Other than the top spot, there was a whole lotta shakin going on in the VDS tables:
- Atala, 4341
- Muk's Maybes, 4253
- Portinado, 4064
- Mighty Herd, 3925
- Zabriskie's Point, 3779
- Vlammende Vedetten, 3733
- Down Tube Shifters, 3698
- Big Aloha, 3679
- More Cobbles Please, 3664
- Action Potential, 3596
Full standings HERE and more links in the sidebar. A few notes:
* Biggest mover was Muk's Maybes, from outside the top ten to within shouting distance of the lead. Appropriately, two other new names in the list are Vlammende Vedetten (presumably something Flemish) and More Cobbles Please. After the first three or four, there is a rather large chase group all within a few points of each other. So if you're outside the top ten but have been hanging around lately, chances are you could be as low as 25th and still just one good result from the podium.
* You can pick over the race-by-race results in this page, though as I write this it occurs to me I have been uploading the rider points, not the team scores. Gimme a spell and I'll fix that.
* Heinrich Haussler is the Arenberg Trench of the 2009 VDS: having him on your roster seems to be a prerequisite to remaining in contention, and sleeping on him is flirting with early elimination. This is pretty distressing for the 100+ teams that didn't see it coming (it being Haussler's transformation into a freaking one-man express train). I can't say the season is over for us non-Hausslerites, but his rise raises a few questions. First, is there a single non-Haussler team beating a Haussler team? I doubt it. Second, is there a winning formula that doesn't include Haussler? What I mean by this is, in order to pass the Haussler teams you need a guy who's going to go berserk this summer. But that's probably Contador, and how many of the Haussler teams have Contador? The final question for the non-Haussler teams is, do you have a less obvious guy on your squad someplace whom the Haussler teams have generally overlooked, and who's about to go off just like GHH himself has done? One possible suggestion: Alexandr Kolobnev going off in late September/October (Worlds, Italian fall races, Lombardia). Kolobnev is a regular competitor in these events, but otherwise not too high up on the radar. There may be other names of possible saviors. But for now, that's what the non-Haussler teams need: a savior.