[Armchair Cyclist]

The riders

An interesting distribution.  There were hardly any riders starting in the 700-900 bracket, where riders one might expect in the top ten would often be found and can be fairly popular picks.  That means that there are far more riders being picked in the 300-450 bracket (with some real gems in that range), so far fewer of the variety of under 100 pt riders, among whom in most years we would find a lot of the variety in picks, and the source of a large proportion of the number of riders relevant to the game.

So, out of 37 teams, here are the numbers going for each rider:

27: LANDA MEANA Mikel
20: LOPEZ MORENO Miguel Angel
19: EWAN Caleb
18: CARTHY Hugh, YATES Simon
15: GALL Felix
12: KÄMNA Lennard
11: ARENSMAN Thymen
Those eight have a within-budget total cost of 3268, so neatly define themselves as the Collective Wisdom team.
9: CICCONE Giulio, DUMOULIN Tom
8: FOSS Tobias Svendsen
7: CARAPAZ MONTENEGRO Richard Antonio, HINDLEY Jai
6: SOSA CUERVO Ivan Ramiro, VAN DER POEL Mathieu
5: BARDET Romain, BUCHMANN Emanuel, GAVIRIA RENDON Fernando
4: GIRMAY HAILU Biniam, KNOX James, POZZOVIVO Domenico
3: BALLERINI Davide, CIMOLAI Davide, DE GENDT Thomas, HAMILTON Lucas, KELDERMAN Wilco, NIBALI Vincenzo, PETERS Nans, VALTER Attila
2: CEPEDA ORTIZ Jefferson Alexander, CORT NIELSEN Magnus, DOWSETT Alex, FELLINE Fabio, FIORELLI Filippo, HEPBURN Michael, MODOLO Sacha, ROSA Diego, SIVAKOV Pavel, SKJELMOSE JENSEN Mattias, TAARAMÄE Rein

and I hope that if you were to count the asterisks above, there will be 31 of them.

Popularity table
The total of the popularity scores for each rider (Landa has 27, Lopez 20 etc)

1	SlowClimber	136
2	Leadbelly	127
3	Rote_Laterne	117
4	Bminchow	115
5	Del1962	113
5	Manafana	113
5	Northerner	113
5	SafeBet	113
9	AmisVelo	111
10	Kazistuta	110
11	Yellow_Knight	109
12	Bonimenier	108
13	Berflamand	106
13	Nyssinator	106
15	Comodoro	104
16	Otoxiep87	100
17	ZigzagWanderer	97
18	Rufs	96
19	JumboVismaFan	95
20	Will10	94
21	Mellow_Velo	91
21	Triley36	91
23	Titan31	80
24	Search	78
25	Scrooll07	76
26	Salvarani	74
27	DJSprtsch	72
27	Josedin	72
29	EvansIsTheBest	71
30	Armchair_Cyclist	70
31	Laarsland	66
32	BluesInTheBottle	64
33	ArchieBoy	57
33	Vladimir	57
35	SamuCuenca	46
36	BicycleBoy	30
37	RedheadDane	16
	Collective_Wisdom	140

Slow Climber has, especially for a rookie in these games, an extraordinarily high popularity score, and he only differs in one pick from the Collective Wisdom team: he has the still fairly popular Foss rather than Kamna, thus making the tracking of the Collective Wisdom team almost redundant.

Major picks
I'll define a major pick as a rider with a cost of 700 points or more.  We seem to have unusually few teams that have more than one of them this time, perhaps because of the previously mentioned wealth of riders in the 300-450 range.
So those who have doubled up are:
Carapaz & van der Poel: Bicycle Boy
Carapaz and Yates: Armchair Cyclist
Carapaz & Demare: Josedin
Van der Poel & Bardet: Salvarani
Yates & Bardet:  Scrooll07 and TRiley36
Yates & Girmay: Zigzag Wanderer
Bilbao & Girmay: Titan31

so the others only have one of these expensive picks:
Almeida: Mellow Velo
Carapaz: Blues in the Bottle, Search and Vladimir
Van der Poel: Berflamand, DJSprtsch, Rufs and Yellow Knight   
Yates: Amis Velo,  Archie Boy, Comodoro, Jumbo Visma Fan, Kazistuta, Leadbelly,  Manafana, Northerner, Nyssinator, Otoxiep87, Rote Laterne, Safe Bet, Slow Climber and Will10
Martin: Samu Cuenca
Bardet: Bonimenier and Del1962
Girmay: Bminchow and Evans is the Best

while Redhead Dane has unique Pick De La Cruz (549 pts) as her most expensive team member.