Yeah, four big scorers so far, heads and shoulders above the rest. Abhishek always uses a new db for every season, Froome, Valverde and maybe even Sagan will deteriorate, so Alaphilippe will be at the top for a long time to come, I think.
Let's see what the points scale is going to be for the U25 races. If it's full scale, then I agree, a rider might score more points in one race than in his whole career so far (and most points have been from training, of course).
In my second post thought I would look at where have the RTG riders spent their time and how successful have they been.
Graphic below shows all the races with 30 or more events over the 3 seasons (except worlds). The column indicates the average finish and the diamond the best finish. An event is a GC, Stage or Classic finish by an RTG Rider. It does not include the specialized jerseys.
The average finishes match what you would expect with the lower tier races being better and the 3 grand tours the worst.
So we have taken a look at the riders who dominate in the RTG world and we have seen how far the young RTG peloton has a lot of room to improve. So I thought I would create a new measuring stick to track that improvement. Which I am calling:
Ahead of Alaphilippe
Since Julian looks likely to be the dominant rider in seasons to come and he competes on a lot of terrain (although his RTG self doesn’t seem to do cobbles) and he is nearly always competitive (in 215 days/GCs he only finished outside the top 50 nine times over 3 seasons) - he is a great way to evaluate the progress of the RTG riders.
The measure is very simple, it calculates the average finish behind (or in front) of Alaphilippe in GCs, stages and classics for every RTG rider in all race where King Julian competes. So this means a lower score is better.
So here is the table through 2019:
Rider
Races w Julian
AoA Pts
Better than Julian
2019 Active
Ariel Pryde
25
104.9
0
No
Andes Munoz Lopez
20
107.1
0
No
Mattia Tornello
51
112.4
0
Yes
Bradley Nettle
9
114.8
0
No
Bernard Garin
30
119.0
0
Yes
Jhon Santiago Garcia Cerravalos
47
119.5
0
Yes
Jens Christiansen
19
122.9
0
Yes
Andrey Yanakiev
45
124.4
0
Yes
Elias Abdessabour
42
127.5
0
Yes
Nagy Levente
91
129.2
0
Yes
Alexander Forsberg
8
129.9
0
No
Levi De Groot
18
131.6
0
Yes
Virginijus Alunderis
73
131.9
0
Yes
Flosi Thorson
32
141.5
1
Yes
Jorgen Hillestad
104
143.5
1
Yes
Irfan Al-Amin
24
143.8
0
No
Thomas Hinault
2
146.0
0
No
Arnout Van Aarle
19
148.6
0
Yes
Donald McRettin
7
149.4
0
Yes
Harry Stanley
4
150.5
0
Yes
Hector Cesar Ernesto Fernandez Hernandez
23
152.3
0
Yes
Tornike Zurabiani
3
153.3
0
Yes
Maximiliaan Vansibraert
10
153.8
0
Yes
Guilherme Barbosa
46
153.9
0
No
Rocco Bianchi Campagna
23
154.6
0
Yes
Daniel Clark
36
154.8
0
Yes
Mario Rizzi
30
162.3
0
No
Total RTG
841
134.4
2
“AoA Points” is the average finish behind (or ahead) and “Better Than Julian” indicates the number of tiems a rider finished ahead of Alaphilippe, something the RTG riders have done twice in 841 tries, more on that later.
Tornello leads in this table amoung active RTG riders, a full 40 places ahead of Clark and Campagno. Rocco finds himself at the other end of this table. I had assumed his experience was the function of one bad GT but it is not, instead it is one bad Tour of Poland and a bunch of bad classics. The presences of Alaphiippe must intimidate Rocco as he has never finished better than 146th in a race where they both start. Clark has a similar profile with Poland also being kryptonite among a bunch of bad hilly classsics.
At the other end, Tornello seems to like Julian and has ridden two very solid Dauphines with him.
Obviously this isn’t very scientific and riders similar to Alaphilippe in style will tend to thrive. Although for now they may do badly since they face Julian at his best.
Either way, hopefully, over time, that overall gap of 134 places will come down.
Now back to our two successes.
The best performances vs Alaphilippe are:
Runner Up, May 13, 2018, Tour of California, Stage 1:
Flosi Thorson is great per Abhi, finishes 23rd, and smokes Alaphilippe by 17 places in this flat stage. Garin finishes 59th that day which is the 3rd best performance vs Alaphilippe. Perhaps motivated by the ignominy of finishing behind Thorson, Alaphilippe goes on to win the Tour of California (Thorson finishes 136th).
The current leader, July 7th, 2018, Tour de France, Stage 11:
An unmotivated Alaphilippe finishes a sprint stage in 132nd, a full 37 places behind Jorgen Hillestad (although on the same time). Abhi notes the unusual top 100 finish for Hillestad. Hillestad is the only RTG rider in the Tour that year so nobody else is able to take advantage of Julian’s day off.
Having had a pretty anonymous Tour prior to that Alaphilippe is clearly inspired by this disaster and finishes no worse than 34th in the remaining stages and wins stages 16 and 18. Hillestad does not go on to win two stages but does finish the race in 160th.
That is a unique way of looking at our riders. Alaphilippe really looks to be the one to dominate RTG for the next few seasons, but he should have a few challengers in 2020 in the form of Roglic and Pogacar, and a couple of others. Valverde is fading and will possibly be further off the top next season.
I'm glad that De Groot is better than the average at least. It's not much, but it's a start
By popular demand, here it is the "Ahead of Dowsett" table:
Rider
Races w Alex
AoD Pts
Better than AoD
2019 Active
Virginijus Alunderis
15
(16.9)
11
Yes
Nagy Levente
15
(15.9)
12
Yes
Jhon Santiago Garcia Cerravalos
17
(1.8)
9
Yes
Ariel Pryde
15
0.1
10
No
Elias Abdessabour
20
7.3
13
Yes
Andes Munoz Lopez
20
11.0
10
No
Andrey Yanakiev
13
18.2
6
Yes
Mattia Tornello
13
27.5
5
Yes
Irfan Al-Amin
8
37.3
1
No
Guilherme Barbosa
7
42.9
2
No
Arnout Van Aarle
44
49.7
9
Yes
Bradley Nettle
19
58.9
2
No
Alexander Forsberg
28
59.0
2
No
Daniel Clark
26
62.6
0
Yes
Levi De Groot
48
68.1
7
Yes
Hector Cesar Ernesto Fernandez Hernandez
28
69.5
2
Yes
Flosi Thorson
38
70.4
3
Yes
Donald McRettin
7
70.7
0
Yes
Jorgen Hillestad
17
71.5
1
Yes
Rocco Bianchi Campagna
34
76.8
1
Yes
Harry Stanley
7
77.4
0
Yes
Thomas Hinault
27
77.6
0
No
Maximiliaan Vansibraert
20
87.8
1
Yes
Bernard Garin
24
98.2
0
Yes
Mario Rizzi
7
102.0
0
No
Tornike Zurabiani
0
0
Yes
Jens Christiansen
0
0
Yes
Total RTG
517
52.8
107
For background see the Alalaphilippe post above.
So the RTG peloton is much stronger against Alex than against Julian. With both Alunderis and Levante scoring significant advantages. They both participated in 2018 Romandie and Catalonia where Alex was clearly not that interested in performing. Nevertheless, it seems Alunderis gets to wear the prestigous "Dowsett Slayer" jersey in the upcoming season.
So powered by those performances the RTGers actually finish ahead of Dowsett 21% of the time. Despite that much better overall rate there are still some major failures. Campagna is apparently as intimidated by Dowsett as he is by Alaphilippe and his rival, Thorson, is little better.
Christiansen has managed to race 3 seasons without once crossing paths with Dowsett. Dowsett only raced 8 days in 2019 so if that doesn't pick up this competition isn't going on much longer.
RTG 2020 signs up are open hereEdited by Ulrich Ulriksen on 20-11-2020 04:20
