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Apart maybe from Laporte, I can't imagine any of my (many) riders in the Vuelta scoring enough points to cover the gas costs.
 
YellowSocks said:
Apart maybe from Laporte, I can't imagine any of my (many) riders in the Vuelta scoring enough points to cover the gas costs.
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But fear not, because you can select a totally different bunch of 8 guys for the Vuelta.

Not in this game, of course, but in the Vuelta GC Game.
 
Vuelta
NYS Thibau
TARLING Joshua
NORDHAGEN Jørgen
LAPORTE Christophe
RODRIGUEZ CANO Carlos
WIDAR Jarno
BRENNER Marco
HIRT Jan

Pretty small group. In theory, everybody could get a GC placing except Laporte (irrelevant for this game), Nys (already given up on him for this season) and Tarling who can hopefully salvage something in the TTs*. In practice, I'd be shocked if I got a rider in the top 10. At least I won't have any riders wasting three weeks domestiquing.

*Somehow, Tarling has only raced two ITTs this season. Obviously it wasn't the smoothest season even before the awful familial tragedy but I don't really understand what NetCompany was thinking building his schedule that way.
 
Paul double
Mattia gaffuri
Victor langelotti
Mikel landa
Alberto dainese
Ganmiarco garofoli
Pai Martii
Christophe laporte
Raul Garcia pierna
Koun bowman

Vamos
 
So here is my vuelta team:

BISIAUX Léo
BRENNER Marco
KRON Andreas
LAPORTE Christophe
MAS Enric
NORDHAGEN Jørgen
NYS Thibau
RODRÍGUEZ Carlos
STEINHAUSER Georg
TARLING Joshua
TORRES Pablo
VANSEVENANT Mauri
WIDAR Jarno

Let´s see, if I will be able to gain a few overall places with that team.. Honestly would have liked to see guys like Nys, Torres, Vansevenanta and Kron participating in other races. At least there are two flat TT for Tarling. Even leader jersey points are possible after stage 1.

Have to say, that this season is really heavy to follow in CQ terms with riders like

Lafay (will officially not race at all this season)
Max Poole
Joseph Blackmore
Albert Whiten Philipsen
Thibau Nys
Ben O'Connor

in the team.

But given the fact, that basically all of us have a lot of these underperforming riders in their team and that I have all popular must-picks in my team (Seixas, Cosnefroy, Laporte, Pithie) and also a few really good rarer riders in my team (Brenner, Steinhauser, Biesterbos) a top10 overall (Difference is only 200 points) as the last two seasons is still not out of reach. So let´s see, what the last two month of the season will bring..
 
Spare a thought for the six of us who have Theodor Storm...
Last year, it looked like he was on his way back from the Guillain-Barré syndrome in 2024... and then... he just disappeared again.
 
Armchair Cyclist said:
But fear not, because you can select a totally different bunch of 8 guys for the Vuelta.

Not in this game, of course, but in the Vuelta GC Game.
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I know, but I am competing somewhere else :flushed: and it already took me two hours to pick my riders there (for the Tour, I spent two evenings on my team, had five minutes to help my nephews complete theirs, and they both won our league classification - I guess I'm not ready to learn a lesson from that).
 
Jasper Philipsen becoming the best expensive pick this year and on his way to be the decicive one for our leader @Eyeballs Out
 
Earns1985 said:
Jasper Philipsen becoming the best expensive pick this year and on his way to be the decicive one for our leader @Eyeballs Out
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He's been a bit of a lucky pick in that he's failed in most of his major goals this season. Nothing from the monuments, only managed 1 win in the Tour (from a break) and didn't win the green jersey. But apart from that he's avoided crashes and been consistent.
 
Wtf is this August shape of Del Grosso? Terrible, terrible level in both Denmark and Germany. Does he not take this game seriously?
 
Pogačar has now cleared the 4000 points bar for the third year in a row. Perhaps he'll even be able to get over 6320 before Duplantis does it in millimeters, although today's events likely made it harder.
 
Earns1985 said:
Jasper Philipsen becoming the best expensive pick this year and on his way to be the decicive one for our leader @Eyeballs Out
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Depending on how Remco and Tadej finish the year, they'll have a fairly decent case as well.
 
Update #32: Philipsen leads the way as Googolplex takes the week

This past week saw the Renewi Tour as the high CQ point race in a week of several stage races and the start of the Vuelta. But amidst all the action, scores were relatively depressed, with only 8 teams over 400 points (7 teams had Jasper Philipsen who scored 410 by himself) and 20 points over 200 points. So not a high volume of movement in the overall table, but the teams who did score high definitely made up some ground!

This Week's Top Scorers

RankTeamPoints this week
1Googolplex630
2vansteenbergen619
3Amis_Velo579
4skankingcyclist548
5Mason07489

Two teams cracked 600 points and in a close race, Googolplex outscored vansteenbergen by 11 points. Both had the aforementioned Philipsen of course, with Googolplex getting notable support from Alec Segaert (95, 5) and Noa Isidore (46, 9) and vansteenbergen from Andrea Raccagni (84, 3) and Giulio Pellizzari (50, 10). Amis Velo rounds out the podium thanks to Philipsen, Isidore and Marc Hirschi (102, 3).

This Week's High Movers

RankTeamUp/down
1vansteenbergen(+14)
2postmanhat(+10)
3SafeBet(+9)
4yoyokt(+8)
5RestInPunk(+7)

Interestingly, this is quite a different looking table in a week where you might think such higher scorers than the rest would have commensurate movement in the standings. vansteenbergen moves up to top spot here by jumping 14 spots in the overall, with postmanhat in 2nd led by Jenno Breckmoes (221, 6) and Matt Brennan (70, 11), and SafeBet in 3rd also Philipsen-less with the same Breckmoes/Brennan combo.

Green Jersey Competition

RankTeamTotal
1Basque Street Boys299
2slow_climber214
3Eyeballs Out200
3EvansIsTheBest200
5zigzag_wanderer181

Eyeballs Out scores 20 Green Jersey points to jump into a tie for 3rd overall, with no other scores in the top 5. With Pogi virtually guaranteed to score leader's jersey points for the next 2.5 weeks on top of any stages etc, it's likely that Samu will add to their team's already substantial lead soon.

One fun sidenote - this week the final teams without Green Jersey points scored their first of the season, so every team has been in the points this year!

Top 10 Overall

RankUp/downTeamPoints
1(-)Eyeballs Out11195
2(-)Crevaison10614
3(-)karaev10577
3(+2)Hugo Koblet10577
5(+1)Senderos10551
6(-2)slow_climber10540
7(+3)manafana10526
8(+9)SafeBet10443
9(-2)EvansIsTheBest10442
10(-2)Amethyst10357

No change in positions this week, but having the rare Philipsen really helped Eyeballs Out expand a recently shrinking lead out to over 500 points. SafeBet rockets into the top 10 at the expense of Nyssinator who falls out.

This week the Vuelta is centre stage of course, but there's a 2.1 race in France leading up to the Plouay WT race as well.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5jcz...ey=2747gc81wpw6gw2tou7v5813e&st=74kt9926&dl=0
spreadsheet link
 
Slowly slipping out of the top 10 and still a couple weeks away from Remco racing again. At least it does seem like the Vuelta GC will have too much impact which is good because my team there isn't going to score much.
 
EvansIsTheBest said:
Slowly slipping out of the top 10 and still a couple weeks away from Remco racing again. At least it does seem like the Vuelta GC will have too much impact which is good because my team there isn't going to score much.
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At least you have someone non-inconsequential (popularity-wise) who you can realistically expect to score points when they race.

My great Vuelta team of Nordhagen, Buitrago and Dunbar are already out of the GC after the first mountain stage. Now I'm just curious how Decomble will avoid getting a top 5 in Poitou. There's pressure on him to continue my team's great streak of points avoidance after Asgreen's and Morgado's stellar job last week.
 
EvansIsTheBest said:
Slowly slipping out of the top 10 and still a couple weeks away from Remco racing again. At least it does seem like the Vuelta GC will have too much impact which is good because my team there isn't going to score much.
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Mas could have an impact from the Vuelta GC; he’s only on 9 of the top 30 teams.
 
Why has L'Avenir been downgraded by CQ? I only missed out on one point from it, but others have lost more (that goes for the teams in the emerging riders games, too).

Jan Huber still managed to reduce my number of non-scorers to six, but the chance of getting all my riders on the board is nearly nonexistent at this point.
 
Samu Cuenca said:
Why has L'Avenir been downgraded by CQ? I only missed out on one point from it, but others have lost more (that goes for the teams in the emerging riders games, too).
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Pretty absurd that Finn got nearly as many points from finishing 4th last year than winning the GC this time around. More points from Sparfel's stage win would have been nice too.
 
Samu Cuenca said:
Why has L'Avenir been downgraded by CQ? I only missed out on one point from it, but others have lost more (that goes for the teams in the emerging riders games, too).
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I guess if the quality of riders allowed to compete is lowered. it makes sense that the rewards for beating those that remain are lower.
 
Armchair Cyclist said:
I guess if the quality of riders allowed to compete is lowered. it makes sense that the rewards for beating those that remain are lower.
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I get that CQ aren't in charge of or in any way responsible for the death of the U23 Nations Cup nor the UCI race categories in general, but to me it's still odd that the main stage race hasn't been assigned its own category.

However, it obviously doesn't have the same impact on a game as CQ suddenly deciding to overhaul its points distribution for women's races (perhaps it shouldn't have been that different from the men's ranking in the first place, but had I known about it at the start of the year, then I and others may have picked different riders for our teams).
 
shalgo said:
Mas could have an impact from the Vuelta GC; he’s only on 9 of the top 30 teams.
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Yes, everyone has Widar in the top20. Mas performance will be the most important one for this game, but also to a lesser amount Brenner, Torres, Bisiaux and Omrzel.

With Mas, Widar, Torres, Brenner and Bisiaux in my team it looks not so bad for me, although I had higher GC hopes for Bisiaux and especially Nordhagen before the start..

Popularity overallPopularity top 20
Pogacar20
Roglic50
Mas277
Kuss00
Onley00
Carapaz10
Gall00
Skjelmose10
Widar6920
Vine10
Mühlberger00
Debruyne10
Torres346
Tejada00
Brenner95
Berthet00
Ruiz00
Bisiaux219
Tulett00
Omrzel193
 
Actual points for Leo Hayter? Wild stuff.
 
Quite some riders for the Vuelta this year. I'm slowly losing touch with the top-10 but maybe the Vuelta will bring me back.
So far, Rodriguez, Zana, Vansevenant and Nys perform more anonymously than I had hoped. Hoping for a good result for Mas and Widar and hoping for some carte blanche for Bisiaux, Torres and Laporte.
2026-08-22La Vuelta Ciclista a EspañaBISIAUX Léo
2026-08-22LABROSSE Jordan
2026-08-22LAPORTE Christophe
2026-08-22MAS Enric
2026-08-22NORDHAGEN Jørgen
2026-08-22NYS Thibau
2026-08-22RODRÍGUEZ Carlos
2026-08-22TORRES Pablo
2026-08-22VAN TRICHT Floris
2026-08-22VANSEVENANT Mauri
2026-08-22WANDAHL Frederik
2026-08-22WIDAR Jarno
2026-08-22ZANA Filippo

Edit: Decomble on his way to grab some points too, a nice extra!
 
Søjberg into profit!
Larsen also with some points.
 
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