Monuments are really bad for me.
I didn't have top favorites at the start but still was quite unlucky with Tiller crashing and breaking his collarbone and also apparently Merlier was on his way to a top 15 before crashing on Carrefour de l'Arbre
Thomas Pidcock
Alejandro Valverde
Tim Wellens
Mauri Vansevenant
Tom Van Asbroeck
Tim Declercq
Vincenzo Nibali
Kevin Geniets
Hussars final block: Matthews, Valgren, Madouas, Fuglsang, Louvel, Ayuso, Ulissi, Gesbert. Sorry, im from phone. Strange that none of Sagan and Gaudu participate
Yeah, Teuns really deserved this one after the bad luck he had earlier!
For the rankings it want well for the Pacifiers. Even with Pogiboy cracking, Vlasov was there to save the day. The Bombers and Hornets did not score well and have to watch out for a comeback of the Paladins. The fight for the 6th spot has become even closer and the Fainthearts are also much closer to the Lemmings!
So, who needs Pogacar, right? The Pacifiers are once again the best scoring team in a monument and are sure of the win now. Van Aert, Higuita and Vlasov proved too much for anyone else.
Powless and Haig gave the Bombers some good points, probably good enough for the 2nd place but it isn't entirely sure yet.
The Paladins once again saw Alaphillipe crash out, so they only had Teuns, but it's enough to take 3rd place for now, as the Hornets didn't manage to score for the first time since GP Denain, 18 races ago. The Bald Beagles also close in, so it's a very open race for the final podium spot.
The Roughnecks finaly cash in on Remco Evenepoel and rise to 6th place. With only one race to go, I'm guessing that's where they'll end up in the end. The Hussars and the Bananas disappointing again. The Fainthearts see their Ardennes squad pay off, with Hirschi, Woods and Barguil doing enough to overtake the Lemmings.
PS: If you regret a draft choice and wanted 200 points more, Quinten Hermans says hi.
With the final race in Frankfurt, we saw one change in the rankings. The Bananas with the final win for Bennett overtake the Hussars, but the Pacifiers overall victory was already set in stone.
SP1
SP2
SP3
SP4
SP5
SP6
SP7
FLW
LBL
KLP
RUF
SP8
TOT
Nemolito Pacifiers
246
330
4
415
358
202
200
116
315
12
443
2198
BBL's Bombers
125
0
0
160
526
275
535
25
130
80
235
1856
Ollfardh Paladins
143
138
132
160
250
325
90
230
130
70
430
1668
Laurens147 Hornets
188
119
70
146
252
272
511
14
0
34
48
1606
Bikex Bald Beagles
76
174
178
152
409
97
151
120
150
0
270
1507
TMM's Roughnecks
95
110
239
80
260
40
194
18
265
0
283
1301
Marcovdw Bananas
131
12
0
270
257
133
233
10
0
166
176
1212
Jaxika Hussars
150
189
68
207
102
230
139
0
40
0
40
1125
Fab's Fainthearts
116
93
54
132
65
106
116
94
175
0
269
951
Roturn's Lemmings
35
10
4
21
199
400
180
0
10
0
10
859
For the riders, Wout van Aert was the best pick, despite his COVID infection and not winning a monument.
This was the first real edition of the Spring Classics game, thank you all for participating and I hope you had fun! A big congratulations to Nemolito for his win! I'll share some more interesting or less interesting facts when I have the time.
Edited by Ollfardh on 03-05-2022 11:08
Van der Poel was a good pick in the end despite the unlucky missing nomination in MSR, which could have send him to the top even.
Other than that Schachmann still struggling post Covid and missing the full Ardennes and neither Roglic showing up there was a blow as the team had not much else really to add.
Pasqualton actually a positive surprise in the early classics being the only reason to come close to 2nd last.
But in the end the depth was missing, which mainly is due to own mistakes and also due to bad luck with some riders/rules early on.
Congrats Nemo and thanks for organizing and running the game, Ollfardh!
For myself, I was disappointed in my top picks. Alaphilippe crashed out in every major race. Trentin crashed only once but never really recovered. Vermeersch was on the ground in pretty much every race he rode.
After that I had some good picks with Kristoff, Hofstetter, Teuns, SKA but I really needed that one really big scorer
A quick team by team review. For me the best team won.
Bikex Bald Beagles - 5th: Good first 3 picks, although most of us might have expected more from Pidcock. But from their next picks, there are few who helped out with the scoring.
Biggest star: Tim Merlier gave the team 2 nice wins, although it could've been more if Alpecin could get some leadership going.
Biggest surprise: Mike Teunissen really benefitted from his teammates' results.
Biggest flop: Gianni Moscon with another lost season.
BBL's Bombers - 2nd: They were not scoring for an eternity, then everything came together for them. Van Baarle, Kwiatkowski, Laporte and surprise of the Spring Classics Bini Girmay got them to some great results in the second part of the game.
Biggest star: Dylan van Baarle with a monument win!
Biggest surprise: Biniam Girmay won the hearts of all cycling fans.
Biggest flop: Senechal suffered with the rest of the Quick Step team.
Jaxika Hussars - 8th: They went for a mix of declining riders and young talents that didn't work very well. Great R11 pick in Madouas though, who kept the team away from last place together with Matthews.
Biggest star: Michael Matthews save the team in the big races.
Biggest surprise: Valentin Madouas with a breakthrough year.
Biggest flop: Peter Sagan needs to start thinking about retirement.
Laurens147 Hornets - 4th: Without a doubt the most consistently scoring team, unfortunately no big win for them. Kung, De Lie ans Cosnefroy were their best scorers.
Biggest star: Stefan Kung was there when they needed him
Biggest surprise: Arnaud De Lie with 2 big wins.
Biggest flop: Lampaert suffered with the rest of the Quick Step team.
Marcovdw Bananas - 7th: Mohoric was the best R1 pick, but the rest of the team leaders may have disappointed a bit. Also lacked a bit of balance for the hill classics.
Biggest star: Matej Mohoric with a monument win!
Biggest surprise: Danny van Poppel restarting his career at Bora.
Biggest flop: Adam Yates didn't show up for any races.
TMM's Roughnecks - 6th: Good top picks overall, but lost quite some points due to bad rider selections. Walscheid and Petit were great options for the last draft picks. Waiting for Evenepoel payed off!
Biggest star: Remco Evenepoel gave them a monument win!
Biggest surprise: Tiesj Benoot revived his career at Jumbo-Visma.
Biggest flop: Asgreen suffered with the rest of the Quick Step team
Fab's Fainthearts - 9th: Lots of bad luck (but yeah, drafting Vanmarcke was your choice, not mine). In the end the depth of their Ardennes squad saved them from last place.
Biggest star: Mads Pedersen, I guess?
Biggest surprise: Lorenzo Rota had some good results at the start.
Biggest flop: Even for Vanmarcke this season was a new low.
Roturn Lemmings - 10th: If your nr. 1 draft pick doesn't ride any races, there's gonna be a problem. Van der Poel came back to save them for a brief moment, but then they were out of starters again.
Biggest star: Mathieu with a monument win!
Biggest surprise: Andrea Pasqualon with some nice results.
Biggest flop: Hard to pick one, but Schachmann.
Ollfardh Paladins - 3rd: Did great in some races but mostly choked in the big ones. Their top 3 picks failed miserably, but the depth of the team got them on the podium in the end.
Biggest star: Dylan Teuns had a great run this year.
Biggest surprise: Olav Kooij, who was completely underused by Jumbo.
Biggest flop: Draft round 1.
Nemolito Pacifiers - 1st: Probably the most unlucky of them all if yous ee what happened to Pogacar, van Aert and Colbrelli, but the first two scored well enough at the start and other riders took their place.
Biggest star: Wout van Aert, even though he missed the cherry on top.
Biggest surprise: Higuita or Vlasov, showing they can do classics.
Biggest flop: Jasper Philipsen didn't get much done this year.
Very happy with second, since early on it looked like I was ticketed for the bottom. My team ended up being good, but extremely top heavy. Girmay was amazing until he left Europe. Van Baarle was a slow starter but killed it at the end, especially with the Roubaix win. Laporte really surprised, and should have even scored more if Wout gave him his deserved victory. And Kwiatek showed he still has winning legs in Amstel, if only he got more chances to lead.
Those 4 were really fantastic. Unfortunately, almost everyone else disappointed, and that's mostly my own fault. I stacked too many climbers in the later rounds, anticipating they would ride the Ardennes again, but many did not. And Senenchal was indeed the biggest flop. I really thought this was the year he might end up as Quickstep's top cobbles finisher. But not only was I wrong, Quickstep sucked overall on the cobbles. Can't win them all.
Huge congrats to the Nemolito and the Pacifiers!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Really enjoyed this game, obviously winning also made it a bit more fun Was indeed unlucky that the reason for my team being Italian (Colbrelli) fell out after once race, whereas Pogi not going to LBL was also bad news. Wout being sick was not ideal either, but he definitely made up for that by finishing high in almost any other race. Vlasov and Higuita were decent late Ardennes picks. Turgis was very disappointing in general, but with one second place in MSR he scored well of course.
Lesson for next time: don't forget De Bondt
Thank you very much for the organisation, Ollfardh!
Saving the best race for last apparently. Mohoric did very well but also a lot of riders not doing well, seeing many of them at the bottom of the rankings. Picking riders by PCS classics stat is not a good indicator
Congratulations Nemolito! Thanks Ollfardh for the hosting duties!
Mid-field result not bad given the issues with injuries, illnesses and half my team doing Stage Races Indeed Walscheid and Peitt were good late selections, Ackermann was ok early on. Missed a few points but not enough to move up a position anyway.
Simple fun and kept me more engaged with the classics season than usual.
Thanks a lot for organizing this, Ollfardh - and congrats to a commanding win to Nemo!
I can obviously not be too happy with my team. Although Pedersen was one of the better scoring 1st round picks, I expected more from him, especially on the cobbles.
Woods preferred doing stage races, and didn't really show great things when racing classics. So that's the 2nd round pick basically given away - which obviously hurts.
Despite his late start, Hirschi almost equalled Woods' score. Which I'm pretty happy about, given that picking him definitely was a risk. And yes, I should have taken Küng there - and am still a bit disappointed I didn't get the latter in R11.
However, the final one of the first four rounds was the biggest failure of all my picks I'd say. Bettiol really looks to be wasting his talent once again, scoring not one single point in the entire classics season... And given that this was R4, for me he's a much bigger disappointment than Vanmarcke in R9.
I then surely expected a bit more from THJ, but he just didn't show up as often as I was hoping.
On the other side, we have Warren Barguil who - if I had been able to update the roster for SP6 - would have been short of Pedersen's score by just 4 points. For me, he's actually my biggest star, as he definitely outperformed my expectations.
The same holds for Mozzato and Welten in R7/8, who both scored some really solid points - no huge results, but still.
Vanmarcke in R9 was already mentioned - has anyone seen him actually?
Vingegaard didn't show up a lot as well, as he still prefers stage races. With a win in Drôme, he still scored some decent points - that clearly was the early season highlight, unfortunately not followed by many others (by the entire team, though)...
Schmid tried some attacks in his early season, unfortunately to not much avail. This roster spot was actually reserved for Küng, but Laurens unfortunately had some other plans ^^
Rota in R12 was a good pickup as well, so I can agree with Ollfardh on the "biggest surprise". Unfortunately, he couldn't keep his good form throughout the entire classics season - but I surely don't regret taking him.
That looks a bit different with Champoussin, of whom I definitely expected more. Well, one Frenchie did well, the other not that much - good average.
Stybar's best days are over without any doubt, I guess he just scored some teammate points this year. Another pick to forget - cobbles definitely aren't my discipline ^^
However, Haussler got some OK-ish results on cobbles, before getting injured. Bad luck for him, but he wouldn't have scored dozens of points anyway.
Which might have been the case with yet another unlucky fellow. Battistella was in great shape as well, but just crashed or got sick too often.
All in all, it was a good experience, and I guess it was the first time I somewhat followed the "lesser" classics. Thanks for this one, and let's try to improve on this result next year
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
