Decision time! Only three races are left this month for the PT teams - and just two thereof are covered in this mini-update, with the all-deciding Giro di Lombardia yet to come. The two other races were hilly PTHC classics - with PT teams doing between zero and two of them.
First up was the GP Cycliste de Montréal, which nowadays is taking turns with the GP Cycliste de Québec. Whereas the pure puncheurs clearly prefer Québec, Montréal usually is one for the better sprinters among them.
Well, this wasn't really the case this year, with e.g. Yates only taking 7th place. Instead, it was Mohoric who managed to get away in a late move, together with PCT rider Stannard - who won the race. Still, 2nd place was Mohorics best result of the year, worth 125 points! Ries got a Top 50 finish as well, making it 127 points for EA Vesuvio.
Vansevenant is a decent sprinter, though, and this surely helped him to claim the final spot on the podium. 3rd place and 100 points for the Belgian and his Dutch team Fastned, thereby fending off the Luxembourgers in the fight for 11th place - for now at least.
Relegation is inevitable for them by now, but Assa still are having a pretty good late season, with Wisniowski winning in Rheden - and Gesbert getting a good 5th place here in Canada. 80 points for the French puncheur, plus 2 for the Polish cobbler thanks to his 50th place - 82 points for Assa Abloy.
The two teams left in the title fight didn't participate here - and in the fight for the final podium spot, neither Evonik nor King Power had a good race, making Polar look like one of the race winners despite not participating.
And of the teams in the relegation fight, only Rabobank were in Canada - but they didn't make a decisive step out of the danger zone, scoring just 34 points.
The second PTHC classic was the Japan Cup. A circuit with a pretty tough climb, usually favouring the better climbers among the puncheurs.
Well, not this year. The race was won by a PCT rider who's neither a great climber - nor a great puncheur, in fact, but definitely a well-rounded rider. 2nd place also went to PCT - and so Champoussin was the best PT finisher, taking an amazing 3rd place here! He joined what turned out to be the - surprisingly - winning move, and scored 100 very important points for Rabobank in their fight for survival! Kron also got them some points for 23rd place, making it 109 for the Dutch team!
And who would have thought that Amezawa would be MOL's best finisher here - and even in 4th place! He was also part of the winning group, but only managed to get 4th out of 5 riders up front. Still, it's 90 points for him. With Ardila finishing on a truly disappointing 27th place, that's still "just" 96 points for MOL - will it be enough to still have a shot at staying up?
Whereas the success of the Top 5 can be explained by their successful late breakaway move, Madouas is a pretty surprising name to win the sprint of the group of favourites! In particular when riders like Benoot, Areruay, Aranburu or Lutsenko couldn't keep up - but the Frenchman not only kept up, he also had the most energy left to secure 6th place in the end! 70 points for the Puma rider, with the German team also getting points from Schinnagel (30th), Zwiehoff (31st) and Zegklis (40th) - 79 in total.
We'll take a look at the ranking implications later, let's just summarize these two races first:
Fastned were the most successful team in these two races, scoring 160 points (all by Vansevenant). Rabobank are close behind on 143, making a big step towards safety. EA Vesuvio and the Pumas take 3rd and 4th, scoring 127 and 115 points respetively.
MOL scored pretty well in Japan, with these 96 points being enough for 4th place - but will it be enough? Evonik on the other hand have to be very unhappy with just 88 points out of these two races. Assa were pretty close as well - and they only needed Montréal to score 82 points...
cycleYorkshire and Xero are next with 62 and 61 points, with the latter also having two disastrous races with Areruya being nowhere close to his normal form. Lidl round off the Top 10 with 49 points from Canada.
Aker, Grieg, Carlsberg and King Power are the remaining Top 15 teams, scoring between 40 and 31 points. Oxxo can't be happy with their 25 points, with Higuita once again missing out on giving them some good room to breathe.
Jura won't be happy with their 24 points, either, with Schmid having more lows than highs this year - and then we have our two title contenders, scoring only 18 and 15 points respectively. With Tinkoff getting the slightly better end and reducing the gap at the top by 3 points...
The other teams didn't race and hence got zero points.
Here's the overview:
Pos
Team
GPCy
JCup
Total
1
Fastned
100
60
160
2
Rabobank
34
109
143
3
EA Vesuvio
127
0
127
4
Team Puma - SAP
36
79
115
5
MOL Cycling Team
0
96
96
6
Evonik - ELKO
32
56
88
7
Assa Abloy
82
0
82
8
cycleYorkshire
62
0
62
9
Xero Racing
41
20
61
10
Lidl Cycling
49
0
49
11
Aker - MOT
0
40
40
12
Grieg-Maersk
0
38
38
13
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
0
32
32
14
King Power
31
0
31
15
Oxxo - Frisby
0
25
25
16
Jura GIANTS
0
24
24
17
Tinkoff Team - La Datcha
0
18
18
18
Gazelle
0
15
15
19
Polar
0
0
0
20
Cedevita
0
0
0
21
Moser - Sygic
0
0
0
22
ZARA - Irizar
0
0
0
Full Ranking
I just said it, not much has changed at the top. Gazelle have a 17 points lead over Tinkoff heading into the final race of the year - crunch time! Any of the two could win the title now, even though Gazelle likely still are the favourites, bringing Dombrowski to this race that could suit the climbers - but maybe not as much as last year, with less difficulties at the end of the race.
The race for 3rd also is still wide open, in particular "thanks" to Lopez not even remotely performing up to his standards. Polar still hold onto that final podium spot, with 6,911 points - and Evonik, still in 4th place, trail by 87 points. They could still do it, but Lopez will have to find his best legs again!
King Power as the final Top 5 could still have a shot at 3rd place as well, but their deficit of 173 points is already rather big. A podium is basically a "must" for them if they want to improve.
Outside the Top 5, Aker are somewhat in no-man's-land, trailing King Power by more than 200 opints, and also being ahead of the Pumas by about 150 points. However, should Herklotz win the race again for the latter, the Germans could still claim 6th place - but very likely not more, as that would require a huge depth result.
But we should get a great fight for the three final Top 10 spots, as we basically have 4 teams fighting for those! Carlsberg currently are in the best position (6,282 points), but Xero (6,231), Fastned (6,219) and cycleYorkshire (6,208) are less than 80 points down!
With a Lombardia win, EA Vesuvio (6,055) could also have a shot at the Top 10, but they probably aren't the top favourites for that. But we've seen in Japan what a well-timed attack can do - and Mohoric has shown in Canada that he's absolutely capable of doing that!
Jura are another 170 points down, and with Grieg trailing them by 120 points, the Swiss will most likely stay in 13th place. Which isn't necessarily true for the Danes' 14th place, given taht Rabobank - now on the final Top 15 spot - are trailing by less than 100 points and have a good chance of doing well in Italy!
Cedevita have lost one place, and with 5,604 points could even still be in relegation danger if everything goes wrong - in particular given that they don't have a good record in hilly races this year. It's a 220 points gap to the relegation zone, but who knows?
In between the Slovenians and the relegation spots we still have Oxxo, who - we said it - missed out on another big chance to secure safety. They're roughly 110 points behind Cedevita and 110 ahead of the relegation zone - and now there's really quite some pressure on Higuita et al. to do well in Lombardia!
Because we still have Moser in the first relegation spot, and Moser will bring Kudus to Italy. If he wins the race, the Czech team could indeed stay up. If he doesn't, they'll have to hope for Oxxo to have yet another subpar race.
150 points further behind - or 260 points behind safety - we now have MOL, who have moved a bit closer to the line, but are still well below. They'll definitely need something very big to survive. Not impossible, but rather unlikely.
For ZARA, Lidl and Assa, we already knew they'd likely be going down, and neither of them did something truly miraculous to get a serious shot at staying up in the final race. It's still theoretically possible if they get the Top 8 spots or so, but yeah...
And here are the penultimate full PT standings of the year, with just Lombardia points to be added:
Indeed, nailbiters all around! Thanks for the update Fabianski!
Think it's gonna come down to us versus cycleYorkshire for the 10th spot now. Unfortunately, I think Fastned and Xero are too close to not catch us in Lombardia unless Vansevenant cracks hard. There's a shot Aranburu/Carthy/Galta can keep their 74 point lead on Yates/Romo/Morton given the course, but it's going to be tough. All we can do is hope!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Fun fight at the top, and a nailbiter for the final relegation spot! Thank you for the update! For us, Herklotz is definitely a threat for that 6th place. We need a good Valter to defend in Lombardia.
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