After a slight delay, due to official UCI results for the Finnish National Championships not being available (they will be part of next weeks computer rankings), this weeks Top 25 shakes things up a bit. This weeks poll once again has Niels Albert number one, with Sven Nys second and Kevin Pauwels in third. Pauwels was on six points behind Nys. Meanwhile the top American, Jeremy Powers, sits fourth in this weeks poll ahead of Ryan Trebon and Bart Aernouts. Ben Barden, Bart Wellens, Tim Johnson and Klaas Vantornout round out the top ten.
Jeremy Powers continues to be number one in the computer rankings. Power’s has been number one for three weeks now. Nicoals Bazin, who was number one for the first three weeks, remains at number two, but has slipped to eighth overall. The computer has James (Jamie) Driscoll at number three primarily because of his strength of schedule (SOS), in which he’s now number one. Martin Bina, who has been on a tare lately is number four in the computer rankings, and Ben Berden slots in at number five.
Putting it all together, Powers remains the number one rider a head of Nys and Trebon. Berden moves up to fourth, while Johnson moves up a spot to fifth and remains the highest place rider without a victory this season. Dan Timmerman slid way down in the rankings from 10th to 21st. Francis Mourey makes the biggest jump this week moving from 16th to 1oth. With this weekends World Cup race, the odds are things will drastically change next week.
Note: we’ve simplified the view of the rankings this week in an effort to make it easier to read and debate. While the computer uses fractions of a point, we’ve converted its results to numbers that actually make sense. We’ve also generated a column for the computer rankings and voter rankings. This should make the whole thing easier to read and understand. The far left (rank) is the final rank, followed by rider name, where they landed in the Top 25 Poll, the final computer ranking and how they rank in UCI Points, Race Quality, Winning % and Strength of Schedule. Hopefully it makes a bit more sense.
[top25-week id=9]