Another month with lots of racing for PCT teams, and with 5/10 races being PTHC, and the C1-rated Tour of America having HC points, it was an extremely important month for many teams!
We'll do the "traditional" split by categories once again, although detailed ToA scores are posted in the race's discussion thread due to the mix of PCT and CT teams participating.
Partial September Ranking | C1/C2
Let's start with the lowest scoring race. The Tour of San Luis made its comback in the MG calendar as a C2 race, with Zalgiris being the only PCT team to attend the hilly stage race. Schönberger did a good job for them, finishing 10th on GC (without any notable stage results, though). Räim and Rodriguez each got an 8th place on the two flat-rated stages, with the latter taking 3rd in U25 - 20 points for the Lithuanians.
Then there was the traditional hilly C1 clash at the end of the month, consisting of Milano - Torino and GP Lugano. Both in Italian-speaking locations, but with a pretty different route.
Milano - Torino was one for the "classic" puncheurs, those who are strong uphill, and don't need to be fast sprinters. And one man has been riding in a league of his own in these races so far. Yep, Areruya won once again. 80 points for him, 80 points for Xero.
2nd place, and maybe his final brilliant result, went to one of the puncheur legends. Beltran was almost able to follow Areruya, rewarded with 56 points. Prevar in 18th and Budyak in 23rd place also scored some points, making it a total of 63 points for Popo4Ever. Benoot may have narrowly missed out on the podium, but thanks to Kozhatayev's 17th place Sony still outscored Higuita's Pollos by one point, 47 vs. 46.
The second half of the clash took place in Switzerland, and it was rather one for the punchy sprinters - on paper.
In reality, it turns out that the peloton completely mistimed the chase (or underestimated the break?), and so the winner didn't even need to have any trace of climbing skills. The surprise winner in Lugano was Varga - and with teammate Gladysh winning the peloton's sprint for 7th, that's a great haul of 108 points for Popo4Ever!
The runner-up might be even more surprising, given that Stöckli only is lvl 3 and doesn't have any particular strengths - but it looks like the home bonus kicked in big time! Müller also finished inside the Top 20, making it 62 points for home team UBS. In 3rd place, another strong rouleur with Gamper - definitely not his preferred terrain, but he somewhat makes up for some weaker cobbles results this year. With Bagioli taking 15th, that's 54 points for Lierse.
The Tour of Britain was the last of plenty hills-TT hybrid races this year. And like always in these races, there was one clear-cut favourite. Who won the race - but his team wasn't the highest scoring one.
Instead, depth turned out to be pretty efficient once again. 3rd, 8th and 21st in GC, two stage wins, two more stage podiums, team standings win - yep, it was a good race for Jura! And it could've been even better, if they didn't decide that 2nd overall Stüssi should work to catch the break on the last stage... only to be dropped and fall down to 8th. Instead, teammate Masnada salvaged the race by moving up to 3rd. Schmid also got some GC points, plus 3rd in U25. All but one rider scored for the Swiss, for a total of 215 points - their best C1 score of the year!
In 2nd place, we now get to the GC winner, who is no other than the already legendary Eddie Dunbar! No stage win (not even in the TT, surprisingly), but two stage podiums and 2nd in points on top of the GC win were worth a lot of points - 169 to be precise. But sadly for Indosat, only Kochetkov (8th on stage 1) and Setiawa (30th in GC) were able to add one point each, so that's 171 points for the Indonesians. I'm sure they can still live with that outcome.
And 3rd place? Well, the team of the third podium finisher, GC runner-up Stannard! The Australian won stage 3 and ended up 2nd on the final day, netting him 2nd overall, 3rd in points - and the U25 jersey! 135 points him, with Henao adding 5 more points for 22nd place - all in all, 140 precious points for DuckDuckGo!
And then, the big one, the people's GT, the Tour of America. Only 7 participants from PCT, resulting in a far higher average score per PCT team than last year with 11 PCT participants. As mentioned previously, detailed scorings are in the ToA discussion thread, here's just the overview:
Despite finishing "only" 3rd in GC, Powless was one of the big winners of the race. On one hand with his 3 stage wins and the GC podium - on the other hand Zwift got two additional stage wins and a total of 459 points!
GC winner Eastman with his Glanbia team wasn't far off, though, with the men in green scoring 440 points. Their issue was that besides Eastman's two stage wins and the GC win, there came "only" the TTT win on top - and not much else from the rest of the team. A good score for sure - but will it be enough to keep survival hopes alive?
McCormick in 3rd place was the 3rd team above 400 points (whereas only Philips scored over 400 last year), confirming the "lots of points per PCT team" statement. McNulty did an amazing job, losing out on the GC win by nothing (more precisely, by 2 seconds...), getting the white jersey as a consolation price.
Colombini with 312 and Kraftwerk with 275 points can be more or less satisfied with their outcome, whereas Spark with 150 and DuckDuckGo with 134 points can't be overly happy. The latter actually scored less points in 21 days in the Americas than during 5 days in Britain...
On average, PCT teams scored 311 points this year, compared to 248 last year. A significant difference of more than 60 points, showing that it takes some luck with the startlist on top of a great performance to score really big.
Unsurprisingly, it's the ToA participants who rock this block. And at the top, we have... Zwift! Despite adding only 3 points in Milano to their ToA tally, 462 points are still unbeaten.
Which is mainly because McCormick were unable to shine in their other C1 races. 32 points combined from Britain, Milano and Lugano can't be satisfying, and with 442 points in total they miss out on Zwift's score by 20 points. At least, the Americans did beat Glanbia by 2 points - which is just because the latter didn't race anywhere else.
Next are Colombini, who did the hilly clash at the end of the month. And they did fairly well, especially with Sprenger getting a surprise 4th place in Lugano. 69 points from these two races, which adds up to 381 with their ToA return.
DuckDuckGo were PCT's worst scoring team in ToA, but with a great Stannard show in Britain, and solid scoring in Milano, they still managed to jump inside the Top 5, rounding them off with 308 points.
Next are Kraftwerk, adding one Lugano point to their ToA tally, ending up with 276 points. And then, we finally have the first non-ToA participant with Jura, who had a great Tour of Britain. The hilly clash wasn't successful for them, with just 18 points out of these two races, but 233 points are enough for 7th place. And to be the final team above 200 points.
With Indosat, we have the GC winning team of the Tour of Britain next; they did even worse than Jura in the end-of-month clash, scoring just 5 points. Which makes 176 in total. 5 more than Popo4Ever, who only did the hilly clash - and rocked it, with Varga's surprise win in Lugano and Beltran's 2nd place in Milano!
And only now, rounding off the Top 10, we get to the final ToA participants, Spark. They did no race in this block other than the "big one", hence totalling 150 points. They are pretty closely followed by Assa in 11th, who scored 143 points mainly thanks to Gesbert's performances in Britain and Milano.
Next are the final 3 teams above 100 points; Genii, who had a strong Tour of Britain and a decent GP Lugano, Trans who also did well in Britain and OK-is in the hilly clash, and then Xero, winning in Milano with Areruya and having a decent Houle finish in Lugano. 117, 108 and 104 points respectively.
It's then another 30 points step down to Lierse in 15th, who also had a pretty good hilly clash, especially with Gamper's 3rd place in Lugano. 70 points for them, followed by UBS with 67; the Swiss even went one better in Lugano, but failed in Britain with just 5 points.
Failure, that's a fitting label for Démare's Lugano race, and the main reason why Tryg only picked up 56 points this month. Although Britain started very well with Rodenberg's stage 1 win... Zalgiris also end up at 56 points, after a decent Moscon result in Milano, and their 20 points in San Luis.
Sony and Los Pollos are next, totalling 47 and 46 points respectively, all of them picked up in Milano - Torino. Braliwa and Fastned are the final scoring teams, the former getting all their points in Britain, the latter in Britain and Milano. 37 and 25 points aren't great for promotion contenders, though...
Which definitely holds for Lampre's zero points as well, although they only had one (missed) chance to score in Lugano. The same holds for Sauber, but they won't care as much, not having a lot at stake anyway.
Here are the numbers:
Team
GB
ToA
SL
M-T
Lug
Total
1
Zwift Pro Cycling
0
459
0
3
0
462
2
McCormick Pro Cycling
5
410
0
16
11
442
3
Glanbia
0
440
0
0
0
440
4
Colombini Cycling
0
312
0
28
41
381
5
DuckDuckGo - Everesting
140
134
0
34
0
308
6
Kraftwerk Man Machine
0
275
0
0
1
276
7
Jura GIANTS
215
0
0
8
10
233
8
Indosat Ooredoo
171
0
0
1
4
176
9
Team Popo4Ever p/b Morshynska
0
0
0
63
108
171
10
Spark-BNZ Racing
0
150
0
0
0
150
11
Assa Abloy
111
0
0
32
0
143
12
Genii Hyundai N Cycling
103
0
0
0
14
117
13
Trans Looney Tunes
94
0
0
11
3
108
14
Xero Racing
0
0
0
80
24
104
15
Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam
0
0
0
16
54
70
16
Team UBS - Tissot
5
0
0
0
62
67
17
Tryg - Gobyk
39
0
0
7
10
56
18
DK Žalgiris
0
0
20
36
0
56
19
Sony - Force India
0
0
0
47
0
47
20
Los Pollos Hermanos
0
0
0
46
0
46
21
Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes
37
0
0
0
0
37
22
Fastned
11
0
0
14
0
25
23
Lampre - Pinarello
0
0
0
0
0
0
24
Sauber Petronas Racing
0
0
0
0
0
0
Partial September Ranking | PTHC
Four classics and a stage race are in this PTHC-only block - we'll cover the one-day races first and end with the potentially highest scoring race.
Riga - Jurmala GP came first, with the other three classics in the final week of the month. The sprinter race saw a PT winner - but Bonifazio did a great job to finish 2nd, scoring 125 points! But that's not all Lierse got - they also had Biermans in 19th, hence the Belgians' total score is 138.
We then have to go down to 6th place to find the next PCT sprinter, which was the Flying Finn, or Mighty Matti - or just Manninen. 70 points for him, with Ruiz in 18th and the legendary Quispe in 21st scoring pretty big points for Los Pollos as well - 95 points in total for the Mexicans.
And although Aniolkowski was only the 4th best PCT sprinter in 8th place, Varga's 13th place plus Lutsyshin in 30th and both Manamalage and Golovash in the Top 50 made sure that Popo4Ever took 3rd place in terms of scoring. 84 points for the Ukrainians.
The cobbled TT, Chrono d'Arenberg, came next. But it turns out that the organizers somehow modified the cobbles in a way that they behaved almost like normal tarmac in the 2023 edition - leading to a race for the pure TTers.
And therefore leading to an unexpected win by Zmorka, who was the strongest pure TTer present. 170 additional points for the only team that doesn't really need them anymore, Los Pollos. Well, 175 points to be precise, with Nareklishvili's 30th place being worth 5 points as well.
Lierse probably had some mixed feelings about the lower cobbles impact. On one hand, it robbed Gamper of possible back-to-back wins. On the other hand, it allowed Siddikov and especially Sajnok to finish high up as well - Gamper, Sajnok and Siddikov actually took places 7th to 9th, and 150 points. Less than a win, but more than a 2nd place - so probably pretty OK for the Italians.
Dillier often did well here before, with a win and two 2nd places. This year, he got a decent 5th place, and combined with Schäppi's 18th place that's 94 points for Team UBS.
Cobbles, but without the TT bike, are the theme of the next pair of races - as we had the traditional cobbles clash of Rheden and Battenkill. Let's cover Rheden first.
A cobbled race with a sprint finish, something quite a lot of PCT cobblers are fond of! Stallaert was the best of the bunch again, being the only able to follow Wisniowksi's winning move, and finishing 2nd. 125 points for him, with Okbamariam and Teggaert adding Top 30 finishes - 140 important points for Bralirwa!
Max Daniel had a disappointing 2023 season overall, but at least got a strong result in Rheden. 4th place for him, and with Lampre's usual cobbles depth - Rowe 17th, Riesebeek 19th, plus two more in the Top 50 - that's 122 points for the Italians.
3rd place the goes to two teams - the two Swiss ones. Theuns for once was unable to win the sprint of the pack, finishing 5th behind Daniel. Jura also had Tediashvili in 28th and Kosic in the Top 50, scoring 88 points in total. Team UBS had Spengler another spot further down, in 6th, plus Jacobs, Bohli and Schäppi in 26th, 27th and 30th. That's 88 points as well.
Interestingly, Battenkill had a less packed startlist - but less points for PCT teams nonetheless! With its nice mix of cobbles and hills, it was a perfect fit for Benoot, who indeed delivered for once and finished 3rd. Ringheim in 18th and Kozhatayev in the Top 50 scored some points for Sony as well, with the Indian team getting 116 points in total.
Summerhill was the next PCT finisher, with his 5th place being worth 80 points for Tryg. And 3rd place was shared again, with two teams scoring 62 points. DuckDuckGo had Debesay in 7th position, with Vahtra adding Top 50 points. Zepuntke finished 8th for Los Pollos, who had Ulloa rounding off the Top 20.
And then, there's just the PTHC stage race left. The big one - for one team at least. The Balkans International. The long awaited Lopez vs. Areruya clash.
Despite being a tad weaker than the Colombian on the short bursts, Areruya turned his slightly better climbing skills into a dominant race win - he took over the yellow jersey after winning stage 3, and then confirmed it by winning on the final day as well. GC win, shared points win - 316 points! It's "only" his 2nd highest score behind Dauphiné, but with one less day of racing - just ridiculous scoring for a PCT rider anyway! Pidcock also had a good time in Balkans, ending up 16th on GC and 2nd in U25. Kipkemboi finished 44th, and Xero ended up 4th in the team standings for some bonus points - all in all, 375 points! Which is 4 points better than Los Pollos' Deutschland performance (but way behind their Benelux score), so they're now holding the best and 2nd best scores of the season...
The fact that Xero were just extremely dominant is confirmed by the gap to the 2nd best scoring team, which is over 200 points behind. In fact, Fastned shouldn't be too unhappy with Olivier's 6th place in GC (plus 4 stage Top 7 finishes), but that gap is just looking rough. It's 123 points for Olivier, with Cras adding a good 19th place on GC. Vanhoucke was more disappointing, only barely cracking the Top 100 - all in all, that's 150 points for the Dutchmen.
The gap to the 3rd best team isn't that big in terms of absolute numbers, but in relative numbers we still have a factor 2 between Fastned and... Jura. The latter could again count on Masnada in top shape, finishing 11th in GC. And despite Schmid being mostly invisible, he still finished 25th in GC and 3rd in U25, bringing the Swiss' points tally to 75.
Yes, you all know who stands on top. It's obvious, it's Xero. Their Balkans points alone would have been enough to win this block, but they also score in the cobbles clash, for a total of 393 points.
Los Pollos weren't that far off, though, with great performances in Arenberg and Riga, plus some decent points in Battenkill. 332 points, easily beating all other promotion contenders.
Lierse only did two classics and scored 288 points, meaning they're the most efficient team in this block by far. UBS with 251 and Fastned with 228 points round off the Top 5, and are the final teams above 200 points, both doing everything except Battenkill.
The next 4 teams got some decent points as well, and are just 27 points apart from each other. Bralirwa lead the bunch with 190 points, most of which came from Rheden. Lampre scored 179 points, with Rheden being their top race as well.
Sony's highest scoring race was Battenkill, with the Indians scoring 166 points from three races. Jura are the only team in this bunch to race just twice, ending up being the 3rd best scoring team both in Balkans and Rheden. 163 points for the Swiss in 9th place.
And that's all teams above 100 points, actually, so we have a gap of more than 60 points down to 10th place. Where we have Popo4Ever, doing well in Riga and getting some points from Arenberg. 99 points in total, which is 3 more than DuckDuckGo - most of them scored in Battenkill.
Zalgiris got 86 points from Riga and Arenberg, with Sauber getting 77 out of their 81 from the French cobbles-TT race. Tryg are another point behind, with Summerhill scoring all of their 80 points in Battenkill.
Rounding off the Top 15 are Colombini with 64 points, scored in Balkans and Rheden. Spark and Zwift are close behind with 56 and 54 points respectively.
Trans and Glanbia end up with 29 and 28 points; Kraftwerk and Genii form another pair with 18 and 17 points, and McCormick are the final scoring team with 11 points.
Assa did race in Battenkill but failed to score, whereas Indosat had zero participations and therefore an excusable "bagel".
Here's the full overview:
Team
Rig
Bal
Aren
Bat
Rhe
Total
1
Xero Racing
0
375
0
16
2
393
2
Los Pollos Hermanos
95
0
175
62
0
332
3
Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam
138
0
150
0
0
288
4
Team UBS - Tissot
6
63
94
0
88
251
5
Fastned
22
150
4
0
52
228
6
Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes
2
46
2
0
140
190
7
Lampre - Pinarello
27
30
0
0
122
179
8
Sony - Force India
0
48
0
116
2
166
9
Jura GIANTS
0
75
0
0
88
163
10
Team Popo4Ever p/b Morshynska
84
0
15
0
0
99
11
DuckDuckGo - Everesting
32
0
2
62
0
96
12
DK Žalgiris
60
0
26
0
0
86
13
Sauber Petronas Racing
2
0
2
77
0
81
14
Tryg - Gobyk
0
0
0
80
0
80
15
Colombini Cycling
0
30
0
0
34
64
16
Spark-BNZ Racing
37
0
19
0
0
56
17
Zwift Pro Cycling
0
0
0
54
0
54
18
Trans Looney Tunes
0
18
0
9
2
29
19
Glanbia
0
24
0
2
2
28
20
Kraftwerk Man Machine
0
14
0
2
2
18
21
Genii Hyundai N Cycling
2
0
15
0
0
17
22
McCormick Pro Cycling
0
9
0
0
2
11
23
Assa Abloy
0
0
0
0
0
0
24
Indosat Ooredoo
0
0
0
0
0
0
Period Ranking | September
ToA or Balkans, which one was more important? The September rankings say: Tour of America! Which means that Zwift take the win this month, totalling 516 points! And this isn't only due to spending lots of RDs; their 20.6 PpRD average is #6 in the league, so they performed really well also compared to teams who weren't in ToA!
However, in 2nd place we already see the first non-ToA-participant - and it's obviously Xero, the Balkans dominators! Well, one dominator, not the team obviously: Areruya himself scored 396 points this month, his teammates "just" 101 - 497 is still good enough for 2nd in September. And it's also the 2nd best PpRD average with 35.5, looks like they've really woken up...
Back to ToA teams, as Glanbia take the final podium spot. They scores less than McCormick in C1/C2, but more in PTHC - and end up 3rd, scoring 468 points. But will a PpRD average of 15.1 be enough to close the gap to safety?
McCormick are next, unsurprisingly given what we said about Glanbia. The bad news for them is that they spent 7 RDs more, but really couldn't make good use of them. 453 points in total, but with only 6 teams having a lower PpRD than their 11.9 the must be glad they already were out of immediate relegation danger before the month...
Rounding off the Top 5 are Colombini, just 8 points behind the Americans. Just like Zwift and Glanbia, they need every point in the fight for survival, but couldn't beat either of them both in terms of points and PpRD. With the latter still being Top 15 material though at 13.5.
DuckDuckGo are the 5th ToA team in the Top 6 - and the one with the lowest PpRD so far. Rather unsurprisingly, given their low ToA reward. They're still the final team above 400 points, and they still left behind 5 teams in terms of PpRD, so it wasn't a completely awful month despite the failure in the Americas.
In 7th place, we finally have our 2nd non-ToA team, which is Jura! Being top scorers in Britain and #3 in their PTHC races, they didn't have an outstanding, but still a very solid month, scoring 396 points. Yeah, as much as Areruya got on his own, how humiliating... But nonetheless, it's another big step towards promotion, underlined by the fact that they had the 5th best PpRD of the month, with 23.3.
But they still won't be able to close the gap to Los Pollos, given that their Mexicans are next - not the least thanks to Zmorka's weird Arenberg win. But their PTHC races were strong in general to be fair, and Higuita also rocked their sole C1 race - 378 points in just 8 RDs, a PpRD of 47.3 and - once again - the division's #1 in that respect! Just insane what they've been doing in the second half of the year...
They're followed by the team having the 2nd best PpRD in September - also doing 8 RDs, scoring just 20 points less with 358. These are the numbers of Lierse, getting some great PTHC classics results, as well as a surprising podium in Lugano! A PpRD of 44.8 is really strong - better than LPH's value in August, which was already considered to be pretty amazing...
In terms of points, we go down another 40 points - in terms of PpRD, the next team is almost 30 lower... UBS actually still had a pretty nice month (except for Britain maybe), totalling 318 points in 19 RDs. A 16.7 PpRD is nothing to scoff at, solid midfield as they were pretty much all season long. Maybe still a tad disappointing overall for a relegated team?
Just outside the Top 10, in 11th place, we have the next ToA participants with Kraftwerk. Their ToA wasn't exceptionally strong; even less so their other races. With 8.9, they even have a bottom 3 PpRD average - will this have a major impact on their final ranking?
Popo4Ever definitely also know this feeling of having disappointing months, they had more than one of them. September clearly isn't among these, though, especially the hilly C1 clash turned out to be fantastic for them! Overall, it's 270 points for them - and a PpRD of 27, which is #4 this month.
On the other hand, the next two teams will hate being this low in the monthly rankings, both being still in the promotion hunt. First are Fastned, who despite a decent Balkans campaign by Olivier only end up in 13th place. 253 points scored, losing quite a lot of points to Xero - they can't be happy with this.
Nor can Bralirwa, who are 14th. Stallaert did his job in Rheden, but that's about all that can be positively mentioned this month. 227 points for the Rwandans, who might be at risk of dropping out of the Top 5 at the very end of the year...
For Sony, rounding off the Top 15, this position probably puts an end to their promotion dreams as well. With 17.8, their PpRD isn't awful, though, with some other promotion hunters doing even worse. Benoot still was pretty shaky, doing well in Battenkill and Milano, but nowhere to be seen in Balkans... Can he fully wake up and carry his team into the Top 5?
In 16th place, we finally have the last of the ToA teams, Spark. They didn't race a lot outside of ToA (but more successfully, actually), and their 8.2 PpRD is 2nd lowest of the division... Lampre also can't be happy with their Sepbember scoring, getting 179 points out of 12 PTHC RDs (plus 2 in C1); a 12.8 PpRD surely won't bring them closer to the Top 5... Can Turgis/Meurisse do some more fireworks in the final month?
We then have two more promotion contenders - yep, pretty far down the list. For Indosat, though, this shouldn't be too much of an issue. They won the GC in Britain, and didn't race (and score) much more; 176 points in 9 RDs still is a PpRD of almost 20, and #7 in the league. Clearly keeping their promotion ambitions intact.
This could be somewhat different for Assa, who are right behind, in 19th place. Gesbert did a good job in his C1 races for sure - but he scored almost all of Assa's points, and 143 points in 11 RDs (or a PpRD of 13) isn't a lot. Their PpRD is even slightly lower than Fastned's and Bralirwa's...
We're actually inside a group of 5 teams separated by just 9 points now, with Zalgiris trailing Assa by a single point. The Lithuanians looked to be out of relegation danger in the last update - could they slip down again now? The situation is even worse for Trans, who already were in the relegation zone, and now got the division's lowest PpRD with just 7.2...
PpRD is looking slightly better for Try with 12.4, but the points aren't great, either. Just 136 points, missing quite some that Démare left on Lugano's roads. Genii once again are among the lowest scoring teams, despite a decent C1 campaign this month.
And at the very bottom, we have Sauber, being the only team below 100 points and even trailing 2nd last by more than 50. Not a good month by the Sammarinese...
In case you couldn't quite follow, here are all the numbers in a more compact overview:
Team
C1/C2
PTHC
Total
RD
PpRD
1
Zwift Pro Cycling
462
54
516
25
20.64
2
Xero Racing
104
393
497
14
35.50
3
Glanbia
440
28
468
31
15.10
4
McCormick Pro Cycling
442
11
453
38
11.92
5
Colombini Cycling
381
64
445
33
13.48
6
DuckDuckGo - Everesting
308
96
404
34
11.88
7
Jura GIANTS
233
163
396
17
23.29
8
Los Pollos Hermanos
46
332
378
8
47.25
9
Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam
70
288
358
8
44.75
10
Team UBS - Tissot
67
251
318
19
16.74
11
Kraftwerk Man Machine
276
18
294
33
8.91
12
Team Popo4Ever p/b Morshynska
171
99
270
10
27.00
13
Fastned
25
228
253
19
13.32
14
Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes
37
190
227
17
13.35
15
Sony - Force India
47
166
213
12
17.75
16
Spark-BNZ Racing
150
56
206
25
8.24
17
Lampre - Pinarello
0
179
179
14
12.79
18
Indosat Ooredoo
176
0
176
9
19.56
19
Assa Abloy
143
0
143
11
13.00
20
DK Žalgiris
56
86
142
13
10.92
21
Trans Looney Tunes
108
29
137
19
7.21
22
Tryg - Gobyk
56
80
136
11
12.36
23
Genii Hyundai N Cycling
117
17
134
11
12.18
24
Sauber Petronas Racing
0
81
81
8
10.13
Full Ranking
The one overview you've all been waiting for, of course!
Well, not for the top of the list, as that one's really boring. Los Pollos are very, very lonely at the top, currently totalling 4,250 points. They've already smashed Amaysim's winning total by almost 300 points, and will no doubt add a couple of points in their remaining 8 RDs. Sadly, the rankings archive threads currently don't load correctly, so I can't compare them to the pre-RD-cutback era, but I guess that even back then this would have been a rather impressive score... The title is a formality now, although Nemolito won't accept this with his modesty until the very final race
A formality, because the gap down to 2nd still is more than 800 points. 808 to be precise. But for Jura - newly promoted, just to recall - this is a huge success nonetheless. Even more so given that their current 3,642 points total is already more than ZARA got last year; the Spaniards were in the exact same situation, promoting just the year before. With a gap of 501 points to 3rd, and even more to 6th, it's pretty safe to say by now that we'll get back-to-back promotions for a third straight year!
Behind, things are looking less settled. Between 3rd and 9th, we have a gap of 382 points. And it's even just 230 between 4th and 8th - but we'll get there later. In 3rd place, we currently have Indosat, holding onto their spot, and totalling 3,141 points. Their 20.26 PpRD also is #3 in the division, so things are looking decent for them to say the least. They have most notably Tour of Japan left with Yates as their leader - a race that could make or break their fight for promotion. Looking at Yates' season so far, he should rather be on the "make" side; it currently really looks like Indosat are going up.
4th by the end of August, still 4th by the end of September - Assa were able to hold onto their spot as well. But by just 43 points, currently totalling 3,088! As we all know (due to bands selection), they won't be in Tour of Japan, which could be a decisive factor in what looks to be a very close race for the Top 5 spots! As their manager posted, they'll rely on Gesbert in Euskal and Emilia - meaning that they'll use only 162/163 RDs, which might be a factor, too. But don't write them off yet, even less so given that Gesbert was really strong in Britain!
5th place, and the final direct promotion spot, still belongs to Bralirwa! As said before, they trail Assa by a mere 43 points - and looking at who's behind them, holding onto the Top 5 might imply that they need to overtake someone... Meintjes definitely should have a great shot at doing so in Japan, with the punchy nature of the course suiting him - but with the TTs being a question mark... Other than that, it's GP Cycliste and Emilia for them - none of these are races where they're expected to score big. So it might come down to just Meintjes vs. Gesbert in the final month, to decide the fight between these two teams!
Whereas 5th place doesn't sound awful, a gap of just 119 points definitely isn't big. And even less so if it's Team Areruya - aka Xero - that follow behind! The Kiwis have gained another 3 spots this month, moving up from 9th to 6th - and with Areruya in the form of his life, it wouldn't even be overly surprising to see him winning all of GP Cycliste, Japan Cup and Emilia! On top of that, there's also Bennett in the Tour of Japan, and very likely Houle in Euskal (as I think they'll do that one and not Sun Tour) - is there a way to see Xero miss out on promotion by now? GP Lugano says yes, but if most races have a "normal" ending, probably not...
Which obviously is pretty bad news for Fastned, who dropped down another spot. 2,910 points by the end of September means 16 behind Xero, and 135 behind Bralirwa. Furthermore, Xero have 5 RDs more to spend - so Fastned may need to overtake both Bralirwa and Assa to not miss out on bouncing back! Olivier should do well in Japan - and then they'll have to bet on Vansevenant in GP Cycliste, Japan Cup and Emilia... Scoring bigger than Bralirwa in Tour of Japan might be key already!
Points-wise, Lierse in 8th place aren't that far off - just 52 points behind Fastned. And if Oomen was racing in Japan (which he isn't, as he's done with his RDs), they would even have a decent shot at promotion! Novak will probably have to pull off a great show for them now, and they'll need some more Lugano-like magic (e.g. by De Plus) in Japan Cup and Emilia. Not fully excluded, but not very likely.
For Sony in 9th place - dropping 2 spots this month - promotion seems even less likely. They're 99 points behind Lierse - or almost 300 behind Bralirwa. But Choi must be one of the biggest GC favourites in Japan, and Benoot has won in Emilia last year and also has the two hilly PTHC classics left - it would take a big effort to promote, but it isn't fully excluded yet, either.
But that's is about the teams more or less realistically fighting for promotion. It looks like 7 teams competing for 3 direct promotion spots, which is awesome from a neutral perspective, but definitely nerve-wrecking for those involved!
For Lampre, who round off the Top 10, it's surely disappointing that they're almost certainly out of it by the end of September already. But 460 points to 5th, with so many strong teams in between, is probably just too much. Sure, Meurisse/Turgis could (or even should) enjoy the hills that are left, but other teams have "bigger" leaders for Japan, which should be the highest scoring race of the month.
On the other hand, UBS and Popo4Ever acre pretty close behind; Lampre currently holds at 2,583 points, with UBS at 2,577 (-6) and P4E at 2,551 (-32). All of these three are almost on par in terms of RD usage - and only one of them is likely to end up inside the Top 10!
It's then an almost 300 points gap down to 13th, where we find McCormick, having gained 3 spots after the ToA. With 2,279 points, they shouldn't be afraid of relegation anymore (more than 400 points of a cushion), but moving up doesn't look too likely, either.
Next is another ToA competitor with DuckDuckGo, totalling 2,149 points. Being 300 points clear of relegation - and having 5 teams as a buffer in between - should make them feel pretty secure; even more so given Stannard's good shape. But they'll need their star puncheur to do well to hold onto that Top 15 spot!
The final Top 15 position is currently held by Sauber, trailing DuckDuckGo by just 15 points - and having 4 additional race days left. They lost their Top 15 spot in the very last race in 2022, and will try to be a tad more successful this year!
However, that could be difficult, given that Tryg are next - and according to their HQ, they do have Démare in Euskal, which he's pretty likely to win. But it's also a 97 points difference, and Sauber do have some depth to counter a star rider... On the other hand, Tryg are just 200 points clear of the relegation spots, so a couple of good results will indeed be required!
Kraftwerk are next, trailing Tryg by just 13 points. But they have played their main card now, with a pretty mediocre ToA outcome. Furthermore, Ranaweera has already ended his meh season - so who should score the big points for them now? Well, the team, obviously - and the team will have to do pretty well if they are to stay up!
Zalgiris are another 21 points further down - and just 168 points clear of relegation. However, Moscon should be a decent fit for the remaining races - at least he's done well in some of them. Scoring big in the Tour of Japan might not be easy, though...
And now, we really get into the danger zone with just 6 teams left! The final safe spot still belongs to Zwift - and by winning the month they obviously were able to extend their gap a little bit! They have a 111 points margin right now - but they just have 8 RDs left, and projections actually still see them going down...
So, this leaves us with just 5 teams, who currently occupy the relegating spots. First of them - with the most realistic hopes of still staying up - are Colombini. They had a pretty good month - and they needed it, as otherwise pretty much all hope would be lost. With 1,835, they trail Zwift by 111 points - but they have a 10 RD advantage. However, with Reis having concluded his season, it's a big question who could score for them in Japan? And how well can Kelderman do? On a good day, he wins a PTHC classic - and that's definitely what they must be hoping for!
Glanbia did achieve their main goal of winning the Tour of America. However, Eastman wasn't as dominant as they surely must have hoped in terms of stage wins, and the rest of the team didn't really help with the scoring, either. And so, Glanbia are left 421 points behind safety pre-October. Even with Eastman in California form, it's likely not enough to stay up - and who else should score 100+ points to save them?
The remaining teams have even less hopes - to be honest, no hopes at all. Trans are 547 points behind Zwift already, and they'd need some insane depth results especially in the hilly classics to even get that many points. Genii are another 120 points down. Spark have only just crossed the 1,000 points mark and are almost 900 points behind safety...
So it looks likely that we have 3 newly promoted teams going back down, alongside Trans. Plus either another newly promoted team - or we could even see back-to-back relegations. But having an established PCT relegating - Zalgiris or Kraftwerk - isn't impossible, either.
It looks however like there are less teams involved in the fight against relegation than in the battle for promotion - and in particular the latter will definitely great to follow in the coming month!
Opinions are always biased, but here are the full, fully impartial, numbers:
Even though the season isn't over yet, it's fully clear who the winner will be: Joseph Areruya. 396 points alone this month, 1,239 in total - this guy doesn't belong to PCT! And the "worst" is that he isn't even done racing; in his current form, he'll use the final 3 races to at least reach 1,500 points, and it could even be 200 more... Insanity!
On the other hand, the next couple of riders are already done with their 2023 racing. Eddie Dunbar used the Tour of Britain to gain one spot, taking "best of the rest" (at least for the time being). For a rider who's 22nd of the division in terms of OVL, that's quite a feat - even more so given that he's on the podium for the second year in a row! Hats off - and definitely another good candidate to move to the "right" division for him!
PCT's best sprinter? No, not Alberto Dainese! He was in the lead last month, but dropped to 4th after his final race of the season. Instead, Matti Manninen passed him by just 2 points, currently taking the final podium spot and almost certainly getting the title of "Best PCT Sprinter"! He's not the fastest on paper, but he's the most consistent, and that pays off! By the way, he scored 1,052 points in 2023, with Dunbar 24 ahead and Dainese 2 behind.
In 5th place, we already have the next Pollo, Marlen Zmorka! 948 points for him, definitely a fantastic season, even including a cobbled TT classic win!
30 points down is PCT's top cobbler, Joeri Stallaert. I'm not quite sure whether he still has some races left and could catch up with Zmorka, but more does seem pretty unlikely. Still, 918 points is a great score - if Bralirwa end up losing their Top 5 spots, it's definitely not his fault!
And it's clearly not Sam Oomen's fault that Lierse aren't on a Top 5 spot currently. He keeps dropping down the standings, being done with his 2023 season for a while now. But 902 points is a great score for him - and if we consider Areruya a beast and Dunbar a TTer, Ooomen actually is the best "classical" stage racer of the division.
But that might not be the final word, given that Adam Yates, currently 8th with 822 points, still has the Tour of Japan left to do. If he can dominate this race, he might even join teammate Dunbar on the podium - but we'll see.
And yet another stage racer in 9th place, with Brandon McNulty moving up from 24th to 9th place! He ends his first maxed season at 800 points - which however is unlikely to be sufficient for a Top 10 spot at the end of the year.
Currently occupying the final Top 10 spot is Dylan Groenewegen, who fell from 9th to 10th. He has 772 points to his name, but with some good climbers and puncheurs close behind, he's unlikely to hold onto that Top 10.
Among the riders who could still make the Top 10 - at most 200 points behind right now - are Olivier, Démare, Eastman, Choi or Meintjes.
The most notable improver this month besides McNulty (who gained 15 spots) must definitely be Eastman, jumping up from 39th to 15th - and potentially even higher next month. Reis (49 -> 28) gained 21 spots, which is also a nice improvement. Powless made an even bigger jump, improving from 65th to 30th. Inside the Top 50, we also have Benoot, moving up from 75th to 37th.
That's all for now, we're looking forward to the final rankings. Here are the current standings:
Thanks for the great update. I think we can really feel safe at this point so that is nice. Hopefully we can also hold on to the top 15 and achieve that goal.
Exciting end to the promotion season, Japan looks like it will be pivotal. Congrats to Nemo on putting together a dominant team, especially since I think his plan A of getting Gaviria fell apart pretty late in the bidding window.
In an exciting milestone for the team, McNulty has scored 910 points for us meaning he is now our all time leading scorer, 4 points ahead of Dan Holloway. It only took him 3 seasons to surpass Holloway's single season total. Kuss needed just 44 at the beginning of the year but has only scored 42 so far. Sepp still has Tour of Japan so if he can score 6 points (top 35) there he will take the prize at season end.
Finally a moment of self-pity, I am little bitter about how many points we conceded to Zwift in TOA. I think we got punished for being the team who really made the pace on the big mountain stages while they sat on, snatched a stage win and got rewarded in the teams and depth GC. I am sure you all feel deeply sorry for me. .
It's not looking great, but there's still hope, which is the terrible thing With what is left for them, Xero feels like a lock, and I'd say Indosat should be good with their gap on the rest and Yates in Japan. So as you said, it probably comes down to Gesbert's Euskal and Emilia vs. Meintjes' Japan vs. Olivier's Japan plus Vansevenants three classics. I believe Fastned also have the best chance at depth scoring with Vanhoucke and Cras in Japan, but 178 points to Assa Abloy is quite a bit. I'm honestly not sure who has the edge here, but if I were to bet, I think Assa is still the most likely to finish 5th. It would be a bit heartbreaking for us to have our third season in a row where we spend quite a long time in or near the promotion spots only to fade near the end, but if I'm being honest, it would also be pretty wild to promote with the team we have. So with a bit of distance, I'll probably ultimately be happy with the season no matter how it ends.
It's going to be a tough relegation battle probably until the final day, too. I'm not convinced Zalgiris is 100% safe yet, but Moscon should be good enough. And then, well, will Kelderman drag down the, what is it, third team in four years? (Sony, Los Pollos both relegated with him, right?) Ackermann and Jorgenson could score well in Japan, the former in Emilia as well, but that's not guaranteed at all. 111 points is a sizeable gap in that region of the table, but let Kelderman finish 2nd in Emilia (let's not kid ourselves about who will win that ), and that's down to 13 ...
Stellar write-up as always, Fab, thank you! Good luck to everyone in the final month!
Edited by cunego59 on 01-06-2024 07:59
Much better than I antecipated actually. Stannard isn't racing any more days this season, but hopefully we've built a big enough buffer in order to be able to stay afloat.
Nemo has pretty much sealed his victory with another remarkable season. The battle for the final promotion slots looks juicy though, looking forward to see who gets the biscuit.
Depressing material right here. Kelderman has 3 races left. We definitely need him to pull his shit together and pull is from this nightmare. Well, if we do have to relegate, we probably have a top level CT in our tanks with Reis or Kelderman so thats a plus . I firmly believe we have it in ourselves to stay up. I don’t wish relegation to anyone but yeah. Rather them than us in this case.
Whatever happens, safety or relegation. Benetton will be here. And we will fight to get to that top step!
The haul we got from the two C1 races we took part was great (I still believe that the perfect planning was by accident), but those alone were never going to be enough. We're now confirmed to go down a level even though we still have 10 RD to use in Japan and the Basque Country, but the season has been over for both Triple P and Sicard, Britain was the final race this season for Barta and Pavlic, which leaves us with the hilly duo of Nikiema and Velasco as our best hope for something in Euskal Bizikleta.
Next season pls we go back down this season but I’m excited to see how Scott and Yates do leading the team in the CT as we will definitely have to let go of our “leaders”. Plus do they really deserve to stay after this season ?
As stated this run has been one disappointment after another, never in my wildest dreams that I believe there would be a chance that we'd miss top 10 this season with the way it's been going, but blimey I have no idea now... .
The updates are greatly appreciated as always Fabi, a great read!
I hate this. I hate how we're still not eliminated thanks to some overachievements, but then Arenberg was somehow changed so Gamper massively underperformed. Theoretically it's still possible, but it will need 2 big results.
I will have to come back on my comment from last month that Fastned had promotion locked in. They're going to have to fight for that last spot with Assa Abloy and Bralirwa (I can't see Xero fail at this point).
At the bottom Colombini looks in trouble, I still think they can turn it around though.
Thanks for the update Fabianski, as ever a great read! Looking forward to a very interesting final month of the season, with a lot of very deserving teams in the middle of the promotion fight.
Well, not for the top of the list, as that one's really boring. Los Pollos are very, very lonely at the top, currently totalling 4,250 points. They've already smashed Amaysim's winning total by almost 300 points, and will no doubt add a couple of points in their remaining 8 RDs. Sadly, the rankings archive threads currently don't load correctly, so I can't compare them to the pre-RD-cutback era, but I guess that even back then this would have been a rather impressive score... The title is a formality now, although Nemolito won't accept this with his modesty until the very final race
I can make a comparison here in a fashion based on the analysis I did after 2021 using standard deviations from the mean to calculate comparisons across seasons. Adding in the 2022 season and the current and projected totals for LPH gives the following:
2016
Wiesenhof - Andritz
2.56
2018
Generali - EDF
2.45
2014
Quickstep
2.44
2023
Los Pollos Hermanos (Current)
2.41
2022
Amaysim Cervelo
2.39
2023
Los Pollos Hermanos (Projected)
2.32
There's a fairly good chance we're seeing a top 5 PCT season by that methodology, with 6th being on 2.29, so definitely a very impressive score! Amaysim's season was slightly more impressive using this method than the projected LPH score due to the closeness of the field overall last season despite them scoring fewer points.
We only had one good race out of the 4 classics but getting the third best score in Battenkill did save our quiet month.
Now that TOA is done we know where we stand against the teams that participated there and we should be able to hold onto our top 15 spot over the last part of our season, especially as we've banked on our depth and consistency all season long.
As Croatia says, these rankings have been some of the best content in the season, outstanding effort and quality Fabianski, can't thank you enough
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 nervous about the run-in. As I see it, Bralirwa is our main contender for the 5th promotion spot, and Fastned should not be disregarded. I had hoped to build a bigger lead in Lugano as I fear both teams could score really well in Tour of Japan, but unfortunately things didn't go our way in Switzerland.
Crossing my fingers Gesbert will continue his form from Britain in his final two remaining races, but I do have some concerns over the relatively easy profiles in Euskal Bizikleta, and he will also face much tougher competition in the season finale than in Britain. Will be interesting to see!
Thank you for another fantastic update, Fabianski! Thank you for acknowledging that quispe, who scored over 100 points in his record breaking season, is indeed legendary.
Great month for the team, although we didn't race that much. But four great one day races from all of the guys. Manninen and the Peruvians in Riga, Zepuntke and Ulloa in Battenkill, Higuita in Milano and of course good old zmorky sporky in Arenberg. Great to see two in the top-5 individually like two years ago (the same two, even), we'll see if they can stay in. Areruya is a monster that shouldn't be allowed in PCT
Hope we can hold on to that number one spot in October. Japan won't net us too many points, but hopefully Higuita can go out with another bang in Emmilia. Best of luck to all fighting for promotion and to survive relegation
Still only 111 points clear from the drop... 
.
we go back down this season but I’m excited to see how Scott and Yates do leading the team in the CT as we will definitely have to let go of our “leaders”. Plus do they really deserve to stay after this season ?
