Only 4-5 races were on the PT teams' schedules this month - but with another monument and another GT, two of them were really big ones! Furthermore, two PT classics, and one at PTHC level for those picking the corresponding band.
Plus, as a late "bonus" addition, the postponed Vuelta a Colombia, making it another (potential) race for the PT teams. Let's dive in!
First, let's check off the race that is more than overdue, being initially scheduled for March. The 6-day PTHC Vuelta a Colombia, a pretty climbing-heavy stage race with some opportunities for sprinters as well.
And even though he "only" won one stage - losing two more to the break - PHL clearly was the strongest rider in Colombia, winning the GC by over 3 minutes and taking the points jersey as well. That's 299 points for the Frenchman, who may not only regret missing out on stage points, but also his teammates not contributing that many points. Eenkhoorn barely made the Top 30, with Blums also getting a Top 50 GC, Gavars took 4th place on stage 2 - and Evonik ended up 4th in the team standings. All in all, 338 points for the boys in yellow.
Dombrowski was pretty disappointing in this race, surprisingly finishing only 3rd (with one stage podium along the way). The American scored 165 points and yet, Gazelle are the 2nd highest scoring team! This is because the Dutchmen didn't just have Dombrowski - they had both Warchol (13th) and Carboni (17th) in the Top 20, and Senni (24th) close behind as well! Karnulin, Bongiorno and Sosnitskiy ended up between 40th and 47th - and their worst rider, Peters, was 54th... No doubt about the team standings winners here, with Gazelle almost 6 minutes clear of the rest. A strong 293 points haul was their reward for a great team performance!
And no, we still don't get to Phinney's Fastned team, as the 2nd placed American was almost the team's exclusive scorer. And so, 4th placed Latour led his Polar squad to 3rd place in terms of team scoring. The Frenchman took two 3rd places on days 2 and 3, with sprinter Philipsen adding a 4th place the day after. Also boosting the team's score were Inkelaar (19th) and Mas (22nd) with their GC results - leading Polar to 2nd in the team standings as well. 241 points are noted for the Finns.
Next up was the lowest scoring race - the cobbled PTHC classic Cheshire Cycling Tour. Quite a lot of hills and not as many cobbles as in other races - a chance for the puncheurs?
Well, not really. Skills on the cobbles were still a must-have. But almost-race-winner Polanc - who suffered a puncture while being a minute up front, ending up only 7th - definitely is a very well-rounded rider.
And so is the actual race winner, Gerts. Probably the strongest hilly cobbler in the world, he used the steep finish to his advantage, sprinting to a great win! That's 170 points for the Dutch NC, and 172 for Rabobank thanks to the Top 50 finish by Van den Berg.
Per was very strong once again, but this time he just couldn't quite match Gerts. Still, he confirms his great form by taking another podium and 125 points. And for once, Meiler also did a decent job, finishing 20th, with Matsangos in 44th contributing the final 2 points to Carlsberg's 139.
Anderberg in 3rd place got one of his top results of the year to date, which was rewarded by 100 points. With Swift (24th) and Potts (28th) also in the Top 30, and Laporte and Klaris ending up in the Top 50, that's 118 points for Aker.
Next up was the 2nd part of the Ardennes triple, the PT-rated Flèche Wallonne. Pretty easy for most of the race, but with some nasty climbs in the final part of the course - just short enough or a tad too long for the pure puncheurs?
Looking at the results, you have to conclude that the strong climbers were definitely better off here - all of the podium finishers are 80+ in mountain stat! And obviously 80+ on the hills, too...
And the best of them - at least in this race, taking his 3rd consecutive win atop the Mur de Huy - was MAL! Even though the runner-up closed in on the final meters, there was never any serious doubt about the Colombian defending his crown and the 225 points linked to it! And Evonik had a pretty good team result, with Blums (25th), Konrad (33rd), Polanc (42nd) and Gavars (45th) all finishing inside the Top 50 as well - overall, that's 286 points for the men in yellow.
He may not be the first rider you think of when betting on an Ardennes podium - but Ardila definitely did do a great job here, almost seriously challenging MAL and ending up 2nd! His teammates did reasonably well, too, with Filutas (44th), Carretero Millan (47th) and Amezawa (50th) all taking a Top 50 finish as well, making it 211 points for MOL.
3rd in Amstel - and 3rd again in Flèche Wallonne for Areruya! Not yet the desired win, but another great result for the Rwandan. He tried to keep up with MAL, but simply couldn't for once - and paid for his efforts by being passed by Ardila. Still, that's 129 points for his 3rd place, and with the never tiring Tesfaye Heyi getting a Top 50 as well, we note 169 points for Xero.
Before the big Ardennes finale, we had a completely different kind of race - one for the sprinters! The PT classic Rund um Köln has some hills as well, but they are so far from the finish line that they're completely irrelevant. A route that does favour the pure sprinters over the rouleurs normally - and in 2024?
Well, it was the same. Althoug the podium was a bit surprising, with none of the top sprinters making it - no Gaviria, no Grosu, no Groenewegen, no Cullaigh.
Instead, the Flying Finn has returned to not only flying but winning, with Manninen showing an incredible finish! Barely in the Top 10 with 500m to go, he somehow found enough room to move up all the way to the top spot! That's 225 points for him, with Heyi (30th) and Horvat (42nd) adding some points as well, to make it 271 for Xero.
In 2nd place, another representative of the plethora of 81 sprinters, local hero Max Kanter. The Pumas even seemed to be in control of the pack, but eventualy lost it - their sprinter did everything right, though. And Steimle, Rutsch and Gross still ended up inside the Top 50, so that's 211 points for the Germans.
And then we saw Dainese finally delivering after a really poor season so far, claiming the final spot on the podium. But this wasn't enough for Assa to claim 3rd place in terms of team scoring - instead, Aker successfully played both the sprinter and rouleur cards, with Groenewegen in 5th and SKA in 9th both ending up in the Top 10! Even though no-one else scored more than minimum points, this was enough to bring their total up to 182, the 3rd highest value.
It's just the two big highlights of the month left. First, monument #4, the one for the puncheurs. Liège - Bastogne - Liège. Lots of hills, and the finish line after an uphill sprint in Ans.
One for the puncheurs? Forget it. Herklotz has hijacked yet another puncheur race, after Grand-Duché and Lombardia. And if Herklotz decides to win a classic, he wins a classic. So he won Liège - Bastogne - Liège; for the first time nota bene. Which is only his 2nd monument win - but you can be pretty sure the 3rd one will follow later in the year. Maybe he should try doing all 5 of them?
Just joking obviously, and what's just as obvious is that the Pumas have once again racked up big points - 280 for the win, 40 from the rest of the team, with Schinnagel being the only other Puma in the Top 50. 320 is still easily the best team result.
But it wasn't an easy win after all - and in particular one rising puncheur star gave Herklotz a big battle - with Valter ending up 2nd. Another huge result for the Hungarian in the Ardennes, after the Amstel win. 205 points for him, and just like in the Puma case, only one other rider got a Top 50 for Aker (Bagioli). That's 245 points for the Norwegians.
Gidich also had a good race, finishing 3rd - but it wasn't enough for King Power to be the 3rd best scoring team. Instead, it was 4th placed Formolo - a huge result for him, too - leading his team to the final "ranking points podium" spot. That's 245 points for the Italian. Evenepoel surprisingly finished in the Top 20 as well, with both Champoussin and Kron ending up in the Top 30 - all in all, that's 231 points for the Dutchmen!
So, let's do a quick summary before getting to the biggest race of the month - here are the scores for all of these races:
Pos
Team
Col
Che
FW
Kol
LBL
Total
1
Evonik - ELKO
338
71
286
74
108
877
2
Aker - MOT
187
118
90
182
245
822
3
Rabobank
144
172
155
55
231
757
4
Gazelle
293
107
145
40
162
747
5
Xero Racing
0
0
169
271
164
604
6
Team Puma - SAP
0
0
59
211
320
590
7
MOL Cycling Team
205
40
211
55
71
582
8
Fastned
219
48
106
45
103
521
9
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
118
139
67
130
60
514
10
King Power
0
0
148
102
212
462
11
Polar
241
14
56
89
45
445
12
Assa Abloy
0
0
68
173
120
361
13
cycleYorkshire
0
0
81
106
169
356
14
Moser - Sygic
56
0
45
148
84
333
15
Oxxo - Frisby
0
0
97
61
138
296
16
Lidl Cycling
0
0
80
75
134
289
17
Tinkoff Team - La Datcha
0
0
88
83
79
250
18
Cedevita
15
74
50
50
45
234
19
EA Vesuvio
0
0
82
52
89
223
20
Jura GIANTS
0
0
84
58
66
208
21
Grieg-Maersk
0
0
57
77
50
184
22
ZARA - Irizar
0
0
50
72
45
167
Unsurprisingly, Colombia and the Ardennes were good races for Evonik, who win this block with 877 points. Aker however did a huge job all over the month, getting pretty close with 822 points.
Rabobank and Gazelle should also be very happy with their scoring, totalling 757 and 747 points respectively - and then we get a gap of almost 150 points.
Xero, Puma, MOL lead the upper midfield, which includes Fastned and Carlsberg, too. King Power and Polar are next, and starting with Assa we definitely get to the lower midfield, or even the backmarkers.
At the tail end, Grieg and ZARA couldn't even score 200 points, which Jura just barely did. It might have been the most worrying block for Cedevita, however, who did all races and still weren't particularly successful.
But now, let's get to the big, fat points. At least for some teams. And they sure deserve it, making the Vuelta a really thrilling race until the very end - with a mere 14" deciding on the win! What a race it was!
And it's quite a surprise that the most dominant rider - at least in the mountains - didn't come out on top, neither in the GC nor individually.
However, calling Bernal a surprise winner would clearly not do his performance justice! The Colombian won two stages - and got a total of 9 podium spots, more than anyone else! He was rarely the strongest, but always right behind - and fully used the stages agains the clock to his advantage.
He took over the red jersey after stage 8, losing it - by one second - after stage 18, only to take it back in the MTT the day after. Congratulations on a massive effort and 1,264 points, including the reward for 2nd in points and 3rd in KoM!
His teammates weren't quite as impressive, with only Inkelaar and Eyob scoring notable points for 30th and 34th in GC. 5th in team standings also was worth a couple of points, so all in all Polar leave the Vuelta with a massive 1,422 points in their bags!
With 6 stage wins and two additional podium spots, Morton was the most successful rider in terms of stage results. And yet, it wasn't enough to win the race - which clearly was due to his relative weakness against the clock. Although you've got to admit that Bernal has just become a beast in those - and his training paid off.
So even having the GT of his life wasn't quite enough for the Aussie to win a GT - but he sure had a great time in Spain. 6 stage wins, just as many as Herklotz got in the Giro - with the only difference that Morton had a very serious rival here. The gap of 5 minutes to 3rd place shows just how far these two stood above the rest.
Morton also took 4th place in the points standings - proving again that Bernal was simply more consistent. At least, he did better in KoM, taking 2nd. In terms of points, it's 1,140 for Morton, meaning that he scored 1 point more than Bernal apart from the final GC points. Getting just a 20" gap on the final mountain stage would've basically swapped the two riders' scores - but it didn't.
In terms of depth scoring, cycleYorkshire are very similar to Polar as well. Polar got 158, cycleYorkshire 156 points from their other riders. In the Brits' case, they had Williams in 28th place, and Elissonde taking 50th in GC. Unlike the Finns, someone else also got a strong stage result, with Oliveira ending up 4th in the stage 8 ITT. Overall, that means 1,296 points for cycleYorkshire, still a very respectable score!
And a 3rd team also scored more than 1,000 points - 1,004 to be precise. No, it's not Gazelle with Dombrowski. No, it's not Gaviria's Moser. It's Tinkoff!
What a really, really stupid start to the race it was for Sivakov - simply losing 2'20" on the first day, an almost pan-flat stage. Considering that he ended up 1'44" behind the GC podium, he paid quite some price for this unawareness in the end.
Still, the remainder of the race was strong. Not just by him, but in particular for Tinkoff's other leader as well. Samolenkov actually took 3rd place on said stage 1, adding a 2nd and two 3rd places in week 1. He had some more Top 5 results, including 3rd place on the final stage, ending up 3rd in points and scoring 262 ranking points.
Sivakov obviously still was the team's highest scorer thanks to 4th place in GC. He got a 2nd and two 3rd places as his best stage results, and the fact that Tinkoff didn't get a single stage win makes their scoring even more impressive. In fact, they were the team with the highest number of Top 5 stage results - totalling 13 of them, 3 more than Bernal (and Polar)!
In the end, Sivakov ended up with 444 points, adding up to 706 with Samolenkov. So, where are the other 298 points hidden? Well, in the depth. Tinkoff won the team standings - giving a hint that there must have been some more decent GC results. Indeed. 20th, 24th and 27th by Mamykin, Foliforov and Arslanov, scoring almost 200 points combined. Add Trakhov, co-leading KoM standings for 4 days and scoring above 50 points too - and in the end, we get to these 1,004 points. Good job!
The next two teams missed out on these 1,000 points - but with a gap of more than 300 points to the next teams, they can still look back at a pretty successful Vuelta!
This is definitely the case for Gaviria, who matched Morton's 6 stage wins - but getting "only" one additional podium, 2nd place on the final day, he was just a tad less dominant. Obviously not in the points standings, though, which he absolutely smashed thanks to the sprinter-friendly points scale - winning 325 vs. 185 against Bernal.
And whereas a sprinter wearing the GC leader jersey for 3 days sometimes happens at the start of the race, it is a very, very rare achievement to get the sprinter jersey on day 1 - and keep it right until the end! The only case where someone else actually wore it was because Gaviria was leading the GC, from days 1 to 3. But he was in the lead of the points standings every single day of the race - hats off!
Gaviria ended up being the 3rd highest individual scorer, totalling 808 points. With 106 points, his teammates weren't exactly great contributors, though. Stocek was the best of them, thanks to co-leading the KoM for two days, and sitting in the Top 3 in KoM and U25 for a couple of days, scoring 31 points in total. Otherwise, Otruba and Cerny with their Top 100 GC results were the best scorers, making it a really bad depth score. But who needs depth if you have Gaviria, leading you to 914 points?
Just 8 points behind are Gazelle - despite Dombrowski as their highest scorer getting 110 points less than Gaviria.
The American likely was hoping for more than 3rd place pre-race - but he simply had to recognize the superiority of Morton overall, and of Bernal against the clock and in the later stages of the race.
Still, with a stage win and 6 more podium spots, he didn't have a bad race at all. But 5th in points and 6th in KoM confirm that he was slightly off the very best of the race, and hence scoring about 450 points less than Morton isn't just due to the lower GC result - where the difference between 2nd and 3rd is 60 points - but mostly due to stage results and intermediate classification standings.
At least, Gazelle once again got some decent depth - Gazelle doing Gazelle things - with Vervaeke ending up 23rd in GC and Bongiorno, Pavlic and Karnulin all getting a Top 40 as well. Two more in the Top 100, and we end up with 906 points for Gazelle - another big GT result for them!
As said before, there's a pretty big gap behind the Top 5, with everyone else scoring less than 600 points. Next up is a team whose GC rider scored 6 Top 5 stage results - yet not a single podium, always finishing 4th or 5th (and sometimes 6th or 7th). We're obviously talking about Galta, who couldn't quite match the Top 4, but was clearly the best of the rest, taking 5th place in GC in the end. He scored a very solid 346 points.
Carlsberg will have rather mixed feelings about Galta's teammates. Gregaard and Eg surely did a good job, finishing 19th and 26th respectively in the GC, adding a good chunk of points. However, their sprinter, definitely among the better ones on paper, was disappointing. Sure, AKA did get the team's sole stage podium of the race, taking 3rd place on day 2 - but it was his only Top 5 result in the entire race, resulting in a disappointing 40 points.
But with 3 more riders in the Top 100, Carlsberg got some more good depth, rounded off by a great 2nd place in team standings, with the team scoring 587 points overall.
Above 500 points as well, we might have the first rather surprising name - Evonik! Rather surprising, because they didn't have a world-class rider in this race - just to relate, their best scorer got about 1/3 of Galta's points, and still Evonik end up only 51 points behind Carlsberg.
So, how was this possible? Well, with depth obviously. 13, 14, 16 - these aren't lottery numbers, but the GC positions of their Top 3 riders! Foss, Eenkhoorn and Blums are the corresponding names, and thanks to Foss sitting in 3rd place for several days, that's more than 300 points combined already.
Then we have Plapp, 38th in GC and 2nd in U25 - a place he also held for most of the race. And when talking U25, we can't get past Ansons, who led the standings for several days, too, scoring close to 50 points as well. Just like Dversnes and Sureda, who got the team's two stage podiums. And all of this indeed adds up to 536 points. Pretty amazing.
8th ranked Aker might not be completely happy with their outcome, despite the rather good amount of points. Which is mostly thanks to Novak, claiming the KoM win with an epic ride on stage 20 (after having led the standings for some days early in the race). He also got a stage podium and 12th in GC, not a bad race at all by him given his lack of TT skills.
Aker will however be less happy with their sprinter's performance, though. Sure, Groenewegen did take 3 stage podiums, but with his skillset he should have scored more than 125 points - he was only the 6th highest scoring sprinter, which isn't enough for a Top 3 favourite.
Otherwise, Aker only had Donovan and Harper in the Top 100, with the former ending up 5th in U25. So besides their leaders, they didn't score much - 481 points is still easily enough for the Top 10 here.
Next up are King Power. First and foremost, they could celebrate the U25 win by Chaiyasombat, definitely a big achievement - moreover with a 10 minutes advantage over Plapp. The Thai ended up 25th in GC.
GC-wise, they also had Rubio in 36th, plus three more in the Top 100. And they had the 4th highest scoring sprinter in the race, which can definitely be seen as a surprise, as Hsu was able to beat quite some stronger sprinters here. Starting the race with a 2nd place was great, though, and he added another podium finish in the 1st week.
And then King Power also had a great stage win by "flagship" rider Mano, edging out Bernal in the ITT! All of this makes it 431 points for the Thai in 9th place.
And now, we have 4 teams within just 2 points! Going first, and hence claiming the final Top 10 spot, are ZARA. Choi had another very solid GT, ending up in 7th place (after taking 6th in the Giro). No stage podium for him, but plenty of solid results and 242 points.
Unlike Choi, Thijssen didn't have the same great race as in Italy, but still got his stage podium. Otherwise, there were Soler and Rodriguez in the Top 50, and the team ended up 8th in the team standings to claim another point - 395 in total.
At 394 points, we have two teams. And both of them shouldn't be too unhappy with their outcome. Fastned had to fear the worst after Wellens' Giro letdown, but he was very solid in Spain to end up 6th in GC. 289 points scored by him.
Schelling also contributed some decent points with his 31st place, whereas Denz missed out on the Top 50 by one spot and 28". And so, they end up behind ZARA despite Wellens scoring clearly better than Choi.
Also with 394 points, we get Lidl. Their GC leader Faglum Karlsson was their top scorer as expected, ending up 11th in GC, but Burke added a great 17th place to make it a pretty nice GC score for the Germans. And let's not forget about Crncevic in 48th place.
But their race highlight, without any doubt, was Gee's breakaway win on stage 13 - definitely not an unlucky number for them! Dekker also did reasonably well in the sprints, getting a 5th place as his best result.
And the 4th team in this bunch is Oxxo - who will most likely not be overly happy with this. Not because of Aular, who pretty much did what could be expected from him, finishing 8th in GC.
However, greater things were expected from Halvorsen. He did get his stage win - completing the GT stage win triple for Oxxo/LPH - but it was his only podium of the race. Making him just the 8th best scoring sprinter of the race, even behind his predecessor Manninen.
And Oxxo didn't have huge depth, either, with just Osorio making the Top 50 as well. At least they got a nice breakaway result with Aguilar Mendez taking a 5th place, but all in all it's probably not the score they were looking for.
We're definitely into the lower midfield now, as we get to another team that probably is a tad disappointed with their main sprinter. At least they got two sprint wins from two different riders, though.
That must obviously be Assa Abloy, where Prasad surprisingly did such a strong leadout for Dainese on stage 2 that he ran away with the win - ahead of his teammate. This 1-2 surely must be the moment of the race for the team.
Dainese finally got his win, too, being the first rider to cross the last finish line of the race. Only one further stage podium must be below his expectations as well - but he still was the 3rd highest scoring sprinter behind Gaviria and Samolenkov, which still isn't all that bad.
GC-wise, only O'Connor (barely) made the Top 50, so there's not much scoring apart from the two sprinters. It's still enough for 348 points - without any kind of GC rider, that's still an OK-ish result.
The final Top 15 spot is taken by MOL. And personally, I'll admit that I'm surprised to see Amezawa in the GC Top 10 in the end, being one of the weakest TTers among the climbers. He made up for it with being consistent in most stages (apart from the really weird S16), ending up in 9th place.
With Stancu in 32nd and Carretero Millan in 45th place, MOL had some decent depth as well - adding 4 more riders in the Top 80. No huge scores, but still 316 points in total. They'll be hoping for 3x as much in Le Tour probably.
Next up are the Pumas. And let's say that given their lineup, ending up 16th is actually a decent outcome. None of Kämna, Zimmermann or Zwiehoff are good enough stage racers (yet) to fight for a Top 10, and even though one of them should probably have made the Top 20, positions 29, 33 and 42 for the trio aren't all that bad.
But what made them climb higher than just the GC results was their sprinter. No, not Kanter, not even Steimle. Gross was their sprinter, and he really lived up to his name, showing some great sprints. A podium plus three more Top 5 finishes clearly are more than what could be expected from him - and he even ended up being the 7th best sprinter, beating Halvorsen, Rajovic, Thijssen and others!
Apart from Gross, Kämna and Zegklis got the highest stage results with a 6th and 7th place respectively - and the team ending up with 269 points. Almost 1,500 less than in the Giro, even though this comparison obviously isn't fair.
There was one single team who didn't get any Top 5 stage result. Despite having a sprinter who scored two wins and another podium in his previous GT, ending up 2nd in points in last year's Giro.
Yes, I'm talking about Cees Bol and his Jura team. In fact, Bol was the lowest scoring of all sprinters in this Vuelta, continuing his absolutely awful season. 20 points scored by him, you imagine how "happy" his manager is.
Fortunately, the Swiss have an incredibly reliable stage racer to partly make up for his teammates' failures. Stüssi ended up 10th in GC, despite an inexplicable meltdown on stage 16 (25th place, losing more than 9 minutes). That's 3 GC Top 10s in a row, not bad for a 79 climber. Chiarello vibes?
Otherwise, absolutely nothing to talk about. Setiawa, Berthet and Rohendi made the Top 100, that's all. 263 points, no good news after doing already an awful job in the "other races" section...
Vesuvio must still be wondering what on earth happened to Van der Lijke in this race. A nice, punchy sprinter, definitely not worse than some sprinters scoring 100+ points in this race - but all he got was a handful lower Top 10 spots. Still beating Bol by 6 points, though, but no other sprinter did as bad as he did.
GC-wise, Vesuvio couldn't expect a great race anyway after Godoy's departure. Kirsch ending up 22nd is still below expectations - and he was the only Top 50 rider of his team.
Vesuvio at least got some stage podiums for their morale, with Tanfield taking 3rd in the ITT stage, and Pelikan ending up 3rd after the stage 13 breakaway. 228 points for the Luxembourgers, not a good month for them, either.
Another manager who's unhappy with his sprinter - despite him being the 5th highest scoring sprinter, which sounds credible - is Xero's team boss. He sent Manninen to Spain to get a lot of success - and while Manninen did get some good results, the sprints were just too "random" behind Gaviria for anyone to score really well.
Mighty Matti still got his stage win, plus another podium, scoring 126 points in the end. More than Groenewegen or Halvorsen, but less than Hsu or Samolenkov. And the bad news for Xero is that Manninen's points are pretty much the only ones they got.
Three riders made the Top 100, getting at least some slightly higher points than the minimum ones - but in the end it's still just 210.
The final 3 teams even ended up below 200 points. Grieg got closest, scoring 194, most of them scored by Vingegaard with his 15th place in GC. Nesset made the Top 50 as well, whereas Hulgaard contributed the team's best stage result, 4th place on day 13.
Cedevita ended up another 8 points down, scoring 186. Buitrago was really disappointing - not doing any of the expected attacks, and only just making the Top 50 with his 49th place (but still 3rd in U25, though!). Instead, Rajovic was their best scorer, getting a 2nd place and another Top 5 result and scoring 70 points in total.
Sheehan got some intermediate KoM standings points, but otherwise it was a poor race by the Slovenians.
So, one team is left. The team that managed to score less than 100 points in one GT last year. It wasn't quite as bad in this year's Vuelta, but almost. 116 points. That's Rabobank's score.
And that's absolutely ridiculous given that Van Poppel alone could have scored as many points or even more. Instead, he just scored two minor Top 5 stage results and 41 points. And he was still the team's top scorer by far - two of his teammates got a Top 100 GC, and that's pretty much it. 116 points.
Last but not least, let's mention the wildcard teams. They didn't do overly well, definitely not competing at the same level as Sony in the Giro. But they still got some decent results.
Lotto-Caloi narrowly missed out on a stage win by Wouters on day 10, almost crashing Oxxo's party. Wouters also got some more nice stage results, scoring a respectable 82 points (4x as many as Bol, just saying ^^).
GC-wise, Quintana definitely has lost a lot of his skills, ending up only 21st, probably mostly due to his pretty bad physical condition. All in all, that's 241 points, which makes them the 18th best team.
Tryg surely had some pretty high expectations, which is obvious when you can send Démare to a race. But just like lots of other sprinters, he simply didn't perform as well as expected, getting repeatedly beaten by the likes of Wouters, Gross, Dekker, Thijssen...
Démare still got an early stage podium, taking 3rd on day 3 - but this already was his race highlight. Schlegel actually scored better than him, ending up 18th in GC. There wasn't much else going on for them, making a grand total of 204 points or 21st place.
A ton of text and no table - as you can find this one in the Vuelta Discussion thread, alongside all the individual scores.
So let's now move on to the monthly rankings. And as you'd expect after their great Vuelta success, Polar top the May standings! A midtable outcome in the "other" races was enough to win the "month+", as in their case it's definitely Colombia that brought them to the top! 1,867 points in total, scored in 35 days of racing, resulting in a great 53 PpRD average. Which is "only" #2 though.
The next two teams got rather close given that they didn't win a GT - with Gazelle taking 2nd again (just like last month), this time by one single, tiny point! Colombia brought them a ton of points, too, and with Dombrowski's 3rd place in the Vuelta, they scored 1,653 points in total.
Which, as we said, is exactly one point more than cycleYorkshire. And despite missing out on the Vuelta win, by these measly 14 seconds, they actually were the top team of the month in terms of PpRD, reaching an average of 61! They aren't in PTHC band 3 with Colombia and Cheshire and therefore spent 8 RD less than their competitors - and still lost less points than the others scored in Colombia alone.
We then have a gap of almost 250 points - but this means that Evonik in 4th place still got a very respectable score, 1,413 points to be precise. Which is 110 points more than Aker in 5th, who scored pretty similarly to Evonik in both parts, just 55 points less in each of them.
Tinkoff in 6th actually almost matched Gazelle's PpRD, having the 4th highest average, and a still pretty nice score of 1,254 points. They're 7 points ahead of Moser, who due to being in band 3 have a far lower PpRD though.
Carlsberg are another roughly 150 points down, but still scoring 1,101 points - the final team above 1,000. Because behind them we have to go down almost 200 points until we get to Fastned with 915. MOL and King Power were fighting for the final Top 10 spot, with the former getting the better end by 5 points, 898 vs. 893.
Rabobank are just another 20 points down, and Puma are 14 points further behind - it's just 66 points between 9th and 13th. So the 45 points gap behind the Germans, down to Xero, is almost another step in this region of the table.
However, it's then another 100 points to the final Top 15 team, which is Assa - let's still call this the lower midtable, though. Because with Oxxo and Lidl, we have two more teams just 20 and 26 points respectively behind - before getting another 100+ points gap to the bottom 5.
Of these remaining teams, ZARA still were almost 100 points better than the others, but still bottom 5. Jura, one of the surprise teams so far, seem to have hit reality by now, ending up with just 471 points, in 19th place.
EA were even worse off, scoring another 20 points less. But it's Cedevita in 21st place who had the worst month of all teams, scoring 420 points in 35 RDs - a PpRD of 12 is the lowest of the division.
At least the Slovenians could avoid the red lantern, which goes to Grieg this month, scoring just 378 points. They'll be looking for Herbiers and the PTHC races in July/August...
Enough words, here are the numbers:
Pos
Team
w/o Vuelta
Vuelta
Total
RD
PpRD
1
Polar
445
1422
1867
35
53.34
2
Gazelle
747
906
1653
35
47.23
3
cycleYorkshire
356
1296
1652
27
61.19
4
Evonik - ELKO
877
536
1413
35
40.37
5
Aker - MOT
822
481
1303
35
37.23
6
Tinkoff Team - La Datcha
250
1004
1254
27
46.44
7
Moser - Sygic
333
914
1247
35
35.63
8
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
514
587
1101
35
31.46
9
Fastned
521
394
915
35
26.14
10
MOL Cycling Team
582
316
898
35
25.66
11
King Power
462
431
893
27
33.07
12
Rabobank
757
116
873
35
24.94
13
Team Puma - SAP
590
269
859
27
31.81
14
Xero Racing
604
210
814
27
30.15
15
Assa Abloy
361
348
709
27
26.26
16
Oxxo - Frisby
296
393
689
27
25.52
17
Lidl Cycling
289
394
683
27
25.30
18
ZARA - Irizar
167
395
562
27
20.81
19
Jura GIANTS
208
263
471
27
17.44
20
EA Vesuvio
223
228
451
27
16.70
21
Cedevita
234
186
420
35
12.00
22
Grieg-Maersk
184
194
378
27
14.00
Full Ranking
It feels like the Vuelta had a bigger impact on the rankings than the Giro, with some really big moves - in both directions.
There wasn't any movement at all at the top, though, with Gazelle not only easily holding onto their lead - now totalling 5,560 points - but even extending it from just over 200 points to more than 900! They also slightly increased their PpRD, by about 0.35 points - and despite having spent more RDs than their direct chasers, they're still projected to finish more than 1,000 points ahead of the rest!
Best of the rest currently are... Polar! They made an insane jump from 16th all the way up to 2nd place, now also having the 2nd best PpRD (by almost nothing, though). They may have played their big GT card now, but so have Gazelle - and Polar still have a Latour GT left. Gazelle looks to be the more well-rounded team, though - can the Finns still close the gap?
Or will someone else stay in the title race? King Power hold onto their 3rd place - by one point - totalling 4,548 points, trailing Polar by 83 points. And having a McNulty TdF left, plus a lot more potentially great scoring opportunities. They're currently projected to end up 2 (two!) points behind Polar in the end, so this should be a close race.
And what about the Pumas? They dropped from 2nd to 4th - by one point, as mentioned before - but their PpRD and the Herklotz race days already used don't really speak in their favour. We'll see, never underestimate the Germans!
For the final Top 5 spot, it was close once again - and again, one point separates two teams. Carlsberg have moved up from 8th to 5th, with a score of 4,421. But Galta and Carthy both had their GTs - what's left for Le Tour? And how well will they do in other races?
What is sure is that cycleYorkshire are pretty much on fire - as indicated by their jump from 15th to 6th. With 4,420 points, they're actually still just 211 points behind 2nd place, and with the 4th highest PpRD (just 0.06 behind Polar's 2nd highest value), a lot seems to be possible - the projected 13 points gap to 2nd place by the end of the season means it's definitely a wide open race!
However, the gaps continue to be rather small, with Tinkoff following barely 60 points behind, Aker another 30 points down, and Fastned 20 more points off. Even Xero in 10th place are less than 300 points behind the podium, despite a painful drop from 6th to 10th! These teams are between 4,362 and 4,251 points, so one race and the order can be completely reshuffled. Or am I wrong, Mr. Areruya?
Jura had a great season so far, but this month was awful for them, dropping 7 spots from 4th to 11th. Which is still much higher than everyone predicted, though. There's an almost 200 points gap to the Top 10, which is more than between any two other teams so far except for Gazelle standing a league above all others.
Right behind are Rabobank, totalling roughly 50 points less. And then we have Evonik who have started their catch-up race, and will undoubtedly continue it in the next two months at least. They're about 650 points behind the podium right now - but just look at what Polar did if you think that's too much to overcome.
May's red lantern, Grieg, are the team taking the worst drop down the rankings, from 5th all the way down to 14th. Can they stop this trend? They'll have to, and rather quickly, otherwise they might still end up very close to the danger zone! Even though their 3,884 points mean a 600 points gap to the bottom 5... But unlike quite some teams behind them, they can't bet on a strong TdF result.
Nor can Oxxo, the final Top 15 team. But they should have the depth across all departments (bar the cobbles) to have a decent scoring potential everywhere. They'll "just" have to turn the potential into actual points.
Vesuvio dropped 7 spots this month, just like Jura. With 3,711 points, they just keep in touch with the lower midfield, and they'll be desperately looking forward to Herbiers, Slovenia, Deutschland, hoping for Wirtgen to consistently make work his magic. From here, it's just 432 points down to the relegation zone - sounds like quite a lot, but you never know...
The final team above the red line are Cedevita, after a really bad month. They're just 60 points clear of the bottom 5, and they'll have quite some work left to do to somehow stay ahead.
Because 60 points down, we have MOL. So the fight between these two teams could very well come down to Haig vs. Pogacar at Le Tour - even though there obviously are still plenty of other races left.
And don't forget about Moser, currently 250 points behind MOL - Kudus will definitely join the fun in France as well, and Gaviria definitely brought them back within reach of safety thanks to his Vuelta show.
Things aren't looking quite as bright for Assa, who have played most of their top cards already - Dainese at the Vuelta, Wisniowski on the cobbles. Still some races left for their leaders, and Gesbert might also eventually step up - but remember that the gap to the next team that doesn't have a Top 5 TdF contender is 700 points already...
ZARA are even another 200 points down, more than 500 points behind safety. They still have quite some Shikai races left - including the Tour obviously - but I feel like the Tour startlist will be so stacked that a really outstanding result could be difficult to achieve.
For Lidl, it's an even worse situation. They dropped to last place now, 26 points behind ZARA - and who should do a miracle for them? De Bie has been disappointing again, and so has Kemboi - and who else could be competitive at the top level? It really doesn't look great for them, let's be honest...
But make up your own mind by looking at the numbers:
Silvio Herklotz didn't actually need a monument win to stay at the top. He still got one, winning LBL for the first time. 2,142 points is his current score - anyone betting against him exceeding last year's winning 2,362 already next month in Scandinavia?
Then we get some "big jumpers". Egan Bernal has moved up from 49th to 2nd, totalling 1,592 points, and Lachlan Morton even jumped up from 77th to 4th, currently holding at 1,365 points. In between, Fernando Gaviria also gained 26 spots, from 29th to 3rd, with 1,422 points.
Alexey Lutsenko lost one spot and now has 1,225 points - one more than Mads Pedersen in 6th place. Thomas Pidcock fell down 5 places, having only one low-scoring race this month - but with 1,209 points is still just 16 points off the Top 5.
Mauri Vansevenant lost 3 places after a rather lackluster Ardennes Triple, whereas David Per dropped two spots despite having a pretty decent month.
Joe Dombrowski is our new #10, moving up from 95th to 10th, with 1,068 points. Yates is the final rider above 1,000 points, just dropping out of the Top 10. Which is true as well for Wirtgen, Würtz and Wisniowski, who just didn't find races to their liking this month.
The most notable improvers actually all made it into the Top 10, but we can still mention MAL (50th -> 29th) and Manninen (65th -> 30th). And I'm sure you'll spot your own favourites.
Certainly not as bad as I may have feared, despite underperforming. And, as the write-up hints at, with Scandinavia points still to come it's actually even better than it looks here. A long dry spell coming up until ToNE and the autumn hills calendar, but my mood has somehow brightened despite my Vuelta misery
Thanks as always for the mega write-up, Fabianski, such an awesome feature of the calendar now. Some big shake-ups as always after a GT, particularly what Polar did. Gazelle though, wow!
Spoiler
Was very happy for Evonik in Java but it's a tough blow coming next month in the Areruya vs MAL fight
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
Fabianski wrote:
For the final Top 5 spot, it was close once again - and again, one point separates two teams. Carlsberg have moved up from 8th to 5th, with a score of 4,421. But Galta and Carthy both had their GTs - what's left for Le Tour? And how well will they do in other races?[/table]
I've got bad news for everyone. Carthy will be in France too.
Really cannot believe we're in the top 5 this late in the season. Obviously part of that is pure luck from Carthy's breakaway, but Galta has also held firm with a great Vuelta top 5. The depth has been up and down a bit to be sure, and Aranburu continues to frustrate me beyond expectations (more on that next update I guess), but overall, I cannot be happier with how things have gone. Making the decision to fully invest in GC a few years ago basically turned my team direction around, and going with the Carthy-Galta tandem this year has similarly carried me. Oh, and Per! Casual 1000 point scorer once again.
You've really outdone yourself with this update Fabianski. It was an insane read (in a good way!). I love that you give some attention to every team. Hope you're feeling better!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Pretty good Vuelta and a bunch of favorable races make for a strong Evonik month that could have been even better if e.g. punctures wouldnt happen or if we just had that tiny bit of extra race luck in some of the other races.
Still, we are starting to run out of races now as one of the teams with fewest RDs left and the gap to the top is still huge - even with a GT still remaining.
That's a super tight ranking except for Gazelle! Massive consolidation month for them.
For us, a solid month, eventhough our Vuelta points wise was much, much less than hoped and expected for. Another 400 points there, which I genuinly believed in prerace, and we would sit 2nd in the overall ranking. That says everything about how close it is, only 750 points separating 2nd and 14th. That makes the Vuelta a big opportunity missed for us, which I suspect we will regret when the season comes to a close. Especially after the Tour, where our lineup doesn't make for a big points
Thank you a lot for the massive update, Fabianski! Really enjoyed the read, that was fantastic
It's always a pleasure to read your ranking updates, Fabianski! Thanks!
It's nice to see that we are as high up as third currently. It makes me wonder what could be if we had an actually good season. At least Mano now delivered our first victory with his Vuelta stage win.
Gazelle seems to have a comfortable lead already and I doubt anyone will be able to challenge them much for the title anymore. Clearly a testament to DDs great team and season planning around his two top scorers Lutsenko and Dombrowski.
Obviously a monster month for us this month with the Vuelta coming in clutch for us this year! Morton fell short in winning a GT for us but the points come in handy considering we were sitting uncomfortably above the relegation zone. Sadly, our upturn in form isn't likely to last much longer as we don't have anyone to send to the Tour which will hurt our standing greatly. Either way we put ourselves in a better position to get a top 10 at the end of season but I wouldn't call us favourites in achieving that goal
John St Ledger in Team Bunzl-Centrica and Team U25
The classics really making up for our Vuelta to keep us in a good position. But I fear the June update won't be so kind to us as our form has significantly dropped this month.
We will need a good Tour de France to secure ourselves a calm end of season.
Love how our depth scoring compensated for Dombrowski underperforming slightly.
We have a nice gap now, but we need to keep going to stay ahead of teams like Polar and King Power. If we falter they definitely have the quality to catch up.
The bad Giro and other unlucky races keep hurting us, as we keep sliding down the rankings. Vuelta obviously also not a lot of fun with Halvorsen not caring in most sprints. A team that should have been able to stay in PT rather comfortably will now fight until the very end and is also dependent on other team's succeses on whether we're able to stay in or not. PCM AI and (bad) luck sucks
Tough update for us, but probably our worst part of the season as well. Now we'll just have to get through the Tour without dropping too far down, and then it should be some better months.
The month of two of our biggest classics did not disappoint.
Clearly it was an oversight to not have Herklotz do LBL more often, but better late than never! That should mean he has now won all the races he can win at least once, anything beyond this is just gonna be padding the stats.
Our home race in Cologne also went well with P2 for Kanter, who nearly even made it two out of two wins.
These two results more than made up for the lack of points scoring elsewhere, being absent from two other classics and having an actually great Vuelta for our lineup, but obviously nothing to write home about.
