The first month is already in the books - well, kind of. All January racing with PT participation is done, but while February racing has already started, PCT/CT are only halfway through their final January race... Yeah, I hate that situation, but at least the game moves on.
And although it's obviously still very early into the season, we still get our first ranking update - including the first three races:
Period Ranking: January
First things first - and first was Tasmania. Also known as "Phinney Paradise", as despite his first decline, the American won the three-day opener quite easily - and as every year, he won one stage. The green jersey came on top of this, netting him 364 points in three days. 404 points for MOL are the highest value in that race, unsurprisingly.
However, EA Vesuvio came close - really close. Even though Wirtgen "only" finished 3rd, Tanfield in 9th and two more in the Top 25 were worth 378 points in total. The gap to 3rd place was clearly bigger, as Grieg ended up just below 291 points. Würtz won the closing ITT and finished 2nd, but there wasn't much depth on top of that.
The sprinter festival in Qatar then led to a rather surprising result - and to a lot of frustration for some (presumed) top sprinters. Surprisingly, Philipsen took home the GC and the green and U25 jerseys. He may not have taken a stage win, but three 2nd places and another Top 5 are some really consistent sprinting, rewarded by this year's early high score of 447 points (492 for Polar).
Gaviria did a good job on the first stages, but then suddenly disappeared - and had to settle for 3rd in the GC. Winning stage 2 and finishing 2nd on day one on top of the GC result are worth 290 points for him, and 335 for his team. So that's a huge margin for the Finns, getting roughly 50% more points than the runner-up.
Kemboi wasn't overly lucky in the sprint stages, but made up for it with a good epilogue to snatch 2nd place in the GC as well as in the points standings, leaving the desert with 249 points in the bag (295 for Lidl). 5 more teams scored over 200 points, with two leaving with the bare minimum.
After two PT stage races, some of the PT teams still had a classic this month - those who competed in the Great Ocean Road Classic. And as could be expected, the win went to a PT team - EA Vesuvio won the sprint lottery in Australia, with Van der Lijke taking a big win and 170 points. Geniets in 50th place added two more to EA's tally.
125 points are the reward for 2nd place, and these points went to Degenkolb's designated heir, Max Kanter. The Pumas got two additional points by Steimle, so that's 127 points for them.
3rd through 5th then went to PCT teams, with Philipsen being the next PT sprinter in the result list in 6th place. 70 points for him, 79 for Polar, with Becis and Nych scoring as well. With 7 Top 10 spots going to PCT sprinters, there wasn't much left for the other PT teams, none of them scoring above 50 points.
The January ranking obviously corresponds to the overall one (which I'll still post in a separate table due to the additional RD and PpRD information) - and our first leaders are... EA Vesuvio! Their GORC win plus a strong showing in Tasmania and a solid outing in Qatar are worth 732 points.
Polar had mainly Philipsen scoring for them, both in Qatar and GORC - and they're just 13 points short of the lead, totalling 719 points. The final podium spot goes to Phinney's MOL, despite not scoring a lot in GORC. But Phinney's Tasmania performance and some decent points by Keough and Chavanne in Qatar bring them to 631 points. Which is already 100 points off the lead.
On the other hand, it's also more than 100 points ahead of Lidl in 4th place. The Germans are the leaders of what I'd call the "upper midfield", including Moser, Cedevita, ZARA, Grieg, cycleYorkshire, King Power and Team Puma - hence reaching all the way down to 11th place.
The there's a 70 points gap to the "lower midfield", including 4 teams within just 27 points - they are Rabobank, the Minions, Amaysim and Aker. The "tail end" starts another 40 points lower, with Tinkoff, who are slightly ahead of Carlsberg, ISA and ELCO. Gazelle, Evonik and Binance are our early bottom 3, but the most disappointed managers down there should be SotD and Scorchio, with their star sprinters really failing badly in Qatar.
So, here's the January table - followed by the full rankings, where you find some more details as usual.
Without much surprise, the rider who got the high-score for a single race so far also leads the individual standings - Jasper Philipsen. Generally speaking, the Top 10 are dominated by the sprinters, taking 6 out of those 10 spots.
However, 2nd place goes to someone else - Tasmania winner Taylor Phinney. His 364 points are 153 less than Philipsen has - but he also did 5 race days less so far...
3rd place is taken by the 3rd winner of the month, Nick Van der Lijke. However, his 307 points are just two more than Fernando Gaviria in 4th.
It's then roughly a 50 points gap to Salem Kemboi and Fabio Jakobsen - so that's 4 sprinters in a row. Mads Würtz breaks this streak; the Tasmania runner-up is just 7 points behind Kemboi, so that's three riders almost on par.
Another 40 points lower, we find the final sprinter in the Top 10, Eduard Grosu. With Tom Wirtgen and Luke Durbridge, we have two more specialists against the clock rounding off the Top 10, although the former can do far more than "just" TTing.
Probably the biggest disappointments so far are Caleb Ewan in 16th place with 134 points - and even worse for Bryan Coquard sitting in 22nd place, and having a measly 85 points to his name. Can they strike back in the next couple of races?
We did have a good Tour of Qatar, but we were either not participating or just finishing the race in the races Down Under. It's not a great opening month for us, but it's good enough to help us in what will most likely be another relegation battle.
Bjerg saving us in the first month, while Kinoshita did what he could do. The biggest disappointment so far is Ahlstrand who is yet to deliver a competent sprint. Hopefully he'll pick that up in the next months and our scoring remains consistent. The longer we stay out of the relegation zone, the better
Thank you a lot for bringing us the first update, Fabianski! It's always very, very nice to get a quick overview of how the season has started points wise.
And wow, EA Vesuvio!!! What a start to the season for them. This flying start surely see them as title contenders, at the very least from the very start of the season. I fancied them for 2nd before the season, but who knows how high they can go if they continue to score this great in races where they don't have world class leaders on paper (Qatar and GORC). King Power has also scored well, I'd say, seeing Qatar and Tasmania have been the races. Other than that, not many points for the obvious other title contenders.
For us, I'm satisfied with Tasmania and Qatar points wise. Realistically, we couldn't ask for much more. Now is a key period for us, though, with Portugal (big ambitions points wise), the triple header and the first monument. Now we need to get going!
Very good start for us, outperforming our point scoring expectations in both Tasmania and Qatar despite performances that didn't feel all that impressive at the time. I can't see us being as high as 4th after any other update as Qatar is likely to be our best non-hill race of the season, but the 275 point gap to the relegation zone is a good start. Here's hoping we can maintain that through the remaining 9 months and keep clear of the relegation battle.
Decent Qatar for us, that's really all there is to say at this point. Most of the teams behind us are not actual relegation contenders, which is never a good sign. But too early to worry too much about any of that.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
That's a bad start for us. Mostly down to Tasmania really not going our way.
We always were looking at a slow start with the min score in Qatar being 100% expected and GORC as expected but Tasmania could or should have like 100 points more for us. Hopefully, we wont stay there much longer...
Solid first month to start our year! Will get to comment on the individual race threads in time - just been busy/tired/lazy after a holiday so haven't done so even though I have followed our progress.
Grabbing a stage in Qatar as well as ok results overall in both races have meant we start the year inside the top 10, even if the races run aren't really up there for us in terms of target races. Cullaigh once again showing he is a solid sprinter, maybe he deserves a training or two!
John St Ledger in Team Bunzl-Centrica and Team U25
Between Tasmania and Qatar I expected to come away with a decent amount of points, yet I can't shake the feeling that we left some important points on the table in both races. GORC being a dud didn't help things.
February is a big month for us like for a lot of teams I guess. Need to score very well then before we get to our lean period.
What a start to the season for them. This flying start surely see them as title contenders, at the very least from the very start of the season. I fancied them for 2nd before the season, but who knows how high they can go if they continue to score this great in races where they don't have world class leaders on paper (Qatar and GORC). King Power has also scored well, I'd say, seeing Qatar and Tasmania have been the races. Other than that, not many points for the obvious other title contenders.
