Time for a rankings update post-Giro, which also includes the Tour of California.
Riccardo Ricco emerged as this year's Cunego, scoring a mighty 1684 ranking points. Sella also did well on 1130, while Pozzovivvo and Schleck scored 651 and 633 respectively. The best scoring non-GC man was breakaway specialist Banos Ballester, just ahead of sprinter Goss.
Unsurprisingly, this sends Ricco top of the Individual Standings, displacing Bakelandts. Frank Schleck goes into 3rd, while Taylor Phinney - California winner with a points score better than all but 4 of the Giro riders - is into 6th. Sella goes straight into 8th after his first race of the season, making him the highest ranked rider participating in the Vuelta.
Festina, Carmeuse, Santander and Wikipedia may have scored better in California than they did in the Giro, but the Giro was a great source of points for others, that is for sure!
Bacardi and Webeffect obviously lead the way, ahead of Vespa and Vesuvio - but Wiggle showed that despite a crash affecting their team leader, they had the capabilities to score elsewhere - Ponzi being one to notably outperform himself.
Sometimes theres no coming back from crashes though, and Festina losing Fothen effectively ended their race, and they struggled to source ranking points from the remains of their team.
Vesuvio keep the overall lead but Pearl Adidas certainly remain touch, at only 400 points back. Bacardi leap up to 3rd, which is probably going to be their peak position of the season, which pushes down Sony Ericsson, Jack Wolfskin and Nestle, all of whom had similar scores from the race.
Wikipedia's California surge helps them into 7th, while Webeffect have gone from relegation zone to 10th. A one man show of Sella for them. Not even managing 200 points from the Giro is bad news for B&O and Festina. From 7th to 13th, and 9th to 14th respectively they go.
400 points behind them are Carmeuse, Spyker and Santander, battling to avoid the final relegation spot. Spyker currently hold that position, meaning that all 3 teams in the relegation zone really need a good TDF for their leaders - with Cafe de Colombia and Warner Brothers getting further and further adrift. CT team Vespa are closer to Warner Brothers than Warner Brothers are to Spyker - and Vespa have only ridden Milan San Remo and the Giro!
We can see from the Giro - how winning a GTour can change a teams position massively.
Therefore it would be unwise to rule out a Cunego inspired run by Cafe de Colombia to safety yet. With Madrazo currently leading the Vuelta and also going to the Tour - Santander could also amass a lot of points. It raises the question of where the points are going to come from for Spyker, Carmuese and Warner Brothers. Dekker in stage races, Cancellara at TONE and Spilak in stage races look like their trump cars. Reimer's early Vuelta run may have helped Spyker as may Roelandts couple of stage wins so far for Carmuese- WB are probably doomed a little like Lafarge last year a crappy transfer season. Every point is going to count methinks teams from about Milka downwards will be cheering everything they can get!
Well done to Vesuvio and Pearl Adidas - they look really well set and have shown the value of having good all round teams. Brilliant punchaer each, and a gaggle of strong (if admittedly not the very best) stage racers and even a worthwhile sprinter in the ranks. But it is worth mentioning each have an excellent set of well developed domestiques that seem to occasionally prove very useful when infiltrating breaks and helping their leaders.
Cunego needs a 1600 point + Tour. Quite hopeful he can get it - should do very well in the mountains and if he can pull out some big gaps on the hilly stages should be looking at a good haul.
He's racing in Colombia too - and that could turn out to be very important too.
Don't know why - but I have a feeling Pearl will overhaul Vesuvio-Accumalux. The race for the top is between those two, whereas I can see some of the team's in 'safe' positions being dragged into the relegation dog fight.
Wow, this should really bring me to safety for the rest of the season. I expected around 1000-1200 points from Ricco in the Giro, but almost 1700 points is just unbelievable. Really awesome.
Ricco still has a few one day classics and Colombia left, where he should get decent results aswell. In most of those races he can end on the podium, although top 5 might be more realistic.
Also, still got Keizer in some races. While he won't bring the big results, every points are welcome. Steegmans and Burghardt shouldn't do bad in TONE either.
Edited by Kami on 26-02-2012 15:40
It's nice to see my team still in quiet safe position with almost 1000 points advantage over that drop zone.
Anyway, I won't get much points from Vuelta and with Rohregger/Coppel combo in Dauphine it will be probably same. Then in Suisse I will finally have Henao back and he will ride Tour de France as my leader as well, Efimkin should get some nice points in that Duche classic and my team should be solid in that TTT. If my team will be above that line after the Tour I probably should be in a good position in the rest of the season. After that I should gain some nice points packages in every race left:
