Power Rankings - Part 8.

15th place: Bahrain-Victorious. And here it is very worthwhile to make more comments about this entire team performance, because it is deceiving on some level. After all, the team completed 50 less race days than the team with the most ones, and this had an impact on the UCI points and therefore in my points system on the final results - since, if only 30 of these days would have been completed, I they would have scored so many points that an 8-10. place they could have achieved for the season. Of course, you can't ignore the mental pressure either - Gino Mader's death hit the entire cycling world, Gino was a great person, a great rider, and he leaves a huge void, not only in the team, but also en bloc in the history of Swiss cycling. For the time trial-based Swiss cycling, a climber like Mader was needed... and I'm terribly sorry that he's gone. The team remembered him very fondly, they seized more chances and opportunities, the Tour victories for example, especially Mohoric's, were absolutely being emotional and memorable.

The team's 2023 was solid, reflecting on the riders you can see that, but somehow you can feel that some kind of refreshment is needed in the squad. The climbers were fine, the Pello Bilbao - Mikel Landa duo formed a very strong 2023, Landa would actually have won the Vuelta without Jumbo's dominance! If we look at the results of 2023, there are 6 climbers (also, Matej Mohoric, who can climb mountains at a given level) among the top 8 Bahrain riders, this dominance and unipolarity in this form (because we can see this from several places from the sprinter side) is unprecedented. And there are some very good elements here, Santi Buitrago had the breakthrough, both at a domestique and GC man level, Caruso and Poels are still incredible, especially Wout's performance surprised me here, he was really able to find something for 202e - and Jack Haig also had a slightly more positive season compared to previous years. You may think that everything is fine here, but in reality, it is not. Because a) Mikel Landa is sailing away. With the departure of Landa, Bahrain will lose the man who was actually their most competent GC chance, and who in some cases could have even reached the top 3 in Grand Tours, but that has passed, Buitrago is not ready for that, and the others... and then here comes point b): the very bad aging. Somehow, I could imagine the ideal structure to be 4-5 young people for every 2-3 experienced people. It will be reversed this year, Santi Buitrago and the newly signed Torstein Traeen will be accompanied bya lot of older riders. This is not optimal. And I adore Bahrain, and I know that the team has solved a lot of tricky situations, and they have the best DSs in the peloton - but once the irreversible processes of the human body start, (and if it starts at the same time) it can have very rapid and serious consequences the team supporters.

As for the sprinters, the stakes are high there as well. Thanks to my somehow impossible skills, I managed to predict very well that Jonathan Milan will have a good season, even though I didn't expect such a good season from him either. Green jersey winner of Giro, several stage wins at World Tour races, classic-type rider signs - Milan is the kind of prospect that could be epitomized... and someone will, but it's not gonna be Bahrain. The most unfathomable mistake of the entire transfer season was the release of Jonathan Milan to Lidl-Trek. For two reasons, it sucks. After all, at 23 years old, Milan will surely be at one point leader of a team in the coming seasons. Not only the sprinter team, but an entire association. Another important point is that, if he really has the classic skillset, then he could have been a brutally good complement to Matej Mohoric and Fred Wright. Both of them approach this entire process from the hills and the cobblestone part, and Milan would have had the opportunity to do this from the Philipsen-like sprint side. With the departure of Milan, the quality options have decreased on the sprinter front, Phil Bauhaus (who by the way was particularly good in 2023) will be the numero uno choice, Dusan Rajovic may step forward for the second number, but this is a significant quantitative and qualitative decline - this can be balanced by the neo-pro Alberto Bruttomesso , but it would be unlucky to put too much pressure on him in his first year. And if we have to talk about the classics lineup - Matej Mohoric, he surprisingly caught the good form for the second half of the season, this is the form with which you can win a monument. Milano - San Remo has already been done, Liège and Lombardia can only have a chance with a very special preparation - Flanders and Roubaix remain. The past weeks I pushed the Mohoric for Roubaix campaign - I can't say that he will win next year, but this is where he will have the best chance, especially if it is a half-mud, half-wet race. In the dry, he won't stand a chance against the pure powerhouses, but otherwise, the bike handling can come out as an important skillset, and that could tip the balance to the other side.

The 2024 Bahrain season will be interesting to watch, it will be a very exciting season, because the talents are coming from Friuli, and they have already started to think about their future, but somehow, I wonder if this transition that is happening now will not be over soon, and whether this will be too drastic...

14th place: Movistar. It was an interesting season from many points of view, at the same time I have the dissonant feeling that a lot of things didn't work out, but at the same time, it can be argued that they solved some of the challenges they faced.

We have to start with Enric Mas. With Mass, against whom we could always have believed that everything was right, all kinds of negative countermeasures related to GC campaigns were removed, since in the last month of the 2022 season we got a person who was both very strong and, what is more important: proactive. Being known as a good rider is not only being able to react to other people's actions, but also being able to initiate them when appropriate. And if we look at 2023, this has definitely not come true. The form at the end of the season was maintained at the beginning of the following season, at Andalusia he had a good race, where he held himself very well with Tadej Pogačar, it is true that he lost in every sprint, but somehow, I had the feeling that this trend would reverse somewhere, at some point. Let's face it, it turned around, but unfortunately it was the form at the beginning of the season that was the outlier in this equation. Ardennes Classics: DNF, Tour de France DNF after 160 kilometers, and the Vuelta wasn't the triumph I imagined for him before the season. And he is still in the timeframe in which he can win a Grand Tour, but at the same time there are a lot of things that can hinder this process.

After all, he won’t have mountain support of the right quality. With the departure of Carlos Verona and Matteo Jorgenson, Movistar lost two excellent mountain domestiques, and I don't think the signing of Nairo Quintana will permanently compensate for this. Nairoman is a good competitor, but I have a huge question about what role he can be used for, because I think he is not enough for a GC person. If Mas can cooperate, and with that he can convince the Colombians, Rubio and Sosa as well, he can get the most out of it if he wants to. But in the meantime, he may also worry that he is the team's only viable GC option. If we accept the universal principle that a team needs a 50/50 climber/TT competitor in order to be a good GC person, and someone with whom this ratio is shifted in 70/30 then there are plenty of the latter here, because Mas, Sosa, Rubio and Quintana are also like this - and the planned signings for 2025 also feel like this. This is not good, it must be understood that the TT is also an essential element of the sport, and somehow the team also needs young people. It's hard to guess what Mas can achieve, so I'll put my expectations lower and say that stages and Grand Tour top 5, which could be the maximum for him.

As for the other ones, and especially the ones who stay here, there are more positives to talk about, and even if that can be included in the way things are going in terms of Movistar's statements. Fernando Gaviria was solid, I'm not saying that he had the best sprinter season in the world, but there were periods of the year when he was really great - but it causes a little bigger problem that the number two sprinter in the team, Max Kanter was lost, and Movistar filled that position with people unlike him, I will mention this soon. Einer Rubio and Ivan Sosa were already mentioned here, they had a particularly exciting season, with opposite signs. I completely gave up on Sosa, quite simply, it is difficult to get Sosa to have two consecutive good days on the road, and thus it is quite difficult to function as a GC man in a team. Einer Rubio is the exact opposite of this, he showed here that no matter how limited his skills are, he can indeed be a good number two rider in races where there are not/not many time trials, this is his only kryptonite weakness. And then there are the breakaway people, of whom Movistar has now accumulated quite a large amount. This is due to one person: Oier Lazkano. If anyone guessed that Oier would be so decisive in his first year in the World Tour... I tip my hat to him, the biggest surprise here was his performance and appearance and his particularly aggressive manner, which we got haven’t got used to from Movistar these years. The success rate of him meant that they obtained 5 similar riders, and if only 2 work out well like Lazkano, it will be a net positive period. Remi Cavagna… we know what kind of engine he has, if he gets the inspiration and the guts, he is unstoppable. Davide Formolo is also a giant, he has won a lot of good races for the UAE, and he has also shown, especially at the Veneto, how useful he is - the problem with him is that in 2v1 situations so far he was the one of the 2 players who could save energy and attack, now he will certainly be the one who has to fight, it is not sure that this would suit him well. Pelayo Sanchez is my little favorite, he is the miracle of the hilly one-dayers, who I think will be a huge star in a few years, he really tested himself this year in Burgos, and he will surely achieve many, many successes in the professional peloton. The two smaller names, Jon Barrenetxea and Carlos Canal, are extremely complex riders, and the team will really know what kind of rider they will be in the next years.

Movistar won and lost at the same time in this year's offseason, they will be one of the most unpredictable teams in the 2024 season, there is a big jump in many of them, and a possibility of a big collective disappointment, too.

13th place: Israel Premier-Tech. If I want to be honest, this is a huge overachievement compared to the expectations before the season, a result that could not have been achieved thanks to the tremendous and self-sacrificing work of all the members of the team. Last year, Sylvan Adams finally listened to the demands of many of us and this year he put together a very sexy team with young and very experienced people at the same time, which turned out to be a perfect match and fusion. It makes sense to start with the experienced people, since the points were brought by then with a bigger share, and Michael Woods is still the biggest name here. Woods, who is well into his thirties, is a very reliable climber-puncher combo, who you know will perform well in the spring Ardennes and Italian one-day races in autumn, and will certainly bring a couple of extra results, this year this was Tour stage victory at the Puy de Dome, the Ventoux Classic second place, and after all, he can still also help the team if he wants to. There were interesting reports that he would not stay, but he stated unequivocally that he will continue in 2024, and if he continues like this, then he can be a very good rider for this Israel for the next 2-3 years. Last year, Dylan Teuns moved from Bahrain to Israel in a somewhat shocking way, and after 15 months it can be said that this move... has not yet had the desired effect, as neither Israel remained in the World Tour, nor Teuns fulfilled his dreams - the typical type of the quiet rider, who has good results, sometimes he is in the top 5, but something (which is not a very small thing) is always missing in order for him to raise the hands up at the end of the race.. Giacomo Nizzolo has changed teams, as he continues his career with Q36.5, even though he should not have done this move. He won the most beautiful race of the year, the Tro-Bro Leon, and brought many top 10s. Obviously a decline started compared to the previous years, but he is 34 years old, and the decline doesn't seem sudden, it's not something he should be terribly worried about. And Simon Clarke is still a very useful helper and can sometimes show how much of an extra sprinter and puncheur he is at the same time.

Well, the young riders are different, because they mean the future for the team, and they have a lot of confidence from the team leadership here. Corbin Strong came out on top of them. The punchy sprinter from New Zealand is definitely the most interesting young prospect of the team, because after some very promising days last year and the year before last, he exploded this year, the way how well he can handle the hills, the small group sprints, and in fact, everything, was astonishing. He is a particularly versatile rider. 17 top 10s, i.e. the base is there, obviously the next level will be when he starts to really win, starts to show that he has a legitimate chance to compete with de Lie, Pedersen and van Aert. Then there is Derek Gee, the Canadian cult hero, who burst into the peloton at the Giro this year out of nowhere, and he was able to occupy the second place role of Giro himself, as he was both in stages and points classifications. The huge problem I have with him is that neither before nor after he brought almost any results. And if they want to start something serious with Gee (and it was not by chance that he received an almost unreasonably long contract), then you have to start working on bringing out the greatest possible potential from yourself as often as possible. Although Stephen Williams is not the youngest prospect, he can always be considered a prospect on some level, the first place in the Arctic Race GC showed here that he has a lot in him, at the puncheur level, for example, a Dylan Teuns-like career can be ahead of him, although for this, he should not be used as a domestique. I mentioned Riley Sheehan's story on X, it's quite unbelievable that he reached a professional victory in three months from Denver, it took a surprisingly long time until he finally got a contract for 2024 - to be honest, I don't know what you can’t expect from him, because the sky is the limit for him, just like for Matthew Riccitello, who may have a big jump up at 2024, fewer climbers ahead, better skills, he knows how to go on a World Tour, and going into this year together with these experiences will mean a lot to the young American man.

2024 will be an interesting year for Israel, there is now a lot of sprinters/punchy sprinters in the team, Pascal Ackermann is a huge signing, and I always think that on his better days he is a top 3 sprinter in the world, in Ethan Vernon, Jake Stewart there is much, much more than what we have seen so far, Hugo Hofstetter has a bounceback season ahead of them, Oded Kogut, a particularly talented Israeli sprinter, is finally going to the big dogs, and George Bennett can also help in the field of climbers this year. A compact team, a lot of people have a kind of "can do more" potential and magic - but how much this comes out will determine their final goals and results for the coming year.

12th place: Cofidis. It will be a very mixed, with a positive tone in the first part, but then the problems that arose during the team's structure, which are not particularly financial, rather they are/were formed during the building of the team. Before 2023, Cofidis was a fair mass, where slightly different elements tried to get as far as possible together. Here, they fried their steaks in their own fat, animated them, tried themselves, and somehow, I think, they made this organization sympathetic to a lot of people's minds. They broke the 15-year winless streak on the Tour, which I think was a completely satisfying, iconic moment for every fan, and maybe it's worth starting the story here too - because Victor Lafay was ultimately the person who brought this about. The French guy is a very special personality, he seems both a bohemian to someone and a person who can be an introvert if he needs to and wants to. And this duality gives us a very human rider, which I think also came out during the Tour victory - at the same time, he also had one-day results, sixth in the Fleche, victory in Besancon, and this at 27-28 years old, seeing the structure of Cofidis, should have been enough in order to get a new contract. Ag2R, however signed him in front of them, and yes, he will have a good place there, I understand why they signed him, but he would have been in a much better place if he had stayed. Ion Izagirre was our other Tour stage winner, but he had a much complex season next to it, Itzulia podium, Indurain win, two top 7s at another Spanish one-dayers, and there was that Tour victory, Ion is still very stable, it has been the case for almost a decade now, and there is no sign that it will stop in 2024 either. The bigger problem, in my opinion, is with the so-called stadpadders, who bring the points needed for outstanding performance, but we have no memory of the person. Guillaume Martin is the ultimate archetype of this. The rider, called by many a philosopher, is now consistently in the top 40 for the eighth year, but this year he only had two podiums, the Japan Cup and the Tour du Jura. He had results of one-day races, and including Liege. He finished 10th on the GC at the Tour as well, but it is certain that I could not recall a single meaningful moment. Because of this, Martin can be considered a bit weak, because he is very stable, he knows what a numero uno GC person needs to know - but different if you are consistent, and different if you are consistent and you can win, quite a lot. In my opinion, Martin should give up on the latter, and the situation is that it is not very clear who can replace him, which could cause problems for Cofidis in the longer term. This is the category at the level of Bryan Coquard, but among sprinters. Le Coq won his first ever World Tour stage here, and on top of that he worked with the usual consistency, the effort rate was high, and with Cofidis you can't really complain about not having enough leadout man for him either, but against all odds, Coq did not succeed in placing himself among the top 5 sprinters in the world. Jesus Herrada and Anthony Perez were also solid here, but for some reason they were far from the Izagirre-Zingle duo in terms of frequency.

The next year… huhh, it's hard to say, the Cofidis transfer season was not one of my favorites. Inexplicably, the top squad was replaced, and for some reason a similar substitute could not take the place of the better people. Stefano Oldani was definitely needed, the punchy Italian can be a very useful recruitment for Cofidis in the long term, Aniolkowski was saved, rightfully so, Nolann Mahoudo is a huge talent, but he is very raw and needs to achieve a lot, and apart from that... nothing. Tough luck for Cofidis, but somewhere inside I hope they will prove me wrong.

11th place: EF-Easypost. This was a particularly exciting period in the life of the team, as we started this season with the acquisition of a five-star GC man in the name of Richard Carapaz, Mikkel Honoré, who we thought could be Magnus Cort's successor/assistant in the one-day races, there was Andrea Piccolo, who was in top form last fall, and many other people had potential for the future. This kind of prediction of mine was such a failure that I can only laugh because of the agony.

Let's start with Carapaz. With Carapaz, whom everyone spoke of with a very positive sign, that yes, the change of environment, yes, now with Vaughters, in a very open environment, he will once again find the real Richard he left at Movistar - at the same time, there were negative signs. Quite simply, in 2023 it became clear that it is not possible to build a mountain train solely by climbers, now in today's world most cyclists are so versatile that you can easily get to one level with this structure, but the last step that separates the GC people between tier A and B, you can no longer pass with them. And if you look at the people who can climb in the EF mountain train in 2023, you will find almost all such people, whether you think of Hugh Carthy or Chaves or, say, the newer faces. And somehow Carapaz also, surprisingly, needed much more time to settle in, both the Volta a Catalunya, Itzulia and the Dauphine were a disaster for him. And then we were there in the middle of the season, before the Tour, and Richard Carapaz had, I won't lie, about 4 interpretable race days. That's very few. And obviously, fate hit him hard, because he was also involved in the downfall at the Tour where Richard and Enric Mas had to abandon, so it was a very bad season from him. It's a joy in sadness that after all the suffering, he recovered a bit for the autumn, Emilia and Varesine already looked very good, we saw the Carapaz, whom I've wanted for a long time, who won the Olympics, who could even upset the Slovenian duo... It is my hope that this bad shape will not last forever.

The other two signings should also be mentioned here, but both Piccolo and Honore were horrible this year, I expect a better season from them in 2024, the negative swing of the pendulum this year may reverse a little next year. But then who was it that made the entire season more positive? Because of the American-Irish defense and defiance alliance, because of the duo who, although they didn't compete much together, but separately both produced a sumptuous 2023, i.e.: Neilson Powless and Ben Healy. I have to start with Powless. The Florida rider has been developing better and more dynamically for years, and although he is slowly progressing in terms of ranking, I can rate the jump from the top 50 to the top 25 greater than the progress from the top 100 to the top 50. By the way, Powless' season contains interesting anomalies, he won the French season opener Marseille and Besseges, he finished 6th in Paris-Nice in the GC (I wouldn't have expected this to be the case), then he finished 7th in Milano - San Remo, 5. at RVV, (who would have thought that he could also walk on cobblestones...), and here there was a break, a fall, which simply could not be avoided with such a pace and such a high performance - he was able to climb out of this after the Tour at San Sebastian, at the World Championship, and at Maryland, he shone again in his old light. Is it higher than that, the question may come, and the answer is that it is not certain. I mean, Neilson has come a long way this year, to heights that I only hoped for him, if he can pull it off next year as well, then we really have to say that one of the best and most complex cyclists in the world is currently an American guy.

But what can we say about the Irish lad? Ben Healy's sophomore season was such a damn MIP suspect season that I have no words for it. The way he started already boded well, as top 10s and victories in .1 races, this is already more than what he achieved in 2022 overall. Then came the Ardennes Classics and it's here you and the world's name, the way he twitched the lion's mustache, the way he almost crushed pepper under everyone's noses, it was sensational. Second in Brabantse Pijl behind Dorian Godon, second in Amstel behind Pogacar, 4th in Liege behind Evenepoel, I don't know if anyone can dream of more. He didn't just dream, he made it happen, winning the 8th stage of the Giro with a 50 kilometer solo... his uncompromising style and his eternal attacks left an indelible mark on people this year. Even after the Giro, he still had a sense of success in Luxembourg, but the real question is whether he can keep it up, whether he can be even better than this - this year he achieved that a lot of people will pay attention to him next year, and a lot of his attacks will be followed, the question will be what he will do with it, how much effort he will put into developing his tactics.

Marijn van den Berg, who still needs to be mentioned in a positive connotation, has also improved a lot in one year, and as the only all-around sprinter. Van den Berg's greatest strength is consistency, out of 67 race days, excluding TTTs, he achieved 21 top 10 places, which can be said to be very good, the 3 win ratio is a bit low, but without a real leadout it's not bad either. He is a smart sprinter who can clearly see the gaps and places where he can enter and gain positions without endangering others. He has to continue this next year and then he can actually have a winning case both within the team and the peloton.

And speaking of the future: this was a very strange transfer period, because the team only signed young people, some were too young, like Markel Beloki, and there were also great talents. Archie Ryan, Lukas Nerurkar and Darren Rafferty will form a kind of Anglo-Saxon mountain train, making the team's mountain train bipolar (it will be very strange to see how they can coordinate people from Columbia and Britain, from completely different backgrounds within the team), and Jack Rootkin-Gray, who could be a B option for Alberto Bettiol in the future. I will be very curious to see how this rejuvenated (perhaps too rejuvenated EF) will perform in 2024, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a slight drop in the team's results.