The month between TDT and Vuelta, most known as August has come and gone. No big changes in the PT rankings, but time for us to have go at it anyway
Tied for worst August and then naturally still in last place we find Jura GIANTS. 119 points in August is not enough to move them up the table and relgation seems a sure thing for the Swiss team, just like their manager expected before the season started. Something crazy will have to happen for them to somehow survive. Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo Pro Cycling had a better August but are still loosing ground to many of the teams in front, still looks neat with 333 points scored from a pure number point of view, they still lost one spot though with Grieg-Maersk moving past them. Grieg is a pretty easy team to predict, will Mads race? Ok, then they do well and score good points. It is when he dosen't race problems arise. They move up one spot and score a total of 589 points in August, I am just afraid it is still not enough.
Moving out of the group I think og as sure relegators we move into a tight pack fighting for survival. Among these Los Pollos Hermanos currently holds 19th place, where they also were last month. Still there are less than 80 points up to a surival spot for them, every race will count! Same can be said about Gazelle in 18th, scoring only 231 points in August. They hold the last relegation spot but the margin up to survival is even smaller. They were 17th last month, 18th this month and will be looking for that surge in the last races to move up a spot or two. Just outside of relegation we find Team UBS, another team with a bad month with only 174 points. If this form continues they might be in for some serious trouble! Still at this frozen moment in time they are safe! The last team in this group has just risen out of the relegation spot on the last race of the month. A good Deutchland Tour for Sony - Force India takes them all the way from 18th to 16th! Could this be the saving grace for Sony? Could they secure another year in PT?
Concluding the relgation battle takes us into the midtable group, this is a tight group all the way from 15th to 7th where I guess there will be a lot of shuffling done before the season is over! Team Puma - SAP finds themself kinda between this group and the relgation group, but considering strong rumours that a certain SH has been spotten in Spain my guess is that they will find themself scoring some good points soon. Still 413 points in August with a strong showing in Ras Taileteann. In front of them we find Cedevita who got 370 points and fell from 13th to 14th. Started the month with the 3rd highest score in Kigali and some good showings in Tailetaan and East Midlands before taking a break. Moving further up the table we have Aker - MOT just switching places with Cedevita. They were neck and neck last month and now Aker finds themself 51 points ahead in 13th. Arenberg the race helping them here.
Around 100 points ahead of Aker again we find Indosat Ooredoo. A total of 210 points in August (and they races all but one race this month) is not a good score and see them fall from 11th to 12th. You can say the month was somewhat saved in Deutchland as without that race it would have been an absymmal month. That takes us to one of the joint worst team this month. Xero Racing pretty much had no good races and as with Jura GIANTS they only score 119 points, making them slide all the way from 6th to 11th and pretty much taking them out of the podium battle. They are tied on points with Fastned, but the genius system of letting alphabetical order decide ties gives Fastned the 10th spot after August! A better month for them with good scores in Kigali and East Midlands making them jump 2 spots.
In 9th we find Polar who after scoring 198 points fall from 7th. Pretty much no races with any mayor scoring for Polar this month. One of the teams moving past them is cycleYorkshire who goes into 8th with a score of 343, managing to beat out Polar by only 7 points. That moves us into 7th place and the last team in this midtable group, Carlsberg - Danske Bank with good scoring in Kigali and East Midlands before taking a break in the latter half of the month. They look like a pretty safe top 10 team right now.
That takes us into the battle for the podium and the medals. We start of with 3 really tight teams who right now are outside the top 3. The first of them was the best team in August and also the only team racing all races this month, ELCO - ABEA. A great month for them scoring 887 points with all races but East Midlands being over 100 pts and takes them from 8th to 6th. That really propels them into the podium battle! Just 8 pts in front of them we find the Russian Oligarch and his Tinkoff Team - La Datcha. 487 points in August with Deutchland Tour being the top score. Another 32 points in front of them (and falling from 3rd to 4th) is King Power. 486 points is not enough to stay on the podium but still not a bad month.
In 3rd we find the big surprise team (atleast for me) of the season in Rabobank. One of their worst months with only 260 points, but they still manage to stay on the podium (though falling to 3rd). Is this the start of the decline for them, or will they manage to stay on the podium with all the teams chasing them?
That EA Vesuvio would have a good month where there was TT races on the calender was no suprise and they had the 2nd best month of all, taking them from 4th to 2nd. A total of 787 points with 461 points coming from Deutchland Tour. Considering the announcment that the team will disband as their manager has gone missing (after being a mysterious and hidden person for years) there really are some riders racing to show what they are worth!
In first place we still find Evonik - ELKO even though they only raced 2 races and scored 220 points. Even though their lead is going a bit down I can't see them being caught. Not much to say about August however
Best rider of the month, going from 6th to 1st on the rankings, scoring 450 pts in August is Mads Pedersen. He is still doing his best to try to keep Grieg-Maersk up and might well take the individual ranking win with him on his mission. Another rider having a great month just 30 points behind is Stylianos Farantakis. A great month (and year) for him taking him all they way up to 3rd in the rankings (from 9th). He nearly catches Tom Wirtgen, but his Deutchland Tour gives him the 2nd place.
Hampus Anderberg also had a good month scoring 308 points and moving into top 20 (in 19th) while Nathan Van Hooydonck scored 294 and David Per 290 (which takes him to 7th from 11th) showing that this was a good month for the cobble specialists. Same with Ivan Siric and Florian Senechal on 200 and 175 points.
Other than the cobblers sprinter Max Kanter got 224 while TT specialist Marlen Zmorka rounds of the top 10 for the month with his 175 pts.
In the top 10 the big risers have already been montioned and everyone else has pretty muc not raced. That means Miguel Angel Lopez falls to 4th, Merhawi Kudus to 5th, Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier to 6th, Egan Bernal to 8th, Remco Evenepoel to 9th and Stanislaw Aniolkowski to 10th.
Guess we reduced the gap to first place, just didn't expect to drop down to 3rd in the process
Obviously not a great month for us and wasn't expecting to be losing a place. We still have a decent gap to those behind us, but we need to fight hard to finish on the podium.
The SAA result already giving us a huge boost, but I think it will be La Vuelta which will be the decisive race for us.
A tight relegation battle too. It will be interesting to follow.
Honestly didn't expect to be fighting to stay in. We went into the season to relegate and build our 'selfmade' team over the course of two (or three) seasons and be competitive in PCT as of then, but for now we're even doing quite alright here as well. With the remaining races and riders for us/others there, we should still relegate, but it was fun to put up a fight for so long!
Thanks for the update Heine. The relegation battle is looking very tight. We're going to need a really strong race from Godoy at the Vuelta as I don't see many other opportunities to bring in points with our remaining schedule.
Edited by Bushwackers on 13-04-2026 17:56
Still a nice lead but with SAA we already know its a bit misleading. Vuelta will be key as we need to match the scoring of our rivals as we will likely lose further points in Praha. I kinda like my lineup for the GC but it likely wont hit close to the current PPRD - also dont have the very best overview for the vuelta startlist outside of the top hybrids
Crazy to see us so secure and fighting for a top 10 again. Granted, the difference between us an like 16th is basically Skjelmose's overperformance in the TDF, but still feel like we've gotten as much as we could have out of our team in planning, which is cool.
Really the only goal left now is a Vuelta top 10 with Carthy, which will be tough given the competition. Other than that I don't even really care if we score too highly from here on out because I don't want to end up screwing our renewals more than they already are. A good performance from AKA would be nice though.
Thanks for the update!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Excellent month for us here, catapulting us out of danger, and likely securing top 10 aswell!
Would have been nice to score enough to get 4th temporarily, but 6th is still good. Despite having a good September already, both Rabobank and Tinkoff already scorer even better, so we can’t even say we are temporarily in the podium battle.
Regardless of where we end up, this season Will be a succes for us, and Farantakis this high is just incredible! He still have two potentially solid races left, so with a bit of luck he could end up around 3rd overall! Still a Grand Tour left to Shake up things though.
Still have Evonik as the winner here. If any doing, they will win in Lombardia to seal it!
This looks a lot better than after the previous month, especially as we have points in the bank from both Appia Antica and Riga-Jurmala. Adding 335 points from there, and I do dare say we should be very safe. Of course something freakish can, and probably will, happen in the Vuelta, but it shouldn't be THAT freakish that most teams behind us all have a crazy Vuelta
Evonik still looks to have decided everything. No massive TT race left for Vesuvio, at least I think so? And thus, it must be Rabobank and Alex doing something sensational in every race from here and to the very end. If they are going to actually challenge the title in the last races, I suspect they'll need one of their perfect breakaway riders (Champoussin?) to go absolutely crazy in the Vuelta Can't see it happening, really, also because of the strong riders Evonik brings to any race.
ember wrote:
Evonik still looks to have decided everything. No massive TT race left for Vesuvio, at least I think so? And thus, it must be Rabobank and Alex doing something sensational in every race from here and to the very end. If they are going to actually challenge the title in the last races, I suspect they'll need one of their perfect breakaway riders (Champoussin?) to go absolutely crazy in the Vuelta Can't see it happening, really, also because of the strong riders Evonik brings to any race.
ember wrote:
Evonik still looks to have decided everything. No massive TT race left for Vesuvio, at least I think so? And thus, it must be Rabobank and Alex doing something sensational in every race from here and to the very end. If they are going to actually challenge the title in the last races, I suspect they'll need one of their perfect breakaway riders (Champoussin?) to go absolutely crazy in the Vuelta Can't see it happening, really, also because of the strong riders Evonik brings to any race.
Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha is pretty massive TT
Haha, absolutely! I could try writing I have it as a prologue race for Kragh in my book, but rather just a big miss when trying to remember what is left this season
Indeed Praha should be the last Big scoring race for Vesuvio. Maybe they have something interesting in the Vuelta aswell, but the rest of the races should be low scoring for Them.
Rabobank could do well everywhere including Praha with Remco and their sprinter.
August never was expected to be a good month for us, with just three cobbled races and a 76 cobbler as our leader... So can't be really disappointed; a Top 20 in East Midlands was actually pretty decent. If only Stewart didn't always participate in those completely useless mid-race attacks, I guess he'd have more Top 20s by now...
It was clear that we'd be having a rough season, but I still didn't expect to be almost 1,000 points behind safety by now. There's pretty much nothing going in our favour, be it hilly races, TT races or sprints (in particular classics). But whether you relegate by 1 point or 10k points doesn't really matter ^^
Close fight at the bottom and around the relegation zone, will be interesting to see who's got the upper hand at the end.
I could try writing I have it as a prologue race for Kragh in my book, but rather just a big miss when trying to remember what is left this season 
