January racing isn't fully done for PCT yet - but given that only one team is in the still ongoing Vuelta al Tachira, and that the first big PTHC stage races is already underways, and that plenty of classics are being run in the next days, we're still presenting the first ranking update for PCT now!
CT will have to wait until Tachira is done, as it's one of the division's major races - I hope you forgive me the unequal treatment. So here we go, here's what happened in PCT in the month of January:
Period Ranking: January
The season kicked off with the traditional HC sprinter classic Down Under - which resulted in a not at all unexpected win by Groenewegen, putting Fastned right on track to bounce back. 140 points for the winner, 5 more by De Kleijn - 145 points for the Dutch outfit. Dainese is another sprinter to watch out for, and his 2nd place gave Assa Abloy the first 98 points of the season. 3rd place, a bit more surprisingly (at least for me), was taken by Spark's veteran Howard. With Muhindo scoring 5 additional points, that's the first 87 points in the bag for the Kiwis.
Only four PCT teams then made the trip over to New Zealand, competing in the C2 Gisborne GP - and for two of them, it literally was a pointless trip. Glanbia and local team Spark missed out on the points, whereas Destribois and Senyenov secured 7 and 1 point for Kraftwerk and Trans respectively. No huge score, but points are points.
When speaking of domination - McCormick did exactly that in Hong Kong. Despite the race being only half as long as TDU, the Americans reached this month's high-score, getting home with 200 points! McNulty won the closing stage, the GC, and the white jersey, scoring an insane 159 points in three days! Mohammad (12th), Bagioli (18th) and Narvaez (20th) add three more Top 20 spots - are McCormick the new Kraftwerk?
Los Pollos should be pretty satisfied with their tally of 140 points as well, heading back to Mexico with 140 points in the bag. Two stage wins by Higuita and Sütterlin, plus the green jersey won by the former, and three Top 20 GC results by Higuita, Aular and Osorio surely are a nice yield for just three days of racing.
100 points then go to Switzerland, as Team UBS rather surprisingly had the GC runner-up with Barbio, plus some decent stage results by the Portuguese and by Haugard.
Back to Down Under then, with the first PTHC classic of the year, the Great Ocean Road Classic, or GORC. Whereas the top 2 spots went to PT, Afewerki surprised everyone by taking 3rd place in a packed field. With De Bondt and Sprenger in the Top 30 as well, plus some more depth points, Colombini got a nice 117 points. Dainese finished 4th, and alongside Konychev's 18th place that's 104 points for Assa Abloy. Bonifazio's 5th place was worth 80 points for Lierse, which is the 3rd best value.
And last but not least, four teams went over to Central America for the Clasico San Jose. Kraftwerk and Trans, who scored in Gisborne, left empty-handed this time; instead, Vliegen and Carr scored 5 and 3 points for Colombini and Zwift respectively - the first points of the year for the latter, by the way.
That's it for January - almost, as we have 6/7 races covered, with only Sauber still waiting for the final Tachira outcome.
The early leaders - by quite a margin - are Assa Abloy. Dainese had a great start, scoring 188 points on his own - and with some depth points and a great Paillot performance in Hong Kong, they currently stand at 330 points already!
McCormick are very high up as well after McNulty's dominant win in Hong Kong - second place for the newly promoted outfit with 263 points.
Popo4Ever follow very closely, though, having racked up 211 points, trailing 3rd place by just 6 points - and having raced less so far. Which is even more the case for Los Pollos, who only had five race days in January, in which they collected 206 points! It's "only" 5th place for them now, but they've got the highest PpRD already.
Then there are just 30 points separating the lower half of the Top 10 teams - Kraftwerk and Colombini both have 194, followed by Fastned, Jura and Spark. Other teams above 100 points are UBS, Zalgiris, Lampre, Glanbia and Genii.
Some teams are looking to have some difficulties to get their season started for real; most notably Zwift with just 3 points, but we also have Suaber, Xero, Trans and DuckDuckGo below 60 points, with Indosat just above. Which is looking particularly bad for Trans and Xero, having spent 15 and 11 RDs already, whereas Sauber and Indosat with only 2 RD won't be too worried yet.
With Portugal and a lot of cobbles, February will surely be an interesting month - and the sprinters will also get some more fun in Mexico. But for now, here are the January points and the overall ranking:
Also just like in PT, the Top 10 are crowded by sprinters - actually even more so than in the highest division, with only two riders not fitting that category.
3rd place then goes to the biggest surprise among the sprinters so far, Elias Afewerki. He has clearly overperformed in his first races, racking up 170 points from two classics. Can he continue that amazing streak?
Dylan Groenewegen has only raced once so far - and he won, with the win being worth 140 points, which is enough for 5th place.
In 6th, we have the biggest overperformer in general so far, with Peter Varga totalling 138 already!
And from there, it's only sprinters down to 10th place: Marco Haller, Cees Bol, Niccolo Bonifazio and Leigh Howard.
We'll see how that list looks like after the month of February - surely some sprinters should still be up there after Juarez, but Portugal and the Cobbles might propel some other rider types high up!
Going to be a tough first few months with how poor Houle did as after Omloop (which will be a 0) we don't race again until late March iirc. Picked up decent points in Viana but it will be a huge uphill battle for the rest of the season to try and get anywhere close to where we want to. Luckily we still have all of Areruya and Bennett's RDs still ahead of us.
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
Thanks for the update. Hong Kong a great start on the McNulty performance we need and 51 points from Walscheid isn't a bad month. Clearly our scoring will be much lower in non-McNulty months.
Only one classic for us so far, and two + Ukraine in feb. Very light schedule to start the season, so fully expect to start low and work our way up. A great debut for Abdul Halil leaving us with the second best PPRD (:lol. Enjoy it while it lasts! Good to see McCormick have a tremendous start to the season. Thanks for the update Fab!
Mixed feelings on our start of the year. On one hand, races that could have ended with (close to) zero points - TDU and GORC - yielded pretty decent returns.
On the other hand, Hong Kong was clearly below expectations, looking at the GC podium. It was one of those races where we should have scored really, really well, especially with the squad we had. But if your two (on paper) strongest riders just ignore the final stage, you end up with a mediocre result. Not a disaster by any means, but about 50% lower than expected.
Nonetheless, we're in the Top 10 (although just 13th in terms of PpRD), so I'd call it a good start. Good to see most fellow newly promoted teams high up with 5 in the Top 10, and Genii and Glanbia both in the Top 15 as well.
Congrats to Assa on a great first month, Dainese really has turned into a beast
Hoping to move up after the cobbles-heavy month of February - it will be needed anyway given our very front-loaded schedule.
Surprised we are so high up in the rankings considering only Afewerki has scored decent points. We certainly wont have another Saber on our hands, but he's on his way to becoming one of the leading scorers in our team. February will be harsh on us for sure. Blythe certainly wont score big in the cobbled races and no other leaders come into action untill March. Happy to see most of my fellow promotees high up in the table! Lets keep this up!
We got points according to what we were expecting but just that the points were reversed from the races. Nothing lost so far I guess but DUC should've been better for sure. Vesely made it up in TDU though.
Obviously 1 point in Hong Kong was a blow, seeing that the team behaved weirdly and in TdU it feels like more was possible if Vansevenant would have gone for just a few bonus seconds but he rode passively while never being dropped at least.
DUC though was the big win needed for a good start. Winning the HC events is always great scoring wise and Groenewegen used his single race day to perfection.
I expect the team to be stronger in most other months as Olivier is yet to start his season. Same for Cras as best 2nd mountain option while also Vansevenant will have most of his more suited race days in the future.
Then Van Hooydonck was not racing in January but already started well in February, similar as Groenewegen, close to perfection.
I really appreciate the time you take for these detailed write-ups Fab, thanks a lot! 10th in PpRD without any Stallaert or Meintjes RDs is a good start. The post February rankings will be much more telling, when those guys have done their first few races. With the Stallaert race days always coming early in the season, we need to bring as much space between us and the relegation zone as possible soon.
Great to see Moise Mugisha in 56th in the individual rankings, might be the highest he'll ever be. Los Pollos' PpRD is very funny btw. The expected strong start!
15th would be perhaps the highest we may ever reach all season long as the Hong Kong Challenge early on in the season is a race where I have consistently strong results (even during the age of Preidleritis). But after that, there aren't that many races where I've had been consistently competitive - the Monterrey TTT, I guess is another race where I've had success, but that's a C2 race and in the PCT context doesn't really count.
To survive (which is easy said than done) I'd perhaps require some luck and hope that my planning pays off.
With a pprd of over 40 I couldn't say January was a bad month for us First races of February have already seen this go down quite a bit, but that's only normal. Good teamwork in Hong Kong and a decent Manninen in DUC lead to a provisional promotion spot.
Nice to see some of the 'relegation candidates' start the season (very) strong. Thanks for the superb write-up as always, Fab
Pretty good season start overall. Dainese obviously has had a very good season start, but Paillot is really the rider who has surprised me positively with his 3rd place in Hong Kong. On the other hand, Gesbert’s performance Down Under was maybe a bit below expectations. Nevertheless, happy overall and looking forward to see how the season progresses. Not putting too much into our position as we’ve obviously benefitted from more race days than most and favourable terrains so far. Expect to drop down over the next couple of months, but hope we can get some good results going forward as well.
. Enjoy it while it lasts! Good to see McCormick have a tremendous start to the season. Thanks for the update Fab!
First races of February have already seen this go down quite a bit, but that's only normal. Good teamwork in Hong Kong and a decent Manninen in DUC lead to a provisional promotion spot.
