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FV - splash 500 (Giant win)Fantasy Tour de France: the 2010 winners
So, the Tour is over for another year. All that's left are empty bidons squashed beneath the wheels of the Champs Elysèes traffic, and other similarly poignant metaphors. Still, it was a good race this year, made all the more exciting, we're sure you agree, by the inaugural road.cc Fantasy Tour de France competition. And it's time to announce the winners!
So, step onto the podium, alexlnumber1. The Pedal Os have been there or thereabouts for most of the race, and 1800 points over the life of the race is a remarkable total. That's an average of over 85 points per stage, which makes everyone in the road.cc office look like a dismal no-hoper. We can't compete with that kind of scoring, although Simon would like to point that he came a very creditable 36th.
So that means that alexlnumber1 is our first Fantasy Tour winner, and will be taking delivery of a very smart KHS Flite 300 bike courtesy of game sponsors Cyclesurgery. Well done!
There were ten Cyclesurgery jerseys up for grabs too, and they'll go to the following teams who ranked from second to joint tenth overall:
simonking (simonking): 1782 points
azkune (meninblack): 1704 points
saioarri (saioarri): 1685 points
Yella Jersea (djtrax): 1668 points
fdringo (antomeno): 1664 points
going nowhere fast (lessthanross): 1648 points
conquistadors (only1ghost): 1642 points
Devolder (ben1991): 1642 points
peloton de fer (lordthorne): 1639 points
Get off and push... (homer187): 1639 points
Well done to all of you chaps too.
Lastly there's a few more spot prizes to announce for the final three stages. Friday's sprint-friendly run into Bordeaux was taken by second-placed team simonking, with 109 points. Team Bean were the time trial specialists, picking up a haul of 85 points in the race against time, and on the Champs Elysèes it was simonking again, making a late run for the line with 106 points and closing the gap on the Pedal Os but just coming up short in the end. Since he's just won a tee though (and a jersey, the lucky scamp) we'll award the spot prize to next-placed team Vagabonds with 89 points, who edged out conquistadors on the same score by dint of not just having won a jersey for a top ten place.
Well, thanks to everyone who played. It's been fun, and much more successful than we ever could have imagined. In the end we had over 1,800 teams entered, and while some fell by the wayside there were still over 1,500 people playing when the peloton reached Paris. Needless to say we'll be doing it all again next year, so tell your friends.
Next up is the Vuelta. We'll be running a Fantasy league, and we want your input. What has and hasn't worked for you in the Tour? Maybe you'd like some scoring changes, maybe you needed/wanted more transfers. Or less. Whetever, post a comment below and we'll take them all into account as we take the spanners to the game engine ahead of the Vuelta rollout in August.
Dave is a founding father of road.cc, having previously worked on Cycling Plus and What Mountain Bike magazines back in the day. He also writes about e-bikes for our sister publication ebiketips. He's won three mountain bike bog snorkelling World Championships, and races at the back of the third cats.
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41 comments
Rob fletch of team Reims 16th.
Enjoyed the game my girlfriend enjoyed it to. Really got to know a lot of riders we were
not aware of in previous years. Rules were perfect stayed up v.late a lot of nights in debate
of what to do with transfers. Prizes were a nice insentive too. Could of done with a couple more stages to catch up, so close but yet so far. If you do the vuelta count us in.
it was a well structured and user friendly game. my suggestion for an improvement is to lessen the points that the GC top ten and white jersey top 5 guys receive everyday cause what that meant was that some riders were picked and just sat there with no change and soaked up good points everyday. leaving a smaller number of potential changes to be considered. Shleck, Van den Brook, Gesink, Sanchez are the ones im talking about. They remained untouched for a big part of the race and anyone who changed them went backwards as fast as cadel did on a mountain.
Thanks to the organisers and the sponsers.
I dont think i would change anything, the fact that you were only allowed 2 tranfers made it more challenging. I dont think changing values increasing/decreasing throughout would work.
Looking forward to vuelta!
I loved the ability to create personal leagues but I didn't like not scoring any points for a stage where I was a rider short for the day.
that won't be happening in the vuelta version, if a rider retires you'll still get points for the rest
enjoyed playing but as i couldnt get to a computer for 2 weeks made it difficult to change anything, also meant that i didnt score points at all for several stages
Roll on the vuelta then!
well, we did our best
Please leave everything as it is. We loved the game and wouldn't want too much to change. The restrictions added to the challenges and frustrations that made it so fun! It gave my son and me an extra interest in all the riders, and not just the GC contenders. I lost a lot of places when Mark Renshaw was disqualified! The reason the green and polka dot jerseys didn't get points was, I assume, because they were competing for intermediate points each day. The fact that the cost of some riders seemed so arbitary, and the fact that some riders were placed in odd categories, also added to the fun. The better you knew the rules, and the more you studied the riders, then the better you did. At the end of the day, it was a game!!
Ah yes, "mountains tomorrow, better transfer Nico Roche back in as my points classification man..."
Liked it in general.
How about bonus transferes on rest days (and keeping the window open all day on rest day - which you might have done already)
The interface for adding riders was pretty awful, having to reload the page to figure out if I could afford them or already had a Green Jersey etc. Maybe next year do a nice AJAX-powered drag and drop thing so we can see at a glance what we're doing?
Also, the mobile site (on my Nokia e71) had this incredibly irritating feature where the yellow header stuff scrolled down as I scrolled the page and floated above the content, blocking out at least 20% of the screen. Don't do that next year either!
Also looking forward to the Vuelta now.. The addition of Road.cc's FTDF has resulted in an obsession over the last 3 weeks. Often my interest seems to wane about half way through most TDF's, but this has allowed me to remain focused
I agree with the above regards transfers. You should be allowed a free transfer for abandonees. I think the 2 transfer limit must stay.
Not bad result for me top 10%, as an MTB convert.....
I rediscovered cycling this year and this was the first time I watched the TdF. It was fantastic and the competition added that extra level of excitement. I agree with djtrax (26/07/10 12:21) about viewing previous stage results though. Brilliant work. Can't wait for the Vuelta!
Looking forward to the Vuelta! Great work folks!!
contador was second overall in scoring. schleck outscored him because he's also in the white jersey comp, take those points away (86) and he's below bertie.
the idea of including transfers, and weighting stage wins (and breaks) quite heavily, is that it's more interesting than just picking a team and seeing how it does. you could do a big bonus for top 5, but then everyone would just transfer them in, so it's kind of pointless.
One thing we have considered is a bonus based on your *initial* team: extra points for picking jersey winners from the off.
Perhaps prizes for stage winners is in order and will definately have mass appeal.
Perhaps u could issue a new combined category (where a riders ranked position in all classements(excluding youth) is added up and divided by 3 to produce the best average rider in classements)
rcs, Im not sure I agree. Alberto could have gone for the stage wins but didnt. Schleck did, yes contador got the maillot jaune but perhaps it should reflect the stage successes of riders.
I do think, along with a few posters from above that I would have liked chartreau to recieve KoM points throughout his wearing of the jersey...mountain stage or not. Other than that, spot on guys.
I think there should be more emphasis placed on the overall Tour winners. Since Alberto Contador didn't win a stage, he scored significantly less than Schleck and a handful of other guys further down in the GC.
Shouldn't there be a big bonus for having the race winner (or top 5) on your team?
Also, I hate the idea of changing the point values mid-race. Then, if you don't have time to get to your computer and change your lineup, it could suddenly be over the point total. Plus, it's part of the fun finding the guys that are having a better-than-expected Tour.
italiafirenze - you probably had riders on your roster abandon, and didn't replace them: you only score if you have nine riders.
That being said, we'll be changing that for the next grand tour. riders that abandon will just be greyed out, you'll be able to transfer them for free and the rest of your riders will still score. the 'full roster' rule is simply there to stop people spending 150 credits on their five favourite riders and not filling their squad, but it made the rest of the game more complicated.
you're right bikeandy61, we didn't consistently remove the riders which caused a problem. the main issue is that we couldn't remove them in a transfer window in case teams had already made their transfers. so we're looking at that.
As seems to be a fairly general consensus so far, the system was pretty much spot on first time. Obviously don't want to introduce too many complications. Transfers - really don't think more than 2 would be good. It makes you think about what you are doing. Maybe one "bonus" transfer that could only be played once.
The only negative I had was that I had Charlie Wegelius in my squad for at least one day after he had packed. I assume that was just a human error in deletting him from the list. Really looking forward to the Vuelta even more now.
IMHO too there is no need to abandon the competition if you don't get offered a "big" prize. I'm happy to play it for fun. A t-Shirt or some stikers would be ample (if I were to improve my performance).
Cheers for adding some fun to this years Tour.
Andy S
It seems my team abandoned after Stage 9, no points scored after that?
Did I finish outside the time allowance on a tricky alpe?
loving that sig. i'm not going to shout about my 85th place
I believe the rules were absolutely 100% perfect and do not need to be changed in the future at all ever.
Bring on the next Tour Fantasy League !!!
Need to win a new ride......
Excellent work all round chaps!
Transfers:- could we have the option of reversing/re-doing transfers before the 11am deadline?
Lanterne Rouge - for GC placing please? Then it's there to play for, rather than being a totally random 10 pts.
How about banning anyone who averaged over 80 points per stage, clearly on epo to allow them to think quicker and clearer than the rest of us.
I thought it worked really well, as with JtM I forgot to transfer on a few stages but as it was all for fun I thought it was great, transfers kept me in touch and made me really try and keep up to date with all the domestiques too.
I think it was pretty much sorted from the off.
Another transfer per stage would make the game easier to play.
Re. John the Monkey. I thought it was a good thing that you could pick up a relative unkown for next to nothing but score big points. It allowed me to score well on the prologue and catch up a bit when my expensive rider's bothered-o-meters where on zero.
Also I would like to be able to pick more than two riders from a single team.
Problem was, after a couple of stages, the secret squirrels are no longer a secret, so a rider whose value has actually increased (in that more teams know of him & want him in the squad)can be transferred for his starting value, which seems off to me. (imo, of course).
Got a good start in the prologue but went downhill from there!
Great fun though.
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