It's really quite remarkable: With the exception of January, which belonged to McCormick, every single monthly ranking had either HelloFresh or Aramco at the top. Aramco took the top spot in October, mostly thanks to their strong Herald Sun Tour, where they scored more points in a single race than any other team scored all month. Glanbia had a very strong stretch as well, climbing past BWT Hyundai into the final Top 10 spot as a result. Gjensidige, Pas Normal Studios and Trans Looney Tunes were the other big scorers of this month, while Tafjord Kraft, McCormick and Volcanica - Fox failed to crack 100 points.
Vilnius
Herald
Solidar
Bayern
Zuri
1
Aramco DP
20
320
125
84
37
586
2
Glanbia Foods Cycling Project
40
191
33
0
9
273
3
Gjensidige Pro Cycling Team
5
72
136
0
36
249
4
Pas Normal Studios - Mikkeller
0
33
121
50
34
238
5
Trans Looney Tunes
0
110
66
0
56
232
6
BNZ-Superhero Racing
0
34
102
74
0
210
7
Strava
0
7
88
20
89
204
8
HelloFresh
0
105
57
0
23
185
9
BWT Hyundai N Cycling
15
44
24
23
39
145
10
Crabbe-CC Chevigny
0
51
69
0
0
120
11
Eddie Stobart
0
29
30
0
51
110
12
Tafjord Kraft
5
39
36
0
14
94
13
McCormick Pro Cycling
0
8
49
0
21
78
14
Volcanica - Fox
0
14
47
0
7
68
Final 2021 CT Rankings
We've known this for a while, but just to confirm it: With two of the most impressive CT seasons in MGUCI history, HelloFresh and Aramco DP take the Top 2 spots by a country mile. Hugely impressive, and well-deserved congratulations!
Also very impressive was Trans Looney Tunes, who improved from 14th last year to 3rd this year and deservedly get a shot in PCT next season. Similarly, Gjensidige Pro Cycling Team jumped from 11th to 4th and join them, as well as Crabbe-CC Chevigny, who achieve this feat in their very first season, as directly promoting teams.
Pas Normal Studios - Mikkeler, despite their manager's long absence, finish their rookie season on a strong 6th place, while Strava moves into 7th place by just 3 points ahead of Volcanica - Fox.
McCormick Pro Cycling and Glanbia Foods Cycling Project claim the final Top 10 spots, BWT Hyundai N Cycling miss out by less than 100 points. Then, there's a sizeable gap to the bottom three teams.
BNZ-Superhero Racing ended the season on a high note with a very good October, but like Tafjord Kraft and Eddie Stobart, they struggled all season long and ultimately could not climb the rankings. Those teams should not lose hope though - like I've mentioned above, turnarounds can happen very quickly in CT with just one good off-season.
Pos
Last
Team
Total
RD
1
1
HelloFresh
3171
150
2
2
Aramco DP
2771
149
3
3
Trans Looney Tunes
2014
150
4
5
Gjensidige Pro Cycling Team
1806
150
5
4
Crabbe-CC Chevigny
1799
149
6
6
Pas Normal Studios - Mikkeller
1708
150
7
8
Strava
1518
150
8
7
Volcanica - Fox
1515
150
9
9
McCormick Pro Cycling
1317
150
10
11
Glanbia Foods Cycling Project
1245
149
11
10
BWT Hyundai N Cycling
1154
150
12
12
BNZ-Superhero Racing
751
149
13
13
Tafjord Kraft
596
150
14
14
Eddie Stobart
534
149
Individual Ranking
Thanks to a strong Course de Solidarnosc, Fabio Jakobsen fends off the strong late season push of Marko Kump to remain atop the rankings and crown himself the individual champ of the 2021 CT season. Both can look back on absolutely extraordinary seasons though, as they powered their teams towards PCT.
Stage racers Andrei Amador, Enric Mas and Kenny Elissonde complete the Top 5, then the biggest riser of this month, Benoit Cosnefroy, makes it 3 Aramco riders in the Top 6. Teammate Benjamin Thomas and Gjensidige's Davide Appolonio also made major jumps into the Top 15.
Alexey Tsatevich, Guillaume Van Keirsbulck and Pieter Vanspreybrouck are the best cobblestone riders of the year and Odd Christian Eiking the best pure puncheur of the season.
Loving the season Marko Kump has had. What a great way to perform. I'm really proud how he helped HelloFresh to dominate CT, especially with Potocki also doing insanely well for them. Great stuff!
Really enjoying the Top5 with Aramco, Trans, Gjensidige and especially Crabbe, who surely became fan favourites this year. It's also really cool to see a couple of other teams probably riding the ranks to PCT. I really enjoyed following this years CT crop.
Overall I enjoyed this second CT season more than our relaunch debut, given that we were more competitive and managed to snatch quite a few wins along the way. Last season saw mostly a lack of results with Strava often falling outside any significant points hauls, this time we were present in classics and stage results.
Hopefully we can snatch 1-2 leaders for more mountaineous stage races to be competitive there, and perhaps even gobble up a proper cobbles/hill leader as our team depth would have been quite good I think.
Overall I am quite happy to stay in CT for another season, as the time commitment especially in off-season might be too high in PCT for me at the moment and it is nice to avoid any major rebuilds that would be necessary to survive or even have remotely fun in PCT.
Gratz to the promotees and looking forward to the next season. Huge thank you to all the reporters throughout the season, splendid work!
"It’s a little bit scary when Contador attacks." - Tommy V
Thanks for the season recap and rankings my good sir
For us, we snuck into the top 4. Amazing. Our season, in the hills in particular, was a bit underwelhming to be honest. Overal, we over delivered in the Mountains. So it is what it is.
After several years in the CT, let's see how the PCT will treat us!
Congrats to BWT on winning the duel of the Pink B's! Volcanica should be proud of their 8th (and with disbands, and if Stava can pass on promotion then the PCT beckons i think).
A great final period for us with a huge Herald Sun Tour, a relatively successful Solidarnosc and a solid Bayern.
Obviously a great season for us. It's not like Top 2 was unexpected but it was good to see our guys perform throughout.
Jakobsen winning the Individual Rankings is an outstanding achievement! One of those weird ones where he didn't do particularly well in C2 or C2HC races but had a great time of it in his only HC race as well as one of his few C1 races. He could well continue like this in the PCT.
Mas 4th is reflective of his season. He was consistently in and around the Top 3/5 but unfortunately failed to win a race despite being favourite much of the time. Bit to decide on what to do with him next season.
Cosnefroy with an outstanding end to the season with the win in Herald Sun and close to a win in Bayern Rundfahrt. He's a great rider and one who could continue to do really well for us at PCT level.
Thomas easily the best value rider of the season. 50k wage for 15th in the rankings, over 300 points, a GC win in Olympia's Tour and 2nd in Herald Sun. He could also do well in the PCT as he gets favourable splits due to his SPR stat.
Paez as expected really. 31st is about what he's capable of given the strength of Puncheurs in the CT. Again, unsure on what I'll do with him for next season.
Borisavljevic easily the biggest disappointment with only 131 points, down in 56th. He's about on level with Potocki (16th) and Iino (19th) but performed no where near such riders.
Surprise of the season within my team was Noia scoring 97 points. Great little loanee.
On the rest of the division, HelloFresh What a season for them. Was shaping up to be a relatively close battle for a little while but their depth scoring was just way too good at the end. Happy that Jakobsen was able to pip Kump to the title though.
TransLooney a fairly outright 3rd. A great season from them. Fairly close further down but big congrats to Gjen for a strong season and Crabbe whose unique team structure was really interesting to follow and glad they made it into the 5.
Big positives for many other teams throughout the division! Worth noting for them that the likes of my own team have been around for years and this was a season about 3-4 years in the making. Long time vision > short term success
Thank you to those who helped organise the off-season and other activities during. I think we've all appreciated the Ranking Updates more recently, they definitely help to add to the suspense in the back end of the season!
And last but definitely not least. To my fellow reporters, thank you for your time and efforts throughout. It can be a long season but we've gone at a great pace and ensured a high level of quality
TheManxMissile wrote: Congrats to BWT on winning the duel of the Pink B's! Volcanica should be proud of their 8th (and with disbands, and if Stava can pass on promotion then the PCT beckons i think).
Well done to HelloFresh!
Not something I'd like to brag about, to be quite honest
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair." - quote from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities really sums up my season in a nutshell. I've had worse seasons (cough, 2016-17, cough), but this one is really depressing - all hopes to get back into the PCT (or a position close to promotion) went into smoke and mirrors.
Hopefully the battle of the pinks takes place further up next season
Really bad season for us. Huge underperformance from a lot of riders. Hopefully we can pick up next season. Ideas are already in the works dor the transfer season. Should be interesting
Honestly a surreal season. Record breakers, albeit with a relatively big asterisk with the division size in mind, is more than I could have begged for.
To LLS, you're an absolute beast and if you didn't have to face my squad that was just built to dominate CT without any future plans in mind (I sacked Beullens to pick up Vingerling late in transfers etc.) and the season that Aramco has had is insane honestly. We got to see what Jakobsen is made off and he should be an insanely good rider at a PCT level, I have tons of respect for you approach even though you had to sell a lot of talents to make ends meet after last season's relegation.
Also incredible to see Trans go up, just goes to show how strong of a foundation you can build off of a solid core in second year in the CT. As I stated before I am delighted to see the season that Hillis has had. His approach to the game is so far from mine but I really gotta commend it because it takes a special person to be this patient. Finally Crabbe brought joy to a ton of MG fans this season and their focus on classics really was interesting to follow and it will be super fun to see them build for PCT next year.
To think that I was trying to offload Kump at the start of transfers, because I wanted to reinvest into a younger leadership core, but I am super happy I kept him even though he didn't win the individual title. Even on his first decay he was an absolute force to be reckoned with in the CT and also did quite hell in both C1 and HC races with multiple great GCs and green jerseys, really happy that I kept him.
Elissonde in 5th in individual was not something that I was expecting but I am super pleased with it he has had some incredible rides this year and the gamble I took on him in FA paid off. He is a rider I have been after for like the past 3 years and for him to then finally perform at this level is just something that I am over the moon over.
Where do I even start with GVK? Even with the strongest cobbles field in CT history he just trucks along and finishes as the best pure cobbler in the division, 1 point behind Tsatevich who has the incredible hill to build from. A lot of the points comes from the strong core to support him in Thwaites, Kumara and Puccio who also had a couple of very strong showings this season, but he is sadly declining.
While I do think that Diaz should have done better this season a lot of that was covered by Potocki who had an absolute banger of a season with some incredible results. Also I took a pretty opportunistic when I sacked off Cedric Beullens late in the window to pick up another points scorer and Vingerling on 55k ended up being a bargain that won a lot of the sprinter lotteries this season for him to finish 20th is also fantastic.
Again a massive thanks to everyone who has kept the season going at a fantastic pace. Can't wait to fuck up PCT transfers again!
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
What a season for them. Was shaping up to be a relatively close battle for a little while but their depth scoring was just way too good at the end. Happy that Jakobsen was able to pip Kump to the title though.
