Manager: Sykkel_Freak Last season: 4th Pro Continental Tour (Promoted) Star rider: Taylor Phinney – 83TT, 82MO, 77HI, 72SPR, 77END (81,06 OVL) Average Age: 26,2 Average OVL: 73,3 Money spent on training: 3.700.000€
Venchi has been up before, and went straight back down. This season it seems as if they have a bit more base to build from. Taylor Phinney has joined the team, and while he is not the best climber, he is certainly the best timetriallist, and combine that with his firing sprint and you have yourself a superstar. It will be interesting to see if he will get the support of Duarte whenever he needs it, or if Duarte is chasing his own results, because that could well be the difference between Phinney winning races or not. There is a huge gap down to Yates and Antunes, and truth to be spoken they cannot help Phinney. Sean De Bie is probably the team’s hilly leader – for some races at least, and he is not good enough to get top results, simple as that. But what is interesting is that Michael van Stayen is somewhat capable of everything. He is a monster of a sprinter and he goes over hills quite well. When he is supported by De Bie, Haavardsholm and Kruijswijk the other teams have to push extremely hard to shake van Stayen. In the flats, he is also lead out by van Avermaet, Colbrelli and Aregger who are strong riders. Mike Teunissen is leading the cobbled team with help from Kruijswijk and Avermaet, which should be half past decent. Teunissen is a top 10 candidate, but he is a bit too slow to really secure him into the top 10 every time. Riders like Howson, Ascani and Sestili will try their best to keep the TTT team up to par, but even with Phinney, they are likely to lose quite some time going up against the best.
Venchi has a very interesting team. They have a couple of rider types that no one else has and this will probably be key for them to avoid relegation this season. In fact, I do not think they should even consider relegation an option.
Climbing Strength
Climbing Depth
Hilly Strength
Hilly Depth
Cobble Strength
Cobble Depth
Sprinting Strength
Sprinting Depth
TT Strength
TT Depth
Prediction: 11-13Edited by SotD on 01-06-2015 12:52
Manager: SportingNonsense Last season: 2nd Pro Tour Star rider: Andy Schleck – 85MO, 82RES, 82REC, 75HI, 74TT (81,93 OVL) Average Age: 26,1 Average OVL: 73,3 Money spent on training: 2.800.000€
Vesuvio – Accumalux is a legendary team that is always in the top battle one way or another. Two times Grand Tour champion (Vuelta a España and Tour de France) Andy Schleck is an amazing climber. Quickly glancing at his stats and you might wonder what makes him so special, but his ability to improve over a 3-week stage race is unique. You can never underestimate Andy for the overall win, which he sincerely proved last season. He is supported well by riders such as Suaza, Kirsch, Medvedev, Slagter and his brother Frank in the mountains, and while the others (maybe except for Frank) are not going to score a massive amount of points they are nice riders. Ben Gastauer seems ready to tilt Frank Schleck off his throne, and Gastauer is now among the 10 most fierce hilly riders, while Frank Schleck is surely not done getting into a few top 10s himself. In addition, he is a decent rider for many of the hilly GC races this season. Paterski and Slagter are strong helpers in hilly terrain and a new opportunity for Vesuvio has arrived with the signing of Nick van der Lijke who is not only a strong hilly rider but also a strong sprinter. Combine him with Merino Criado and you have the perfect leadout for Ben Swift, who should win as much as he always does. Bob Jungels and Richie Porte are decent timetriallists and should get a few mentions themselves, while also being strong TTT riders to help avoid too much time loss. Marcel Kittel is a great timetriallist however and he should easily get a few podiums aswell as possibly a decent GC in Qatar. While being top in most fields the team is not very strong cobblers. Pit Schlechter could possibly cash a few points, but nothing noteworthy.
Vesuvio is normally a very well planned team, and this season will be no different. I have a hard time not seeing this team inside the PT top 3.
Manager: Heine Last season: 17th Pro Tour Star rider: Stefan Denifl – 84MO, 76HI, 72TT, 75END, 76REC (80,24 OVL) Average Age: 25,0 Average OVL: 72,5 Money spent on training: 3.950.000€
Last season WolksWagen barely survived the Pro Tour, but they have been looking very competitive in the transfer market this time around. Stefan Denifl has been signed, and while he is not the best of the best, he should easily be fighting for top fives throughout the season, and with Monsalve, also a strong climber the two should get quite a few points. The team is well supported by Preidler, Mai and Brändle, with the latter actually having a decent shot at performing well himself. In the hills, Dimitri Claeys and Aleksandar Flügel will support each other well. Claeys is always a big questions mark, though. When he is feeling up for it he is among the five best hilly riders, while if not he falls apart. Flügel is much better rounded and should stabile score top 10s. Jaco Venter and Georg Preidler are perfect as domestiques aswell. Ruben Zepunkte is among the best cobblers in the division and supported by Taubel he should do extremely well. He would probably have preferred at least one more helper, though. In terms of sprinting, Rick Zabel is a decent rider, but without any real lead-outs and the inflated sprinting marked, he will struggle to really set his footprint into the division. Matthias Brändle is the team’s leading timetriallist, but there is also a decent variety making this team a fairly competitive TTT lineup.
There are no doubts that VolksWagen will not be in any sort of relegation battle this season, so the question is just – How far can they go?
Climbing Strength
Climbing Depth
Hilly Strength
Hilly Depth
Cobble Strength
Cobble Depth
Sprinting Strength
Sprinting Depth
TT Strength
TT Depth
Prediction: 10-12Edited by SotD on 01-06-2015 12:56
Before we go through with the final rankings, let's take a look at some different statistics. They aren't really used for anything specific, except for it to be a bit of fun. Let's see who wasted the most money on trainings:
Rank
Team Name
Training
1
Ayubowan!
€ 4.100.000
2
VolksWagen - Andritz
€ 3.950.000
3
Becherovka - Petrof
€ 3.900.000
4
Venchi
€ 3.700.000
5
Festina-Canal+
€ 3.525.000
6
Meiji - JR East
€ 3.400.000
7
Aker - MOT
€ 3.100.000
8
Vesuvio - Accumalux
€ 2.800.000
9
Orange - KLM
€ 2.600.000
10
Bacardi Limited
€ 2.400.000
11
Pendleton's
€ 2.350.000
12
Good Energy
€ 2.125.000
13
Pokerstars.com
€ 2.100.000
14
Quickstep
€ 2.000.000
14
Bouygues Telecom
€ 2.000.000
16
Tinkoff Bank - Tinkoff Insurance
€ 1.800.000
17
Project 1t4i
€ 1.700.000
18
Oz Cycling Project
€ 1.200.000
19
Movistar - US Postal
€ 425.000
20
Swisscom - UBS
€ 300.000
21
Red Bull - Huawei
€ -
21
Metinvest-Dacia
€ -
Clearly there are a huge difference in the amount of money spent this season, but deducting Movistar, Swisscom, Red Bull and Metinvest all teams have spent somewhere between 1,2 and 4,1mio on trainings.
While the difference is huge here, what might be the case if we look at the average age of the teams in listing form:
Rank
Team Name
AVR age
1
VolksWagen - Andritz
25,0
2
Aker - MOT
25,5
3
Becherovka - Petrof
25,6
4
Festina-Canal+
26,1
4
Vesuvio - Accumalux
26,1
6
Venchi
26,2
7
Good Energy
26,3
8
Ayubowan!
26,4
8
Quickstep
26,4
8
Movistar - US Postal
26,4
11
Metinvest-Dacia
26,5
12
Oz Cycling Project
26,6
13
Bacardi Limited
26,8
13
Bouygues Telecom
26,8
15
Red Bull - Huawei
27,0
16
Pokerstars.com
27,1
17
Tinkoff Bank - Tinkoff Insurance
27,4
18
Project 1t4i
27,7
19
Pendleton's
28,0
20
Orange - KLM
28,1
21
Meiji - JR East
28,4
22
Swisscom - UBS
28,5
Every team from the best to the 15th are within just 2 years of age in average. A few teams seem to have no interest in young riders, though. What seems to be a bit interesting is that mainly teams who are predicted to be below the top 10 are listed in the bottom, while the top 5 teams (in terms of youth) are all positioned within (or close to) the top 10 in terms of overall ranking.
Now things start to get a bit interesting, as these figures can actually be used in terms of meassuring the teams possible position in the division. I am talking about OVL. To calculate a fair average OVL, I decided to include only the 20 best riders in the teams. Hence no team is deducted any points for having one or two useless riders or stagiares.
Rank
Team Name
AVR OVL
1
Festina-Canal+
74,81
2
Good Energy
74,76
3
Vesuvio - Accumalux
74,54
4
Quickstep
74,37
5
Tinkoff Bank - Tinkoff Insurance
74,25
6
Oz Cycling Project
74,21
7
Becherovka - Petrof
74,11
8
Movistar - US Postal
74,10
9
Project 1t4i
74,02
10
Meiji - JR East
73,96
11
Bouygues Telecom
73,95
12
Aker - MOT
73,93
13
Bacardi Limited
73,85
14
Red Bull - Huawei
73,83
15
Pendleton's
73,76
16
Pokerstars.com
73,75
17
Swisscom - UBS
73,66
18
VolksWagen - Andritz
73,58
19
Metinvest-Dacia
73,47
20
Venchi
73,30
21
Orange - KLM
73,30
21
Ayubowan!
72,30
Festina-Canal+ and Good Energy excell on this list, and while none of them are dubbed to be able to win the division it is interesting that now we begin to see a pattern of certain teams being positioned in the top and in the bottom of the rankings. Some of you may have wondered what the stars were for, but they are actually part of the ranking system I have created. A metrix was created in order to rank the top riders and the depth of the squads over a few specific terrains, and while some riders were added as a higher star rider, or some as a lower star rider, the metrix decided how the team should be ranked in general.
Let's see what the stars rankings say...
Rank
Team Name
Stars
1
Becherovka - Petrof
36
1
Festina-Canal+
36
3
Vesuvio - Accumalux
34
3
Tinkoff Bank - Tinkoff Insurance
34
3
Red Bull - Huawei
34
6
VolksWagen - Andritz
33
7
Good Energy
32
7
Quickstep
32
7
Oz Cycling Project
32
7
Venchi
32
11
Pokerstars.com
31
12
Project 1t4i
30
12
Aker - MOT
30
14
Orange - KLM
29
14
Movistar - US Postal
28
14
Meiji - JR East
28
14
Bouygues Telecom
28
14
Swisscom - UBS
28
19
Bacardi Limited
27
19
Metinvest-Dacia
27
21
Pendleton's
25
22
Ayubowan!
23
Again we see a quite distinctive result, where teams like Festina, Becherovka, Vesuvio and Tinkoff are all at the top, while teams such as Ayubowan!, Pendleton's, Metinvest and Swisscom seak towards the bottom.
As the final part of the analysis we have the subjective prediction which I have made. Besides the randomness of the AI and the managers ability to plan their season, this is the part where things can be messed up. I have concluded my predictions on things such as previous ability to plan a top team, the overall strength of the leaders, the ability to score big in certain, or most races and finally I have ranked up a few terrains as being key for overall succes:
Rank
Team Name
1
Becherovka - Petrof
2
Vesuvio - Accumalux
3
Tinkoff Bank - Tinkoff Insurance
4
Red Bull - Huawei
5
Festina-Canal+
6
Good Energy
7
Aker - MOT
8
Oz Cycling Project
9
Quickstep
10
Pokerstars.com
11
VolksWagen - Andritz
12
Venchi
13
Project 1t4i
14
Bouygues Telecom
15
Orange - KLM
16
Meiji - JR East
17
Swisscom - UBS
18
Movistar - US Postal
19
Bacardi Limited
20
Metinvest-Dacia
21
Pendleton's
22
Ayubowan!
Also here a few teams tend to stand out, not only in the top, but also in the bottom.
The final result is based on the average OVL rankings, the star-based rankings and the subjective prediction rankings. The lower you end up in a rankings, the higher a point you get, and the higher you end up, the lower a point you get, and this makes for a final result list, that looks like this:
Rank
Team Name
TOTAL
1
Festina-Canal+
7
2
Vesuvio - Accumalux
8
3
Becherovka - Petrof
9
4
Tinkoff Bank - Tinkoff Insurance
11
5
Good Energy
15
6
Quickstep
20
7
Red Bull - Huawei
21
8
Oz Cycling Project
21
9
Aker - MOT
31
10
Project 1t4i
34
11
VolksWagen - Andritz
35
12
Pokerstars.com
37
13
Venchi
39
14
Bouygues Telecom
40
15
Meiji - JR East
41
16
Movistar - US Postal
41
17
Orange - KLM
49
18
Swisscom - UBS
49
19
Bacardi Limited
51
20
Pendleton's
57
21
Metinvest-Dacia
58
22
Ayubowan!
64
As much as I hate ending up predicting my own team at the top, it was the result I got from the matrixes and combination of results. In terms of myself, I will be looking at the subjective prediction in which I am number 5. Things are extremely close in the top, with four team being within absolute luck and randomness from eachother, while in the botton it seems likely that Ayubowan!, Metinvest-Dacia and Pendleton's might relegate while teams such as Orange, Swisscom and Bacardi could well be fighting for the last two spots.
I hope you have liked the read and will comment and debate on here, as it makes it more fun to use time on stuff like this if people actually want to talk about it Edited by SotD on 01-06-2015 13:45
Well written stuff, mate. Nice overview with the stars and (imo) a perfect length of text and key points.
Loving your thoughts on Oz for obvious reasons, too I may repeat that I don't think Oz will finish that high. But it's always nice to see someone believing in our strengths.. Goss... I more and more regret to not have sell him this year. I could have. On the other hand, it was too cool to have an Aussie road champ on the roster, so I hope he will snap a result here and then.
Quite interesting second bunch of team previews from our point of view, btw. Meiji, Metinvest, Movi, as well as Orange and Pendle.. We could all end up fighting against each other in the rankings!
Great,great read so far SotD. Nice layout, text has perfect lenght, stars are cool and there is more info like average OVL, which is interesting, so i give you 5 stars for presentation.
Regarding Metinvest, i pretty much agree with you observations, we are obviously heavy dependant on Pluchkin and Ignatiev to stay in PT. I can see us anywhere between 15th and 22nd place as much can change with leaders falling on the ground or something like that.
And just as Tsmoha,i think you are overrating Oz, but just a few places. Looking forward to next parts, keep up the great work! Edited by Avin Wargunnson on 01-06-2015 12:12
tsmoha wrote:
Quite interesting second bunch of team previews from our point of view, btw. Meiji, Metinvest, Movi, as well as Orange and Pendle.. We could all end up fighting against each other in the rankings!
Not again...
I didn't realize how solid our cobbles depth was against other PT teams. Just wish Altur was maxed out right now. Our cobblers and Tejay have to be our saving grace because Fothen and Ratiy just aren't going to cut it.
Regardless of what happens I have drastically improved my team's depth which will help in the long run of things.
Great previews so far SotD, I really like the star system.
Thanks for the nice words guys... And to jph - You might have noticed that I use a 3 spot preview, and I would think it was rude of me to put you between 22 and 24
The final teams are up now, so makes for a little bit of read before I post the final rankings and some of the statistics
Enjoying these previews. Some really great work here SotD and thanks for the kind prediction for RBH.
I am seeing a lot of guys writing hey there is no mountain back up for Jose. I ask myself does Jose really need a MO78, 79 or 80 riding along side him or am I wasting a load of wage getting someone in like that?
Incidentely I have gone for a slightly unorthodox approach with Guerao in that the poor bugger will ride all 3 GT's he just better get over all the mountains .
@jph - I have to say I think Pendletons could finish worse then you guys
Smowz wrote:
Enjoying these previews. Some really great work here SotD and thanks for the kind prediction for RBH.
I am seeing a lot of guys writing hey there is no mountain back up for Jose. I ask myself does Jose really need a MO78, 79 or 80 riding along side him or am I wasting a load of wage getting someone in like that?
Incidentely I have gone for a slightly unorthodox approach with Guerao in that the poor bugger will ride all 3 GT's he just better get over all the mountains .
@jph - I have to say I think Pendletons could finish worse then you guys
Thanks a lot
I really don't know if it is necessary to have some mountain riders there in this version. In some of the previous versions it was usually a good idea, because otherwise your climber would have to go down to the team car to get his own water, which costed quite some energy and also could be really bad when splits and crashes happened.
Also I tend to think that when you have some good mountains riders next to your captain they will be trying to keep him out of the wind to protect him the best possible. I think it has a bit of an effect, not sure if it is significant, though. This season, more so than before, I have tried to always have some riders to support the leaders so he will not be alone for the final 50-100km unless he attacks.
Thanks for the previews SotD, sadly have to agree with what you say, I'm prepping for PCT already. Maybe I have done some genius race planning but everything else suggests that to be unlikely
Awesome previews and very interesting analysis. I always enjoy reading your insight SotD.
I didn't realize how far behind the curve I was for average, average age, and training. I don't know how, but it seems like you guys are all a lot better at this game than me
The prediction for us is basically the same as our end result last year. This may be accurate because despite the fact that our youngsters improved a lot and we brought in some very strong new riders, Schumacher declined once again and will probably score less points. I'd like to think we are a little underrated, however.
The fight for the win should be interesting. I don't think there is a single clear favorite, and it is difficult to predict because the top teams have very different strengths (Tinkoff in the hills, Becherovka in the cobbles/sprints, and Vesuvio/Festina in the mountains), so they are hard to compare head to head.
Bushwackers wrote:
Awesome previews and very interesting analysis. I always enjoy reading your insight SotD.
I didn't realize how far behind the curve I was for average, average age, and training. I don't know how, but it seems like you guys are all a lot better at this game than me
The prediction for us is basically the same as our end result last year. This may be accurate because despite the fact that our youngsters improved a lot and we brought in some very strong new riders, Schumacher declined once again and will probably score less points. I'd like to think we are a little underrated, however.
The fight for the win should be interesting. I don't think there is a single clear favorite, and it is difficult to predict because the top teams have very different strengths (Tinkoff in the hills, Becherovka in the cobbles/sprints, and Vesuvio/Festina in the mountains), so they are hard to compare head to head.
Thanks mate.
Some are just swapping/selling a lot more often I guess, and a great deal of those swiss riders are just not all that young really.
It's always difficult to put an exact number on where people will end up, because there are a lot of randomness involved, also we have no idea where the strongest riders are present. If none of the big riders are present in Paris-Nice for example then one of the 80HI riders could easily end up winning it, or perhaps a 77MO/78HI rider or something like that because they are "allowed" to attack. If the best hilly riders are in Paris-Nice then the hilly one day classic could be won by one of those riders. And getting these 200+ points every now and again mean a lot in terms of ending up 17th or 10th really.
Well written previews, personally I hope that I end up 1 spot higher than you predict as that is my goal. If I manage that I'm happy with this season. Did a lot of selling this transfer season which gave me quite some training money, unfortunately not enough to get Denifl to 85 Mon
Awesome previews SotD was great to read through everyone one with the prediction at the end agree with you relegation candidates though I do think the top is much more open any of 4-5 could win
Solid previews SotD, and I really like the ranking analysis. I too would come to a very similar approach to ranking the teams for predictions, though I feel I will be hard pushed to remain in the Top 5 this season by the end.
I may repeat that I don't think Oz will finish that high. But it's always nice to see someone believing in our strengths.. Goss... I more and more regret to not have sell him this year. I could have. On the other hand, it was too cool to have an Aussie road champ on the roster, so I hope he will snap a result here and then.
