Things are definitely heating up - with the latest results spicing up the situation even more! So let's take a look at what happened recently:
Period Ranking: October
Well, the title isn't exactly right, as half of the races covered in this update actually were held in September. I'm talking about the cobbles clash Battenkill - Rheden. Let's cover that one first.
In the U.S., it was finally, finally time for Wisniowski to win a classic - his first of the year, netting Aker 178 points - more than runner-up Senechal's Tinkoff got (140), thereby extending their lead in the battle for 4th against the Russians. De Stijl were 3rd best team with 110 points thanks to Salzmann's rather surprising 3rd place finish. Relegation candidates UBS came close, though, scoring 104 points.
The Dutch Rheden GP was another - maybe the final - show of Danny Summerhill, worth 175 points for cycleYorkshire. Neilands took a big 2nd-place finish and 125 points for Evonik, with Zepuntke's Pollos getting 100 Punkte.
Onto the hills then, with Japan coming first. And UBS somewhat getting themselves back into the relegation fight with Buchmann's win! And given that 2nd and 3rd went to PCT teams, their 183 points were twice as much as Aker scored with Mohoric's 4th place (90)! 5th placed Kwiatkowski's MOL got very close with 88 points, being the 3rd best PT team.
So, who did best in this period? Unsurprisingly, it was one of the teams doing all four races - Evonik. The Latvians scored 302 points. However, behind them things get interesting in terms of relegation fight - as Team UBS are 2nd with 287 points, despite racing only in Battenkill and Japan! 3rd place goes to Aker with 268 points, confirming their 4th place overall.
Despite another De Bie failure in Japan, Aegon are 4th with 228 points. And to put things into relation, Duolingo and Huski, their main rivals in the fight for 17th, scored 90 and 48 points respectively.
The latter - together with EA scoring 48 points as well - were actually the worst team among those who did race, with the bottom three spots taken by Isostar, SAP and Polar who were all saving their energy for Lombardia. Gazelle and Zwift were the other teams below 100 points.
Here are the full numbers:
Batt
Rhe
Jap
GP Cyc
Total
1
Evonik - ELKO
50
125
57
70
302
2
Team UBS
104
0
183
0
287
3
Aker - MOT
178
0
90
0
268
4
Aegon - Peroni
0
34
22
172
228
5
MOL Cycling Team
60
10
88
45
203
6
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
140
0
40
0
180
7
cycleYorkshire
0
175
0
0
175
8
ELCO - ABEA
0
74
0
82
156
9
ISA - Hexacta
0
12
18
121
151
10
Los Pollos Hermanos
0
100
0
40
140
11
Moser - Sygic
0
37
0
100
137
12
King Power
0
64
0
64
128
13
De Stijl Cycling
110
0
8
0
118
14
Grieg-Maersk
47
0
70
0
117
15
Duolingo
0
90
0
0
90
16
Zwift Pro Cycling
0
21
0
60
81
17
Gazelle
37
0
20
0
57
18
EA Vesuvio
0
11
0
37
48
19
Huski Chocolate
16
0
32
0
48
20
Isostar - Specialized
0
0
0
0
0
21
Team Puma - SAP
0
0
0
0
0
22
Polar
0
0
0
0
0
Full Ranking
Obviously, if you do all the math on your own, you won't need this overview - but those who don't like maths can continue reading.
Isostar had a big enough gap to stay relaxed while watching the others race. On the other hand, King Power had a golden chance of moving up to 2nd with Puma pausing as well - and they made pretty good use of it. The Thai and the Germans switch places, with the former now trailing Isostar by 493 points. With just one race to go, it's pretty likely that we already know this year's PT winner by now.
The gap between 2nd and 3rd is way smaller, though - with Puma trailing by 111 points. Which might appear to be a lot, but remember that Lombardia is a monument providing lots of points. It's still a good cushion to have, for sure!
When speaking of cushion - Puma's advantage over 4th placed Aker is 261 points. A monument win is worth 280 points. So while it's unlikely, the Germans could still drop off the podium (as could King Power, but that's even more unlikely).
Aker now are 257 points clear of Tinkoff - while having a 500 points margin on a non-Top 5 spot. Both teams look pretty likely to finish inside the Top 5, though, which would definitely be surprising considering pre-season expectations!
Things are getting much closer outside the Top 5, though, with ELCO in 6th and MOL in 7th separated by just 3 points! EA and ISA then are even tied for 8th, less than 100 points behind 6th place! So we could see quite some changes in these spots on the final day of the year!
Gazelle as the final Top 10 team is just 80 points behind as well, though - whereas Polar and Grieg have roughly 100 and 140 points respectively to make up for if they still want to get a Top 10.
Pretty much in no man's land, meaning about as far away from the Top 10 as from relegation, we have Evonik and cycleYorkshire. De Stijl and Moser, about 200 points behind, don't need to be realistically afraid of relegation anymore, either, as they're still 400 points clear of 18th place - and will likely battle it out for the final Top 15 spot. De Stijl have a 28 points advantage heading into Lombardia.
But what you're surely all waiting for are the updated numbers in the relegation fight. First of all: Zwift are definitely relegated now; 1,233 points are available by taking the first 8 spots, but they're almost 2,000 points off safety.
Los Pollos still have theoretical chances, but they trail 17th place by 490 points. So even a win alone wouldn't be enough. But who knows, strange things have happened already...
A win alone wouldn't be enough for UBS, either - but it would get them within 4 points of safety! Buchmann and Spengler have just shown that they're still alive - it'd take a miraculous day to get them to safety, but it doesn't look fully impossible.
However, the most likely scenario will be that one of Huski, Duolingo and Aegon will stay up. And boy, how close did things get with De Bie's latest win! The three teams are separated by 48 points, so this clearly is anyone's to win - or lose! All of them should have a strong contender in Lombardia - looking at the past, De Bie might be the favorite, getting two podiums in a row in the last two years - but Formolo was just one spot behind last year. I don't know the exact lineups yet - but I'm sure the reporter will present you the situation in much more detail in the race preview!
And for those who couldn't follow the textual representation, here's the numerical one:
Given the low amount of races - at the lowest possible points scale for PT teams - we only have a limited amount of changes on top of the standings. Out of the Top 6, only Pedersen did actually race. Not too successfully, but points are points.
Silvio Herklotz or Taylor Phinney will take the individual crown - Lombardia will be decisive in that fight. With only the latter racing, though. Mads Pedersen will finish 3rd, with those behind him being too far away or not racing anyway.
Arnaud Demare stays 4th, Joe Dombrowski 5th and Caleb Ewan 6th. Lukasz Wisniowski is the only new name in the Top 10, moving up from 11th to 7th. Which obviously resulted in a one spot loss for Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier, Bryan Coquard and Pavel Sivakov. As well as Gaviria, who therefore dropped out of the Top 10.
Ahead of the final race of the year, only MAL (12th) and Sagan (15th) still have chances of moving inside the Top 10, all others being too far away.
In the category "notable improvers", we can mention again Wisniowski (11th to 7th) and MAL (16th to 12th), but also Kwiatkowski (26th to 20th), Summerhill (32nd to 24th), Buchmann (39th to 33rd), De Bie (57th to 41st) and Senechal (58th to 46th).
And here's the penultimate individual ranking of the year:
I was already sweating with Duolingo so close even though theoretically Formolo should do better than Bobridge in Lombardia, but with Aegon also being very close now, I have no idea who are the favorites to stay up.
We are now a lot closer to where i expected us to be pre-season. A bit in nowhere but im fine with that. Now all eyes on the relegation fight to see who gets the lucky end down there. Couldnt be more exciting with three teams totally in the mix.
It`s crazy to see me still in the relegation fight after so many failures this season.
Quite painful to see really as the team had barely any big overperformance but so many underperformances.
De Bie basically just needed one of the 3 Ardennes or Japan or ... to be more than a 0 pointer to save us.
Same for Olivier, who had two GTs but failed in two, while he was a top5-10 contender with stage performances in the years before.
Or Van Hooydonck, who wasn`t really anywhere close to the top10-15 this year and even failed in Rheden, when he due to clashes was top3 material.
Basically all year Wellens is keeping our flag up and taking care of us still being close to the line.
De Bie really is needed in Lombardia now, but in especially Formolo with his MO/HI combination might be a tough opponent. That said, last two years he had a good run there, so hopefully he can have another shot there.
Oh boy is that relegation battle fierce! I can't root for anyone as I like all 3 - not only the teams, but the managers aswell. So it will instead be a - Good luck, may the best man win!
Our goal of top 10 seems sealed now. Theoretically we can drop to 11th, but with 250 points down and 5 teams needing to beat us sufficiently I will call it safe. Where in the top 10 we will end up is a different matter entirely though. I can only hope for Koretzky doing one last push for a decent result. His season has already been disastrous with something like 250 points below the expected score - which was already 200 points less than his actual score from last season. So anything that can give some relief would be appreciated. It is likely his last season within the team anyway.
I must say I'm impressed at being 6th though. Our team is no way strong enough to be in that region, but a record performing Coquard has kept us there. A regular performance would have seen us miss the top 10 easily while him not present at all would have put us in relegation. Not surprising ofcourse if you deduct the points from the best rider in the team.
Chiarello easily our 2nd strongest rider of the season, actually almost giving half the points of Lecuisinier (who had a horrible season pointwise though). Combined with Coquards overperformance they almost covered the points that Lecuisinier got, which makes the sale good for us in retrospect. It will be interesting to see if we can cover the loss of Coquard in a similar fashion.
Koretzky as the 3rd best rider isn't surprising, but not good enough really, while Vlatos also had a bit of an underwhelming performance scoring 300 points - less than Kiriakidis. I can't wait to further train him to see if that can cover the loss of his U25 points. It's quite interesting to see just how much better he has performed than Ioannidis when comparing their stats.
Good luck to all those who have something to fight for in the final race, and thanks a lot for the update!
SotD wrote:
Chiarello easily our 2nd strongest rider of the season, actually almost giving half the points of Lecuisinier (who had a horrible season pointwise though). Combined with Coquards overperformance they almost covered the points that Lecuisinier got, which makes the sale good for us in retrospect. It will be interesting to see if we can cover the loss of Coquard in a similar fashion.
Im not too surprised about that. From my POV, this deal was about maximizing the chances to win certain races. I was always very aware that the move would likely hurt my scoring compared to other transfer options that were available. Partly because Chiarello is simply great but also because of my planning for Lecuisinier.
The planning of Giro + Tasmania + a wasted race day over sth like Tour/Vuelta + Liechtenstein + X further contributed to his subpar scoring. But that was also done to be able to target the Tour de France next year to complete the GT collection for Evonik when the route is hopefully more Evonik friendly than this year. So he is pretty much excused even if his GT victory netted comparably less points than other wins.
That battle for staying up is tough! You may fancy De Bie's chances to save the season with a late run of big results, but obviously that's far from a done deal.
I'm not ready for the tension of Lombardia and I'm not even in the relegation battle! Good luck to everyone
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [PT] Xero Racing
Considering the last time we were here we were already down at this point I'm delighted to have already secured our position in the division next year. Especially since we'd have no one to send to Lombardia, so avoiding the very close relegation down there is very good for us.
I've always thought Aegon would survive but its tough and still needs De Bie to get close to the podium really considering the presence of Bobridge and Formolo as well.
Its maybe a bit early to congratulate Croatia on yet another win but may as well since your position is secure!
John St Ledger in Team Bunzl-Centrica and Team U25
