2018 Season Awards - Team of the Year
We are almost done with these season awards. Let's have a look at the most successful teams of 2018.
Just like comparing riders, comparing teams is very difficult. They all have different objectives based on what their sponsors want, what kind of riders they have and which country they are based in.
The easiest way to select the 5 nominees would be to take the top 5 from the World Tour standings, but I'm gonna be a bit more creative than that.
Here are the nominees for the 2018 Team of the Year:
Bora-Hansgrohe
The ambitious German outfit is only in it's second year at the top level. They have grown to be much more than just the team of Peter Sagan. They have 33 wins, 22 of them at WT races. They are the only team that can sort of keep up with Quick Step in terms of sprinting power with Sagan, Bennett and Ackermann. They won Paris-Roubaix, Gent-Wevelgem, 3 stages at the Giro and 3 stages at the Tour. They finished 3rd in World Tour rankings.
Mitchelton-Scott
The Aussie team have won 36 races, including 16 at the World Tour. Their highlight is of course Simon Yates winning the Vuelta. With a little more luck they could have won 2 out of 3 Grand Tours. They still won 5 Giro stages (remember that 1 good Chaves moment this year?) and 1 Vuelta stage. They finished 5th in World Tour rankings.
Quick-Step Floors
72 wins, more than any other team, more WT wins than I care to count, both Belgian monuments, 13 Grand Tour stage wins. They were winning everywhere this year and still they struggled to find a new title sponsor. They also signed Remco Evenepoel who is being touted as the next Eddy Merckx which might turn out to be their biggest win of the year. Needless to say they top the World Tour rankings.
Team LottoNL-Jumbo
This team is only 10th in the World Tour rankings, but I think they will be feeling good about their season. Groenewegen has had his best year so far and as a team, they are emerging as a very strong outfit for Grand Tours with Roglic, Kruijswijk and George Bennett. They racked up a total of 33 wins.
Team Sky
The Death Star marches on in 2018. Having survived all sorts of PR disasters, Sky have delivered 2 Grand Tour GC victories with 2 different riders and that's all that really matters to this team. They have 43 wins in total and are ranked 2nd in the World Tour.
We have one more category to go. It will be a little bit different than I had originally intended. I will leave the Rider of the Year poll for the main page editors and instead create a new category that I will not reveal just yet. It also might be published with a little delay.
Here are the previous polls: