Monday, September 12, 2011

Montréal & WorldTour-ranking

  • Samuel Sánchez gave it a real go in the closing stages of the GP Montréal but eventually had to settle for 17th. The Olympic champ, obviously feeling better than he did on Friday when cramps got the better of him, escaped out of a select chase group in an attempt to catch leading trio Costa, Fédrigo and Denifl. He never really got far though and was reeled in by the main chase group. He ended up four seconds down in 17th place. Youngsters Mínguez and J Izagirre performed well over the testing 205,tkm course to place 30th and 32nd respectively, both at just ten seconds and ahead of the likes of Leipheimer and Gesink - both highly fancied to fight for top honours. Landa came through in 73rd place, while Sicard, Astarloza, Velasco and A Pérez all abandoned.
  • Despite a rather strong Vuelta campaign, Euskaltel slipped to 14th in the all-important WorldTour-rankings. Euskaltel hold a 59-point gap over Astana in 15th and a more comfortable 103-point lead over Quick Step in 16th but, with both teams likely to invest heavily in the winter to collect more points, it really doesn't look to good for Euskaltel ahead of the last few races. Strong performances in Beijing and Lombardia will be vital in securing WorldTour-status for 2012.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How will the withdrawal of HTC and Leopard affect the world tour ranking?

Magnus said...

That's a very good question, one I don't think anyone has got an answer to at this moment in time. One would assume that it'll then be easier for teams like Euskaltel to hold on to its status as mergers/withdrawals mean fewer teams and thus as a result fewer teams to compete with, but how the points will be distributed I'm not quite sure. On the whole though, the disappearance of HTC and the merger of Leopard and RadioShack should be to Euskaltel's advantage.

Kristof said...

and a withdrawal of Quickstep and Lotto? Besides that, Astana is not worth WT, and Katusha would be nothing without Rodriguez.

Nick said...

Rumors also of a saxo /astana merge... all I hope is green edge doesn't get a license. But knowing mcquaid and the UCI they'll Prolly get one.

 

web site counter
ISP Internet Providers