Announcing... the Podium Cafe Angliru Quick Challenge!

Time once more to start clearing out the official, 1990s-ish Podium Cafe schwag bag and to launch another contest. I'm getting to like this idea. Look for more contests, including at least one based on offseason transfers. Anyway, without further ado, say hello to the Podium Cafe Angliru Quick Challenge!

Prerequisites to playing: You must be registered with the site, though doing so is easy and I believe can be done entirely without alphanumeric characters, for you privacy warriors. That's it; this contest has nothing to do with the Virtual Directeur Sportif. Lurkers, join and play!

How it works: Guess the top five finishers of stage 13 of the 2008 Vuelta a Espana, the ride to the Alto de l'Angliru, taking place on Saturday, September 13. Whoever does the best job of guessing wins a schwag item of their choice.

Nuts and bolts: This is a first of its kind, but the basics are: picking the winner is worth 25 points; picking the other four slots is worth 20 points for each correct selection. Correctly picking a rider for one of the top five slots, but not the right one (e.g., if you pick Contador to win but he comes second), is worth 5 points. Tiebreakers will be done poker style, e.g. picking 1, 2, and 3 beats 1, 3, and 4. But that's only for tiebreakers.

How do I enter? Send your five names, specifying the order, by email to podiumcafe@yahoo.com. Mention "Angliru" in the subject line, for ease of spam-sifting. Do this by Friday, September 12, noon Pacific. I will accept changes to early entries right up until the deadline, just as we do with the VDS. Try to keep them to a minimum, but do feel free to swap out Rider XXX after he crashes on stage 2.