As we look forward to the final day of the season, as well as the final monument with the Giro di Lombardia, it's time to look at the rankings one more time to identify the crucial battles going on. Period and individual rankings will follow in the actual final update.
As we've known for a while now, there are no such battles in the Top 4. For those teams, it's about capping off the season with a prestigeous individual result, but none of them can rise or fall anymore. It's then a bit closer between Generali in 5th and ISA - Hexacta in 6th place, who are in turn just 25 points ahead of MOL and 82 points ahead of Grieg - Maersk.
Another close fight is for the final Top 10 spot, potentially crucial for the season ranking goals. Tinkoff is a mere 40 points behind Huski, and Trakhov has been pretty frisky recently, but Benoot will try his best to fend off the challenge.
There are then less than 100 points between Farfetch in 12th and Gazelle in 15th place, but that is of course far less important than what will ultimately be the center of attention: the relegation battle.
Here, we have to bid farewell not only to Xero, but also to Amaysim, who could not keep up with some of their competitors' big scoring this month. Aegon especially did well with Olivier in Morocco and De Bie in Canada, and they vault themselves into 16th place. Yates did well enough for Zwift that it's suddenly Mapei now who find themselves in the relegation zone! But a mere 50 points seperate them from safety. Do they have the fire power to make that jump? Let's take a closer look.
It is looking a bit bleak for Mapei. While far from hopeless, they would likely need a Top 5-7 from Buchmann plus decent depth scoring, and for Yates to fail to get into the Top 10 at the same time. Making up 80 points to Aegon and De Bie feels like an even bigger hurdle. But we've seen how unpredictable hilly races can be this year, so none of this is out of the question. It comes down to just one race - good luck to everyone!
Have not expected to pull Mapei into this area, but this is obviously good news for me and Zwift as the Lombardia startlist is looking rather ideal to remain this situation. Not that I like to see Mapei going down, but as I think SotD has pointed before, it might be better to have a disbanding team being on that spot.
De Bie hopefully doing well in Lombardia as a 84 puncheur really should.
Thanks for that last minute update! Really appreciated.
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." [PT] Xero Racing
Really nice to see the squad in the top half of the table. We dropped off some places, but earlier was super mega uber overachieving now 'just' super overachieving Now lets see how we approach our first Lombardia.
Thanks for the quick update!
Oh wow, didn't expect Aegon and us to perform well enough to put Mapei on the hot seat going into the final race. Looks like I don't have to scrap my "PT offseason" plans just yet. I really like our chances with Yates and the helpers we are bringing to support him.
Best of luck to everyone. Thanks for the quick update!
Now lets see how we approach our first Lombardia.
