Not Boy... or Jean-Paul?)

 

[Samu Cuenca]

I appear to have 9 riders for TDU:
Dinham, Strand Hagenes, T. Rex, Glivar, Ballerstedt, Greenwood, Fontaine, Van Eetvelt and Pithie.

 

[Panda Claws]

What a way to start your first game. Congrats Mason!

 

[Panda Claws]

I dunno... as things are standing right now, things are looking very good for Van Poppel in the Surf Coast Classic.

Startlist for Surf Coast Classic - Men 2026

Competing teams and riders for Surf Coast Classic - Men 2026. Top competitors are Danny van Poppel, Brady Gilmore and Danny van Poppel.

www.procyclingstats.com

(Just to be clear; it is Danny Van Poppel you've picked, right? Not Boy... or Jean-Paul?)

Pick all three and they score double.

 

[skidmark]

Agree that it was pretty much a tossup this year, but for me the tiebreaker is completely the other way around!

How much more fun it is to have some exciting riders who I will feel much better about having predicted to have a good year than I would Evenepoel. And even though I think the Evenepoel (and Roglic etc. in previous years) strategy is the safest in terms of ensuring a high placing, I'm always on the quest for maximizing how many points my team can score. Dreaming of that 20k barrier! And I think having a bunch of mid-to-high cost riders, some of whom could concievably take a big step up and give me several near-Evenepoel scores if the planets, stars, galaxies and everything align, is the only way to have a chance of doing that. Because let's face it, the extra cheap guys that come with an Evenepoel pick aren't going to give me those points, or it's at least extremely hard to predict which random cheap ones will be the best. Because you would already have included the best cheap picks before that even with my strategy, so the extra ones you get are a bit more bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. Even my team this year has some of those, like Faure Prost and Carr. Which made me even more certain that I wouldn't go the Evenepoel route.

Sometimes that gamble really comes back to bite me though, like not having Roglic in 2023 and not having Remco in 2022 (but then I was saved by De Lie and still did well).

Other than that tiebreaker, I agree with all the things you say here. Another difference being that my approach to creating my team is far from as structured as yours.

That makes sense - yeah I always appreciate your team-building approach, as it mixes conventional down-the-middle picks with a risk appetite that accepts big swings, which is why you end up with a unique pick like Buitrago that can really swing things your way if you hit on that risk.

That also does elucidate the key difference in our approaches. I do think that my slow and methodical style leads to me having almost always sanding away the edges (ie bigger perceived downside risks) of my team, which in turn almost always has me in the top 10 of the popularity charts. That's maybe kinda boring from many perspectives, but I love the process - or at least until I get fatigued at the end and choose the Van Der Paars and Hatherlys of the world.

Anyway, I always appreciate having this kind of discussion at the start of the season, every year it brings out another nuance of the risk conversation. I also just noticed that in a couple of your posts right above my original one in this topic of conversation, you brought up a few points about risk (eg not missing out on 700 pointers that might go nuclear) that I made in my later post, oops. I wasn't ignoring those points, I just missed those posts (I think my browser was open when the posts were made but they didn't show up when I was replying).

Can't wait until the bulk of riders start their seasons!