Power Rankings - Part 9

10th place: Bora-Hansgrohe. We could talk about a lot of things here, the dynamics of the Hindley-Vlasov-Uijtdebroeks trio, their opposites, Sam Bennett's total stupidity, Nico Denz's rise... but it is sure that the majority of our analysis will be about the signing of one person, who was supposedly a ’PR move’ - as Primoz Roglic will officially become a Bora-Hansgrohe rider from January 1, 2024. It is worthwhile to look at this singing from both sides, since both sides had a kind of need for each other, which was met even after long negotiations. In my opinion, Roglic wants two things now in this relatively short, but more than complete career: to win the Tour de Suisse and to win the Tour de France, completing the Grand Tour collection. Which one could you have achieved with Visma? The first is true, yes, in Primoz's case, they would have been able to send a mountain lineup that would have been favorable for him in that race. The second one… I don't think so. There are more elements to this, but the main reason for this is that Jonas Vingegaard's dominance grew to an amount that Roglic could only have matched if Jonas had abandoned the race. We got here, in 2023, and this was the point where the departure is completely true and justified, regardless of the fact that Roglic is still among the top 5 GC people in the world, and I can argue for the top 3 as well. What was Bora's need? A person who can climb and can do time trials. So far, there is no such person in the squad, at least there was not in the past, and this limited the skills and the upside of the team, and it was also very questionable who is really the number one GC person, because three of them applied for it. After last year's Giro stunt, I think Jai Hindley tried to approach the starting line of the Tour with confidence this year, and he even made us believe in the Pyrenees for 24 hours that he could legitimately compete with the Pogačar-Vingegaard pair - no, he didn't. And it wasn't because he wasn't a good time trialist, but because he simply couldn't get into good enough shape. I've had this problem with Hindley for a while now, when he's in shape, he's one of the bests in the world and has the right to call him Tour-ready, but he's not like that more often than he is, luckily he can catch this form for the big races. I'd take the other two GC contenders, Vlasov and Uijtdebroeks, under the same hat (they're really good friends... well, nope.) Vlasov has proven that he'll never be a good three-week racer, quite simply he can't be on a very weak day (where you get 5 minutes) to reach a Grand Tour podium. And Cian Uijtdebroeks, in my opinion, is oppressed by the pressure to fulfill himself. I'll explain this: right, Cian is a huge talent, and he always wants more and more, and this sometimes leads to totally unjustified hysterics and nervous breakdowns. He should reduce these and be very patient, although now he wants to leave the team, which I do not understand at all. Naturally, everyone in Belgium, the Mecca of cycling, willy-nilly liken him to Evenepoel, which also adds to this depressing situation... his situation is difficult, he has a year to figure out what he wants to do for the next few years, and this will also determine his own career.

But there was a huge difference not only among the small mountain people, but also among the big sprinters. Sam Bennett is gone, and we have to stop here for a moment. Bennett's fall is quite sad and shows somewhere that the sprinting profession is a kind of hero to zero thing - because not long ago we celebrated him on the Champs-Elysees as an undisputed winner of the points jersey, and now we are complaining about the fact that he will be a man without a concrete leadout with AG2R - on the other hand, I cannot say that Bora solved the problem 100%. Sam for Sam, Bennett for Welsford, this was the tactic, and Welsford is a particularly interesting rider, he was fast in DSM, but he lost the leadout many times, he had to start from afar. It was a bit his own fault, as well as the fault of the leadout - here, however, you can learn a lot from Danny van Poppel, who I think is the current best in the genre. Somehow I have the feeling that if the two of them can work together, then a lot of beautiful things can come out of it, and somehow I think they will match each other. Adding Jordi Meeus, who miraculously won the last stage of this year's Tour, we see that Bora now has two moderately fast, two moderately good one-day riders, who can help each other, pull…it is not as bad as many people think. And the whole Bora is now very compact, good signings, with a good squad, Martinez, Adria, Denz, Sobrero, the German-born Schachmann and Buchmann will all be good here, I'm really looking forward to the overall Bora season, I have a lot of positive hopes about them.

ps: Cian just signed to Visma, this is not a good move, in short.

9th place: Alpecin-Deceuninck. I think that this is the first team where I will give almost only positive comments, as a counterpoint to the fact that I think even more could be achieved from this concept. There are 3 indispensable elements of this team, who contributed to the giant share of 35 victories, who give the Alpecin DNA the foundation. We have to start with Mathieu van der Poel, who was one Tadej Pogacar away from winning 3 monuments + the world championship this season. Obviously, it is difficult to come up with statistics for this, but this accomplished series of results is also something that makes it totally unprecedented status in modern times. I remember before the season, everyone thought that he was tired, that it would be difficult for him to get in shape, if he could be in good shape for the Flanders-Roubaix, and somewhere on Tirreno we saw these doubts, but then he brought in front of us the best 3 weeks of cycling history possibly. Milan - San Remo: win. So how? Soren Kragh Andersen and MvdP worked extremely well together, Kragh took a lot of the burden off him, and the way Poggio started, it is not an exaggeration to say that it was a thermonuclear attack. Somewhere this fuga de la fuga stuff wasn't in his repertoire until now, and I don't know how many chances he would have had in a sprint alongside van Aert, whether he would have been really good at this attack, but in hindsight he made the best decision. Ronde van Vlaanderen: second place. He should have reacted to a historical Oude Kwaremont attack. Paris-Roubaix: gold medal. This was a bit controversial at the same time with the Degenkolb-knockout action, I still have a bit of an emotional burden there, but at the same time it must be admitted that here the team again worked excellently for him, they came up with a very good plan, and with that they were able to take it to the end of this monument. After that, the world championship was really just the icing on the cake, it will be a real curiosity to see him in the rainbow jersey, and he totally deserves it, I think that even if it is not completely the case, both MvdP and Alpecin have improved a lot in terms of tactics, they are not only relying on crushing their rivals with mere force, but have a well-developed plan and can build on it if necessary.

The one who didn't need a plan many times, but rather a complete leadout, was Jasper Philipsen, who by 2023 was clearly the best sprinter in the world. This required his own development, the fact that he was given the keys as the number one man, and with that he went to full force. If we only look at the sprints, then we can see with great confidence that Alpecin does everything so right in the leadout section, in the sections between 1500 and 400 meters they surpassed everyone, and if you do things well there, it will not be difficult for the sprinters to finish it. But can Jasper be called only and exclusively a sprinter? The question arises from the fact that this year he showed signs that, basically, he can play a decisive role in classic races, even on more difficult terrains. Brugge-de Panne's victory was really inspired by the greatests of the genre, the way he handled the wind, the way he handled his rivals, showed a serious potential that very few have. His development will be key for the future. Another such person is Kaden Groves, who joined the team this year and made an instant impact, to a lesser extent in the spring, to a greater extent in the division - his victory in the Vuelta and Limburg was a fantastic sign that there is more to him than a classic sprinter, he can go up a hill, in the cold, hot, he attacks, he defends, he can win in a long sprint, in a short effort, basically, victories are in his DNA. And here comes the only burden for the team: both of their contracts expire in 2024 - and knowing that the team is not doing so well financially, it is currently difficult to imagine that both of them will stay. If one of them were to leave, it would be a serious effort to have a good replacement. It is true that the young riders are very good, Kielich, Uhlig supplemented with the veteran duo Kragh Andersen, Gianni Vermeersch and the rest of the team together form a very nice mixture, but the injuries/sicknesses of the three main riders may cause problems due to the still existing one-dimensional squad structure. So, the key to Alpecin's season will be how healthy they can stay, if everyone is available in full force this year, they will have a better season than this year, if not, they will fall back to the bottom of the midfield.

8th place: Groupama-FDJ. We are after a season where we had huge expectations for the team, and where these expectations were fulfilled for a while, but at the same time, in the second half of the season, this entire organization fell apart at all levels. You can't start this review by skipping David Gaudu. What I expected was that he will climb to the best climbing level, and with his lagging time trial skills, he can come up with something that can work for him. And the joke is that he started the season that way, on the hills and mountains of Paris-Nice, he was the only one able to keep up with Tadej Pogacar at some level. The 4th place achieved at Itzulia was to some extent the result of this wave, but then - a big fat zero. Seriously. He was more preoccupied with belittling Demare to the direction of the team leader during their debate than taking care of his own form, taking the most unimpressive 9th place in the Tour's history. He is a very strong and powerful rider, but David Gaudu can be an extremely toxic person who thinks a lot about himself, always believing that he will be the one who will bring great success to FDJ at the Tour, and in the meantime for years we've been saying that he can't bring this, and in the meantime he's chasing the team's best sprinter out of there. Will it be OK, Marc? Moreover, since Thibaut Pinot (who, by the way, was having a much better season than Gaudu) retired, Madiot did not replace him in any capacity, so even if they had such ambitions, it would be difficult for them to fulfill this. And to be fair, the two main mountain men, Lenny Martinez and Romain Gregoire, will rightfully get their own people, their own line as they have worked to the maximum for this on the basis of their neo-pro season.

About Demare. I'm not sure if I saw this correctly, but I think the majority was not on his side in this debate, which smells a bit like bullshit, to be honest. It's true that even Arnaud Demare doesn't believe that he would have won a bunch sprint at the Tour besides Philipsen. But we are talking about a team legend, someone who breathed together with the team for more than a decade and deserved a chance at the Tour. You know, there is a saying, "A smart man lets things go, a donkey suffers" - this perfectly describes the current situation. After Demare's signing to Arkea, he opened his floodgates, got all the keys to the door of sprinter/easier one-day races, and kicked it in once and for all, with victories, consistency, but most importantly, you can see the relief on his face, the fact that he is glad that he was able to escape from this environment, while Gaudu and the FDJ are facing a difficult year - and even if they are facing many negatives, there were also positives in 2023.

And these are the young riders. FDJ sticked to a very risky and almost incomprehensible thing for 2023, they signed 7 riders from the Devo team into the pro team. And this… succeeded. Ok, not 100%, but I think the desired effect was well and truly achieved. Romain Gregoire was the best from this class, but we knew that he was a great talent even in Devo years and in his junior year. Gregoire did a very good job of showing his talent in a couple of Pro competitions last year and this year... he had a very amazing neo-pro season. When you look at Gregoire, you wonder if he's really a newcomer, or if we're talking about someone who's been here on the World Tour for 5-6 years? He is not the unqualified giant climber that the French would like to see as a new Richard Vireneque, but he is a better puncheur now than many Frenchmen who have won competitions at the same time. The future’s big question next year will be how much he can improve in his sophomore season, but also whether there is more to him than what he really is now, how well he can really bring climber skills, can he go on cobbles... seriously, he is an exciting prospect. Lenny Martinez is also very strong at the prospect level. Leading a Grand Tour at the age of 20 is a huge feat, and Martinez did it, and he looked very good on the bike all season - of course, I say this with the fact that he will never be good at ITT, he will never win a Grand Tour, but he can reach top 10 or top 5 at Grand Tours and World Tour stage victories, too. Paul Penhoet is the third key element here, with the departure of Demare he will be the number one sprinter in the team, and he will have the huge demand to be able to bring raw power to the action with finesse. He has already proven himself in the one-day races, the time has come for him to do the same in the stage races.

As much as I was optimistic about FDJ last year, I am as pessimistic now. Neither the transfer season, nor the structure of the team is optimal right now. I'm worried about them, and I can only hope that the point hunters, Madouas, Gregoire, Gaudu, Penhoet will all improve, this is what is needed for the FDJ to be able to maintain the current level.

7th place: Lidl-Trek. Lidl-Trek has had a very busy season, starting with the fact that the team wasn't even called like this until the middle of the year... however, with the Lidl grocery chain flying in, the team got a lot of money, which was used very smartly, but they were also able to offer the current riders much better conditions in terms of equipment, and thus a super team under Luca Guercilena was sealed for 2024.

The super team must start with Mads Pedersen, who we can say is one of the most complex cyclists in the world today. I said about the Danish rider here that he would become world champion, I also predicted that he would win Flanders... None of them did he win, but we saw that he can do well on such very punchy tracks like the world championship, also on San Remo he finished in the top 10, and besides, he is the kind of person who knows, loves and wants to fight, because in the current peloton, perhaps this is one of the main elements if you want to win, if you want to be successful, and this also boosts your appetite, which is important in the case of a franchise person, because we build a team based on this. Obviously, he didn't just have bad streaks, for example, his victory at the Bemer Cyclassics was the most impressive 1-2 punch of the year, 24 hours after his victory at the Tour of Denmark. He can easily do and go for everything again, he wants the Olympics too, that course will also suit him, he will have the help of Theuns, Stuyven, Alex Kirsch, who is damn underrated in my opinion... and Jonathan Milan, who approaches the classics from a similar side like Pedersen, with the similar sprinter skill, but he has a worse puncheur skill - this is what, if he develops alongside Mads, with the help of the Dane, he can be a lethal force in the next years, and he will be a great help for Pedersen in his peak years.

There was another Dane, whom I mentioned in the introduction, and with whom I was satisfied here, and with that I will move on to the GC section. I saw Mattias Skjelmose Jensen's jump. But to be fair, the jump was so high that he is now a very world-class puncheur, and at certain times he can win one-week races, even at the World Tour level, like this year's Tour de Suisse. Skjelly developed a one-day skillset, and with that he opened the gates for himself, as it shows that despite everything he is not a bad climber, at Tirreno next year, for example he can be very good, the question is that besides the two main GC people, next to Ciccone and the newly signed Geoghegan Hart, what role do they assign to him? Because this trio will truly attack the Tour, and perhaps here is the best symmetry in cycling world between three such big names, three such big GC people. Ciccone is the oldest member of the team, and it would be a mistake to think that he could and still can get noticed just by throwing glasses. Because obviously, if he throws glasses, he wins, and he's done that quite often lately. What is particularly exciting is that he is very smart. When he's in shape, he competes with the best, look at Catalunya, where Evenepoel and Roglic were rivals for many occasions, look at the Dauphine - but now we can obviously say that he won't be a Grand Tour winner. He will be a luxury domestique for the man who blew up perhaps the biggest hit in the transfer market this summer: Tao Geoghegan Hart. Geoghegan Hart is a typical Grand Tour rider who is actually a Grand Tour specialist. This year, he would have won the Giro for the second time after 2020 without the crash, and somewhere one has the feeling that his mental strength, fitness and under the radar approach (because I think he is a very underrated rider) might be enough to take on the competition with the people of the UAE-Visma duo. They will use a traditional, one-captain line-up, Ciccone, Skjelmose (who could one day be the number one Grand Tour man in certain situations, in the right way), Verona, Konrad in the mountains, Tim Declercq on the flat, and then there are a bunch of people who are experienced, with whom you can fill this 8-member Tour squad. And that's strong. I don't know how much, but it will be strong, it will be good, and they will start as favourites in almost any competition. And this is what, although I usually oppose the sudden sponsorship in the middle of the season, I still adore this whole process that takes place there. Continuous proactivity, continuous development, very proper marketing and a good concept, with people who stand out in all areas. I will place the team in the top 3 overall for the coming year.

6th place: Intermarche. The biggest overachievement on the list compared to the original result, I saw them on 14-15. places on different rankings. It was a very interesting start to this season, as many members of the team achieved MVP numbers in the first two months, and then for the next 5 months it was almost a collective letdown, and it was unbelievable that they rose again in the last two months. We have to start with Biniam Girmay, since after 2022 we rightly thought that we have the main creative element to whom we can epithet. This creative element, Girmay, stopped his development here, he lacked the kind of lethal punch that characterized it in 2022, for example. It is also not entirely certain that we fully know what kind of rider he really is. More than a sprinter, but less than a De Lie-type puncheur. But if he's not fast enough... then he can't be a number one man, but if he's not going to be number one here, then who is? This year, Gerben Thijssen was able to fill the role of this question. Thijssen is an interesting figure, we knew that he was fast, but so far he has shown this quite rarely, but this year he blew up, he is a really fast guy who is not completely dimensionally versatile, but he is on the way. On the other hand, considering that he has routine, he is still very young, so he and Girmay can form a very good core - here the big question will be whether Thijssen can step up to the task (so to speak, knowing what happened in Guangxi), because looking at the team's structure, he must be the leader, because the leaders on the other side, the punchy-climby side, have run out.

The punchy-climby side was completely reduced, despite the fact that there were also more outstanding performances - starting with Rui Costa's vintage season, the fourth resurrection of himself. Costa was truly, in the strictest sense of the word, ridiculously good, this was the year when he could use long years, decades of experience to a truly positive advantage, and he could turn all his energy to suffocating and mentally belittling your opponents. He also won the Japan Cup, he won the Valencia Tour, he won a stage at the Vuelta, he had an absolutely fantastic season, and yes, I think they tried to maximize his potential as long as possible, but quite simply, financially, they did not have the ammunition that was needed for keeping him, and signed to EF, which, if I want to be honest, is good and also bad in some respects. Kobe Goossens was, once again, huge in January, two wins in two races, in the span of 24 hours, and actually this 24 hours was where he only brought out his inner mojo - now this was not the first time in his career when he did this, and somehow this should stop, because we know that there is a lot in him, and when this breaks out, he is a damn useful member of the peloton. The situation is basically the same with Louis Meintjes, this was not his best season, and I can't decide if it was due to his own frustration or because he didn't have enough help in the mountains. We are starting to slip out of the positive timeframe, so the next year can be difficult from this point of view.

Next year: Alexy Faure is gonna be here and he is changing the world. I'm serious, it's rare to see as much progress from year to year/month to month as he experienced here, which is why they brought his World Tour debut a year earlier, which was a rare thing at the time, zusammen. First of all, you should take an example from their Development team, they identify talents very well, they give everyone a chance, and there are plenty of opportunities where they can stand out so much that they can be included in the World Tour later on. This structure works well, the scouts are also great, so if there is a way forward for Intermarche, it should be this: train young people and hope that they will bring a lot to the points tally.