November Predictions Round Up

As we enter mid-December, we once again find ourselves trying to wrap things up for November. This time, we are looking back at our November predictions and seeing how we did. We were far more successful in October, but are still missing the perfect podium.

In Europe, things became a little more predictable as the return of Mathieu van der Poel pretty much guaranteed he would take the top spot. However, there was a bit of an inconsistency as riders like Toon Aerts, Eli Iserbyt and Laurens Sweeck were constantly swapping podium spots. On the women’s side, you could almost guarantee a Dutch rider would land on the podium, but the order of the podiums were almost never the same.

Over in North America, riders were constantly changing spots on the podium. On both the men’s and women’s side, there were nearly half a dozen riders capable of reaching the podium in any given race. Kerry Werner and Curtis White were always safe bets, as they continued to swap wins. Maghalie Rochette and Rebecca Farhringer were also regularly on the top step of the podium, but behind them things were wide open.

We missed one weekend of predictions, so we have a total of eight race predictions for the month of November. As usual, it includes four races in North American and four races in Europe. As we move into December and the North American season winds down, we will mix things up a bit and have more interesting, European, predictions.

If you need a reminder of our points system, you can refer to September’s round up. The bottom line is that we can get a maximum of 12 points per race (the men’s and women’s are each worth six).

Really Rad Festival of Cross Day 2

Superprestige Ruddervoorde

Pan-American Championships

EUC European Championships

Supercross Day 1

World Cup Tabor

NCGP #2

World Cup Koksijde

The Results

As the expression goes, “it’s all downhill from here”. For the first time all season, we predicted the full podium correctly. Unfortunately for us, it was on the first race of November, so we had nowhere to go but down. On the bright side, we scored points on every single podium.

The North Carolina GP (NCGP) was our worst podium overall, as we only got one correct spot in the men’s and women’s races. In Europe, Superprestige Ruddervoorde was also disappointing, as we only got one podium finisher correct in the Elite Men’s race.

As we mentioned, we did get one podium 100% correct; the Elite Men’s at the Really Rad Festival of Cross Day 2. We had several podiums where we got the first tow riders correctly, but the third step of the podium eluded us. There were five podiums where we were off by one rider and that rider finished in fourth place.

For the month of November, we could get a maximum of 96 points. Our point total was 49, which is 51% of the maximum points. In September, we got 25% and in October we got 43% of the maximum points. This means that we have continued to improve our correct predictions. This is especially exciting because November was the most races we’ve predicted thus far.