Races of the week:

The end of Tirreno-Adriatico, our first Monument in Milano-Sanremo and a few SSRs: Danilith Nokere Koerse, Handzame Classic and Grand Prix de Denain - Porte du Hainaut

Team of the week:

First named rider is the rider of the week and if a rider has a number in parentheses after their name it means the number of times they have made the select Team of the Week here.

Vincenzo Nibali. One hopes that this guy never has to pay for a drink in Italy for the rest of his life. Wow. Nibali is one of the great Grand Tour riders off all time but he tends to get unfavorably compared to Contador and Froome and that’s just not right. He’s a different kind of rider than those two. Duh. What we saw Saturday was similar to what we saw in his two Lombardy wins and his last Giro win: a rider willing to risk it all in an attack. He’s failed. A bunch of times. Sure. But he’s also won enough times to rack up an amazing career. And he did not win MSR because the peloton fell asleep. Nonsense. He specializes in the devastating attack that sticks.

Michal Kwiatkowski (2). Closed out TA with the GC win. Kwiatkowski put in a workmanlike performance at TA-if “workmanlike” means being able to match the attacks of any competitors, which is a rare gift. He didn't win a stage at TA and he didn’t need to what with the team support he had. He also put in a workmanlike performance at MSR and it got him 11th place.

Arnaud Demare (2). Look who is leading rider on FSA-DS! He’s 27 and so far its looking like he’s about to have his best year yet.

Caleb Ewan- So close. He’s getting better and better at navigating chaotic bunch sprints.

Marcel Kittel (2). Added a second win at TA and made it look easy; looks to have ironed out the kinks with his new team in preparation for a big summer.

Kenny Dehaes. Solid victory at GP de Denain to open his account for the year.

Rohan Dennis. He’s raced three ITTs this year and won them all. He’s in what you might call a groove.

Fabio Jakobsen. and...

Alvaro Hodeg. The new math: Jakobsen + Hodeg = Dominance.

Reverse Survivor Game:

This is not a game that the participants want to win. We have 44 contestants: the 44 riders in FSA-DS that were priced at 18 points or more. 16 of them have yet to score a point. We’re talking Dumoulin, Gaviria, Pinot, Trentin, Quintana, Zakarin, Dan Martin, Bouhanni, Albasini, Degenkolb, Porte, and Chaves. So in the comments below predict if any of them will score zero points for the year or if they all score which rider gets off the schneid last.

FSA DS Team of the week

This one’s easy: Wolfpack d/s YoMarques. Bow down to this: YoMarques has Nibali, Ewan plus others on their way to score 1030 points at MSR. Oh and they also have Jakonsen and Hodeg. And Kittel.