Sorry for bringing this update very, very late - with February already halfway through - but given that Tachira is THE C2 stage race for quite some CT teams, I thought it should still be included in the January update. Tachira is done now, so here we go!
Period Ranking: January
There were two potential races for CT teams on day 1 of the season. The Down Under Classic was reserved to just 5 teams, given the HC status - thereof one leaving without any points. However, it was quite a successful race for some teams - most of all for JEWA in their first ever race, with Degenkolb taking 6th place and 53 points. Kamberaj finished inside the Top 10 as well; 8th place was worth 38 points for him and Stela-Vita - another newly founded team. Mercatone Uno can be happy with their start as well, Saber's 12th place and Kielich's 20th place netting them 24 points.
But the main CT race of the day obviously was Gisborne GP, right on the next island. Pacher may have been a rather surprising winner there, but Bordeaux definitely won't say no to the win and 58 points in total. Stela-Vita were the second strongest team again - and again with a points tally of 38, mostla thanks to Luchshenko's second place. Behind them, we have 4 teams between 20 and 30 points - with Podium Ambition's Lagane taking 29 points, so his 3rd place in the race also makes them the 3rd highest scorers here.
Next was the first C1 race of the year, the Tour Down Under. With the race's degradation from HC to C1, some more spots than usual remained open for C2 teams, with 7 of them participating. By far the most successful of them were Mercatone Uno, scoring 61 points and slightly more than 10 PpRD. Most notably, they won the KoM jersey with Blouwe - and Van der Sande ended up 10th in GC. These two were their main scorers.
We then have two teams tied for 2nd, scoring 26 points each - so less than half of Mercatone's points. Ekoi's main man was Karatsivis, with a surprising breakaway win on stage 4. The same can be said of Scheit's victory the day after, bringing Caja Rural an early first win of the year as well.
And then - at least according to the calendar - came the big one, the longest C2 stage race of the year - Vuelta al Tachira. We don't know if it was the well-known South American air that carried Chiarello to winning two stages, the GC and the points jersey - but we know that 155 is a great points haul, obviously making up for the major part of Crabbe's 170 points.
Second best team in Venezuela were... JEWA! Even though Berhane narrowly missed out on a Top 5 GC result - 6th overall plus a stage win and other good stage results are worth 61 points. Which is augmented by Degenkolb's 39 and Boudat's 29 - the sprinter duo got a 1-2 on the first stage, in reverse order - overall, JEWA got 131 points from this race.
Only in 3rd place come runner-up Lunke and his Gjensidige team; the Norvegian racked up 82 points, whereas Knotten with a stage win on the final day, and Rojus with some good consistency in the sprints, add some good points on top of that - 113 for one of the division's top contenders.
Next up was another C1 race - Hong Kong Challenge. Of the 10 CT teams present, Stela-Vita were the ones having a stel(l)ar race, with Goos ending up on a fantastic and pretty surprising 4th place in GC (thanks to a not less suprising 5th place on stage 3). The well-deserved reward for his great show were 62 points, which also is the team's final points tally.
No other team came even close to that, with Ekoi's 23 points being the next highest score. Teuns got all of their points, taking 2nd on day one, and finishing 21st in the GC.
And then we have Simba Cement in 3rd place with 16 points, 14 of which were gained by Barbin who finished 2nd in the KoM standings.
That's 6 races for CT, thereof half in the C2 category - meaning that several teams have spent quite a lot of race days already. And scored some good points as well. Topping the class after the first month are - unsurprisingly - Crabbe, thanks to Chiarello's Tachira win. It's 219 points for them so far, definitely a good start - and also highest PpRD.
However, we have a first surprise in 2nd place - with Stela-Vita performing pretty well in all of their races so far (with the worst one clearly being Tachira in terms of PpRD), and trailing Crabbe by just 13 points. They have also spent 5 RDs more, though.
JEWA in 3rd place - just another 10 points down - might be another surprise, but it isn't really one, given that they had Berhane plus Degenkolb/Boudat in Tachira (and in DUC, which was a surprisingly strong result, though). 14 PpRD are a great average, being the only ones getting remotely close to Crabbe so far.
Rounding off the Top 5 are Ekoi. However, even though their points tally isn't that bad, they've already been racing a lot, which only sees them in 8th place in terms of PpRD. But yeah, points scored are always better than potential points.
We then have roughly 20 points gaps to the next spots, with Bordeaux (146), Manada (128) and Würth (104) coming next. Hilcona, Simba Cement and Mercatone Uno are within 14 points from Würth, though - with Mercatone being the first team outside the Top 10.
Caja Rural and Podium Ambition both can't be happy at all with their scoring so far, both being established teams, but currently far behind their expectations. Adidas and SEE Turtles are the teams rounding off the Top 15.
At the bottom of the list, we have the top favourites for the division title - Tafjord. But it's not that they've been bad so far - no, they simply haven't raced yet at all! So it's zero points for them, which saves Babymetal from taking the first red lantern. Strava will clearly be waiting for the cobbles starting in February. Air New Zealand and Saeco aren't too far above, but still had a slightly better start.
So, with Tafjord finally joining the fun as well, and the more cobbles-heavy teams aiming high in February, expect the rankings to look quite differently after the next month - but here's what we currently have, just hard numbers, without any hypothetical scoring:
The PT and PCT rule holds for CT as well: The rider who got the highest single race score also leads the first individual ranking. In CT, that's William Chiarello, with his 155 Tachira points being by far the highest score.
No other rider got remotely close to that mark - in fact, his closest rival has 40% less points. And that rider is John Degenkolb, scoring 92 points in DUC and Tachira combined - he'll need more DUC-like races to close that gap, though!
Sindre Skjostad Lunke got the 2nd highest individual score so far, at 82 points - and with this being his only result so far, that's the current amount of points for the final step of the podium.
Next are allrounders Marc Goos and Aurelien Paret-Peintre - the former being so high up rather surprisingly, the latter one expectedly. Natnael Berhane on the other hand will be rather disappointed to only be in 6th place.
Then it's the puncheur duo of Kristian Haugaard Jensen and Odd Christian Eiking - separated by one tiny point so far. Can we expect such a close race between them until the end?
Alexander Krieger and Quentin Pacher - another pretty surprising name - round off the Top 10, but it's obviously very close in those rankings by now. We definitely expect some movement in here as well - even just the cobbles should bring some new names pretty high up!
By the end of January, however, the rankings look like this:
Despite a slightly weak Tachira point-wise (we even lose 10 points compared to last year), it's a much better season's beginning: nearly twice as many points, and 22% of last year's point tally.
Let's continue this on February, with Catalunya as our first important race, and Coppa Placi to continue our good streak on the hills.
“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably."
A. Roy
Was dreading this update, but happy to see myself where I am. Not a strong January, but PPRD brings me some hope. A few more decent races and we could outperform expected.
Really impressive Tachira from Crabbe and excited to see Tafjord skyrocket in February
Thanks for the in-depth ranking update, great work Fab!
February will indeed look totally different with Tafjord and Strava dominating cobbles so far.
Edited by Laurens147 on 28-10-2023 08:26
MG - Lotto - Caloi
[MG] New Manager of the Year - PCM.daily Awards 2022
Thanks for the work, Fabi! I'm quite content with the points until now, it's already about 30% of last seasons points (and double the PpRD). If we can keep the PpRD at this level we're in top 10 territory and that's our goal.
Commiserations to those who've underperformed so far (especially TMM - how about joining the promotion in 2024 group? Though Imladrik seems to be ahead of our time schedule ).
0 points, so much for Tafjord the promotion favorite Strong starts for some of the new teams, Stela-Vita and JEWA in particular. Never thought Degenkolb would still play that big of a role. Good start for Crabbe, nice to see that their first foray into stage racing seems to pay off
And thanks of course for the post, as always, Fabianski!
"Glad" to see that we are not the only team with less than 5 PpRD with 20 or more RD's spend so far.
Top-10 seems possible, as we have some good depth scoring so far. Excited to see what the next couple of months bring.
"Glad" to see that we are not the only team with less than 5 PpRD with 20 or more RD's spend so far.
Top-10 seems possible, as we have some good depth scoring so far. Excited to see what the next couple of months bring.
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
).
