2008 Virtual Directeur Sportif: Tour de France Competition!

Newcomers and Fence-Sitters: Join the Action!

Welcome to the Podium Cafe's internal competition, where you become a directeur sportif and select a team of riders for the Tour de France and hope they accumulate more points than other such teams, whereupon we all sing your praises and send you a wool jersey in about six months. It's like fantasy sports, only with a less creepy name. Note, there is a year-long competition ongoing, and all those teams are entered into the Tour de France competition. For the grand tours, we also reopen the competition for people who aren't playing all year, to enter a team. Hooray! 

To the relief of at least me, the Giro-only VDS competition results (see left sidebar, down a bit) did not show any distinct advantage in the interplay between the year-long players and Giro-only players. Basically, the competition favored whoever drafted Emanuele Sella. So the format for the Tour-Only Competition will be essentially identical to what we just did. Without further ado:

• What the hell is it? The Podium Cafe Virtual Directeur Sportif Competition is a fantasy-sports-like event where you select a roster of riders and accumulate points based on their actual results. The team with the most points gets a prize, despite having paid nothing to enter. Last year, thanks to generous donations, winners received wool jerseys.
  
• Can I Play? Yep. The only prerequisite is that you create a login here at the Podium Cafe (and that login doesn't really require any information, though I urge people to provide working email addresses). But! If you already have a team entered in the year-long competition, you cannot enter a team in the Tour-Only competition... for the simple reason that you already have one.
  
• How does it work? For the Tour-only VDS competition, you select a roster of TEN riders, and you have 50 points to spend. Open this spreadsheet to see how much each rider will cost you. If a rider isn't listed, his cost is 1 point. You must pick ten riders and spend your points within that budget.
• Who Should I Pick? Well, that's for you to decide, but here's how the points will be awarded:

Final GC (top 20): 600-450-375-325-300; 275-250-225-200-175; 150-135-120-105-90; 75-60-45-30-15
Final Points Jersey (top 5): 120-90-60-40-20
Final Other Jerseys (top 3): 60-40-20
Stage placings (top 5): 80-50-35-20-10 (TTT's: each rider finishing with team gets 20%)
Jersey Holders each day: GC 20pts; others 10pts

• How Do I Enter? Email me your roster by Wednesday, July 2, Noon Pacific. The email address is: vdsentry2008@yahoo.com.

For more information, explore the competition HERE or click on the Virtual Directeur Sportif section for more articles. Enjoy!