It's a first for me to do a full ranking, so bear over with me if there should be any mistakes - But before the Tour de France start it seems like a good place to look into the rankings yet again.
We start by looking at the month of June and the races that wasn't included from May in the last update. And there's quite a race in there - Vuelta a España.
Obviously Taaramäe keeps the spirit high for Evonik, while MOL from Tenorio have a similar feel. Madrazo lifts Gazelle to respectable numbers, but definately not the numbers they could expect.
Isostar had themselves a very nice race too from the sprinting of Gaviria and aggressive nature of Aleksander Roman.
Ben Swift helped his Zwift compatriots to a very solid race aswell.
Overall Evonik comes out on top after winning Vuelta a España, Tour de Suisse and Scandinavia Open Road Race. What a month for them! Isostar also keeps pounding away on their charge for overall victory, while MOL in particular takes a giant leap away from any sort of relegation battle almost bagging 2000 points.
From there on it's more even with Moser and Farfetch opening a small gap, while Huski, Aego and Grieg in particular will be hoping for more soon.
In general terms we see Isostar reclaiming the hot seat for the title run. Now more than 650 points ahead of Puma who drops to 2nd - but still sitting very comfortably. Evonik through the massive scoring is back in the podium battle, with 500 points up and 450 down. On paper the most interesting movement here though is MOL who jumps from an already impressive 10th to an unbelievable performance in 4th.
ISA and Grieg both keep up high, despite dropping 1 and 3 places respectably, while Gazelle, Moser and King Power switch up a bit.
Festina takes up the last spot in the top 10, but will surely be hoping for a big jump having the Tour de France just down the line of sight.
Next up are Huski who took a similar plummet as Festina, but unlike Festina they don't have Dombrowski to catapult them back after the Tour, and will be looking elsewhere to pick up the lost speed. Farfetch and Tinkoff moves away from the immidiate relegation battle, while Zwift in 14th is the final team to have scored above 4000 points. There is only 470 points between number 5 and number 14 though so any good race can do wonders.
In the relegation battle we find Xero Racing at the very bottom struggling to find points to close the gap. The remaining 5 team: Amaysim, EA Vesuvio, Generali, Aegon and Mapei are all very very close. Within 134 points in fact! If any of those can have a very strong Tour de France they could be free of relegation trouble for quite some time - On the other hand, a very bad Tour de France could see one of those teams stuck behind with Xero Racing.
At the top of the individual rankings we still see Silvio Herklotz and Taylor Phinney roaming free of anyone else with superior seasons. Silvio Herklotz have concluded his season, while Phinney (if my calculations are correct) still have room for 2-3 more Racedays to make the catch.
Just behind the two we find Vuelta winner Rein Taaramäe who seals a very solid season. Gaviria and Tenorio also move up high, while Wisniowski leaves the top 5 for now. Merhawi Kudus, Joe Dombrowski, Angel Madrazo and Tom Wirtgen takes up the final places in the top 10.
Thanks for doing the numbers. We're looking well on top, but I doubt we can keep that spot. I assume that Puma overtakes us at Le Tour, and then it's just one classic for both Phinney and Gaviria left. Right now I'd guess it's a 4-way title race between Isostar, Puma, Evonik and Festina (Tour domination incoming). I'd give Puma the best odds atm, but all 4 could win it (though Festina would need the most luck).
Also I'm very impressed by Mol and ISA, using great depth and good planing for fantastic performances. A tough battle down the bottom, almost any team could still relegate and there even is some hope for Xero left.
Also it really hurts to see Polanc only 30 points behind Per. We made a wrong decision selling Polanc for sure.
We didn't participate in 3/7 races during this period and Dauphine was hardly a race we showed up to either, so it isn't all that surprising that we performed this bad.
For the future I guess we need to figure out a way not to throw so many points away in the Grand Tours and week long GC races that isn't necessarily priority races for us. There's way to much greatness or failure, and we need to spread out points a bit better to fight for a podium for real.
Winning the title is out of the question. Even with a great Tour de France (~1800 points) we still aren't close to the lead, and this doesn't even consider the other teams scoring any points.
If we can be 3rd after the Tour de France I'll be very happy - and then it's all about survival from then on. To actually finish 3rd would require quite some luck in the run-in.
Projected we should be 7th, and with enhanced projection I think 4-5th overall this season looks realistic.
Not completely happy so far, as standout performances from my team are still lacking and so the scoring is a little bit subpar. But I think there are 4-5 teams ahead of us which we still realistically can catch, with Festina for sure passing us.
Gidich scoring very well so far, can't wait for him to be trained to be a real opponent to MAL and the other top puncheurs!
Thanks for the update!
Obviously an incredible update for Evonik. Three stage race wins (and top scoring teams in each) is outstanding and the other three races were also solid.
Being back into a podium position feels awesome after all that bullcrap at the start of the season. But what have we left on the schedule:
- A fair bit of Lopez racing.
- Polanc has the remainder of the cobbles season plus odd classics without huge scoring opportunity for himself
- Taaramae (Herbiers) and Eislers (2 sprint classics) are mostly done
- Chiarello in the Tour
Isostar still looks the top favourite for me, between Lutsenko and Per, they still have good options for a bunch of races as well as the Gaviria classic and especially Herbiers as elite scoring chances. It was always going to be tough to beat them if Gaviria gets close to 2000 points.
Puma and Festina are both quite dependant on the Tour. Both of course have further scoring options but their top leaders with the chance to dominate races should be mostly done after that. Puma could be up for a close fight with Isostar or be still within reach of myself depending on how dominant Demare will be while a dominant Lecuisinier could put Festina temporarily above myself at least. So it could be a close 3-way fight for two podium spots till the end with one or two of them also challenging Isostar for the title. Still, i like my odds of a podium finish now as i might have better post-tour scoring potential than some of my contenders.
The relegation fight looks intense. So many teams that could still get drawn into it. A lot of managers will be glad that there are only three relegation spots this year.
As expected, we drop a few places. Now let's finish the TdF, and we can start looking upwards again. All in all, I thought we had a decent month, with the win in Norway, a decent Vuelta (by our standards) and Kragh showing himself in the Tour de Suisse. But we also had a quite low number of races and low GC scoring otherwise, so not much.
We might drop down to the relegation battle after the Tour, but we have some good races left, so I'm not that worried.
Good run of recent races for us with the exception of the Dauphine - though I didn't expect to be the 5th highest scoring team since the last update, which was a nice surprise.
The signs of a gap between us and the relegation zone opening up is good, but too early to be overly confident about staying up. If Yates has a decent Tour and we manage to pick up some other solid results then we should be safe, but all it takes is a few of the teams below us stringing a good run together and we'll be back into the relegation mire.
