VDS: Tell us about your team

Glad he won KBK, but after he did nothing last year I’d forgotten about his stupid arrow salute – must remember the “No riders with stupid salutes” rule next year

or, too much. After I nerded out on picking the highest scoring 2009 team, I went quiet and only put together the whole bunch on Friday night. I’m afraid I have more riders who I’d like to do well than who will actually rake in ze big points.

were carefully chosen based on the points earned in the 2009 season. As usual I didn’t pick a high point GC guy, I went with Lance for the fun of it and Cavendish for my sprinter.

I’m in awe of tedvdw’s work for the VDS competition. Here’s my chance to say thanks, it makes the contest so much more fun. Go Nads!

Same “system” as last year – look for 2 & 4 pointers with PPS potential and pray for my mid pointers (6 – 16).

Bargains (IMHO): Yauheni Hutarovich & Frantisek Rabon = 4 pts; Yury Trofimov = 2 pts.
Moderate upsiders: Martin Pedersen, Joost Posthuma & Domenico Pozzovivo (I just like him) = 2 pts

Marcus Burghardt – only 65 teams selected him…hmm?
LA – yeah, I took him. Bring the hate. Listen, I’ve followed him since he was 20. If he says he’s going to do something, he does it…except for retire apparently.

So no Contador/Cav/etc. Then again, I picked Boonen, who might strike some as easy. But I thought he’d pretty much given up on actually, you know, sprinting last year, and am laying in the bet that he’s going to pursue a serious spring campaign. Schleck is my less than even bet that he’s going to be the one who can benefit most from everyone pounding on Contador.

Opted instead to pick 10-20point riders who I expect to get better this year. So, I have
Farrar (I’m on the Wentachee Wonder coolaid)
Gesink (I’m betting he gets better at staying upright)
Kolobnev
Vino (Guy is aggressive, it’s bound to pay off sometime)
Hoogerland
Sastre (I figured strong GC in giro and vuelta was better than a strong gc at the tour only)

Also went for a lot of riders who switched teams to get more leadership. Thus, Henderson, Swift, Michael Barry, Kroon.

Lastly, I was partial to BMC for lower pointt riders as I think they have the opportunity to greatly outperform last year.

… and reviewing my team in the cold light of day it shows…

I’ve got Cav, so that is all well and good, if he actually gets back to form, but then my GC are all hard core “nearly men” who probably wont actually deliver much – Basso, Wiggins, Sastre (now there is a bizarre trio, I grant you). I like the Sastre pick, but the other two I have to wonder what I was thinking…

my team won’t be winning anything unless miracles occur on the roads of Europe.
I loaded up with GC riders after only having Contador last year and a few other smaller names. I have Gesink, Kreuziger, Nibali, Tony Martin, Seeldraeyers and Jackson Rodriguez. Should cover all of the GT’s and should score points in all of them.
It was hard to know what U-26 riders would do since some come out of the wood work and I am regretting some of the decisions I made but the season just started.
My classics team is super this with just guys like EBH, Roelandts and Boom to carry the majority of the load with others having a possibility of scoring. Why didn’t I chose Flens…
Pretty much everybody else on the team is just a random assortment of riders who might do well this year and hopefully in VDS races but I could probably keep my roster for the next 5 years and still score quite well.

added cav for some sure points, farrar in case he starts beating cav, wiggins since he looked fairly cheap and should have some good support this year, fofonov because his name is awesome, and then mostly riders i like/know something about, like horner, cvv, dz nuts… oh yeah, almost forgot, i also picked Jens because i’d hate to find out what happens to people who don’t.

Personal faves and guys who have been on all my VDS teams. When I realized keeping them AND a highpointer (Boonen /A.Schleck were in mind) was going to leave me with tons of no hope 1 pointers I went for a strategy with lots of midpointers. I tried to get some obvious underprized underachievers from 2009.

Sastre and Vande Velde became my GC guys that way, Burghardt and van Avermaet my main cobbles-guys.
Fränk Schleck and Nibali should be money in the bank (heh)

Then there are some who might blossom in new surroundings, Henderson, Kessiakoff , Vansummeren and Craig Lewis (with less in-team competition) .
Some I consider bargains (underprized for whatever reason) are Mollema, Uran, Posthuma
Some Hail Marys are Zabriskie and Igor Anton should be making more points but they are longshots.

Onepointer crapshoot: Alex Rasmussen should be dangerous when he is committed to the road, Rolland is talked up by his DS with not much to show for it before, Santambrogio I blame Chris for (I thought everyone would have him?) Spilak looked so good 2 years ago, it can’t just have been a fluke can it?

The Sentimentals are Löfkvist, Breschel, CAS, Dan Martin and Hutarovich

It’s hard to project AC riding the Vuelta, with his team 2011 situation is in flux, and he possibly will not be motivated to ride anywhere after the TDF wearing an Astana jersey.

For me, he is the rider of the 24+ points guys most able to return 100 points per point. Can AC score 3200 points? Yes, he can.

Can Gilbert and Cancellara score 2800 points? No, they can’t, and therefore they really can’t compete against the good 8-6-4-2-1 point guys, where maybe AC can.

Lot’s of really elite guys on the Armstrong Schedule Plan, where the season ends with the TDF.

so I have no idea who is even on my team(except the big boys like Bert)….I’m sure it will suck ass and have already appropriately named it “ach du scheisse”… or oh shit in a loose translations.

1) Pick guys I like that I think will do well
2) Don’t take more than 30 minutes to select the team

1. accomplished, #1 TDB.

Fucking SBN,……………….

I picked the cycling God that is Christian Knees and some other dudes – now all I do is sit back and watch the points stack up.

“My Knees are killing me” when the points fail to materialize.

A lot of ideas went into setting the prices; two big ideas seem especially relevant while looking ta the teams:

1) I tried my best to make the prices directly proportional according to the points the riders scored last year. So in general a 16 point rider last year scored about half of what the two 32 pointers did last year, 8 pointers scored a fourth, etc. Obviously there were a bunch of adjustments-allowances due to injury and popularity. I did this in hopes that a bunch of players wouldn’t choose just a couple expensive riders and fill out their teams with 1 and 2 pointers. Some folks did that but many didn’t so there seems to me to be more diverse teams. Mission accomplished!

2) For the first time, this year I did not put an automatic surcharge on all Garmin riders. Since this is an american-based website there has always been a bias towards picking american riders and with Garmin’s clean image they tended to get even more play. So in the past I always bumped them up two points (or 1 point for the Garmen who hadn’t scored the year before).

So did it work? Garmin is still the most popular team, easily so in that sense maybe I should have kept the surcharge. On the other hand Zabriskie, always one of the top three favorites, was still just the #2 most popular rider so I am glad he didn’t get picked by more folks. (Honestly I don’t know why Zabriskie wasn’t more popular. As Marlys noted above, he was a big scored in the new races we are including this year, plus the house theft he had last year was also like an injury to him as it kept him out of another stage race and he’s proving himself to be a very good short stage racer, especially when there is a time trial involved. Then again Vlad Karpets being the 4th most popular rider—-did not see that coming at all!)

“I did this in hopes that a bunch of players wouldn’t choose just a couple expensive riders and fill out their teams with 1 and 2 pointers. Some folks did that but many didn’t so there seems to me to be more diverse teams. Mission accomplished!”

Why would you care?

Anyways, too many nice riders from 2009 aren’t well represented in the contest like Thor and Gilbert. Lots of the late season point scorers aren’t here, which could be telling.

The controls on the game, in addition to the expanded calendar has thrown this competition to the domestiques.

Thanks all ambitious efforts anyways. Will be having fun this year, even if feeling douched out of Haussler and EBH.

Before the rules were set I really wanted both Cancellara and Contador. It was had to drop Fabian because I do think he will do better than last year but in the end I had to stick with my #1 love.

A harder decision for me was deciding between Farrar and Breschel. Kept going back and forth. In the end it was the local boy. I feel confident Farrar will do well but so will Breschel and Breschel might outperform him. We’ll know in a month-after P-R.
Oscarito I picked because of his good pre-season and because he was hurt last year. He won’t return to his best years but he’ll be solid.

Both Velits brothers were picked because they transferred to a better managed team. Even being in Cav’s train, they will still get plenty of chances to score on their own because Stapleton is currently the best in the business in sizing up his riders and choosing the right races for them.

Lulu made the team because I find him intriguing, not the least so because he’s a reverse Valverde pick. I’ve written this before: I am counting on the CAS to ban Valverde, opening up the Tour leadership on the team to Lulu but more importantly my reading of what Unzue has said leads me to believe that he thinks the same, and so he is prepping Lulu to score bigger at the Tour.

Van Den Broeck was picked because the lead GC chair at Lotto was opened up for him.

I came close to picking Vande Velde because he left Chicago this winter to train in Hawaii. He should score more this year IMO. But I didn’t pick him because I was getting too top heavy with GC guys and I didn’t want to do that because I wanted more cobbles racers. And I picked Sastre because at 12 points picking him was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Ciolek is the rider I picked who I feel the least good about. I’m expecting him to cost me.

Loaded for the spring classics this year with a three headed monster of Boonen, Ballan and Gilbert, plus a number of supporting types. Points earned in Belgium this weekend: Zero.

but then I realized blonds were expensive, and I kind of just started throwing guys in based on who I like/gut feeling. I guess I’ve tended toward the up and coming young’uns, because it’s fun hoping that someone will have a big breakout season. In fact, I almost definitely have too many young stage-racy climber types. I wanted EBH but couldn’t quite justify the price to myself, so I took Boonen on the hope that he’ll be hungry this year after what happened last year. I needed a 1-pointer at the last minute so I picked Johnnie Walker based on his name, but in retrospect I totally should have bought Martin Velits and called my team “The Hapsburg Empire Strikes Back” – didn’t really plan it, but lots of Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, and an Austrian. Maybe next year.

Was really fast and easy to pick. I had a team I was really happy with. I had Tony, Gibert, Thor, Boonen and GHH. But then “The Man” had to keep me down with all his rules and stuff. So I spent way too much time trying to find guys that might be good and not be douchebags. I’m reasonably happy with my team, but I’m pretty sure De Waele, Konovalovas and Roelants are all in for big years, since they ended up being left off the team.

how did i miss johnnie walker?

went for high priced riders, no middle price, remainder 1 pointers. a schizo strategy that qualified the team for both “prima donna” and “full of hope”. a residual benefit from last year’s vds (other than wearing the yellow jersey) was learning about the younger riders so i enjoy following the 1-2 pointers.

this is a dangerous admission given the stats showing the top picked nationalities and riders, but i broke my number one rule—do not pick an american. dark helmet seemed like a bargain.

… but I think I did. I’m fairly certain I did. I’m going back to bed now.

Obviously, given the name, I had to go French heavy but given the lack of top-end talent (and I’m not sold on Chavanel with Quikstep), it was going to be a lot of small names.

For the top, I think a Lance-free Contador is going to do a LOT of damage this year and was the obvious choice at the top. I decided to focus on stage racing, since I haven’t participated in the previous years, I have no idea if this is a good strategy. To support Contador, I have a well-rounded group made of Gesink, Tony Martin, Nibali and Daniel Martin (Kool-Aid !!!), Taaramae, Deignan, Chicchi and Mollema round up the international crew. For the Frenchies, I just picked names that I had seen around in last year tour or that I had heard talked up around here:
David Le Lay, Jimmy Casper, Brice Feillu, Christophe Le Mevel, Dimitri Champion, Rémi Di Gregorio, Samuel Dumoulin, Amaël Moinard, Maxime Bouet, John Gadret, Alexandre Geniez, Thierry Hupond, Rémi Pauriol, Pierre Rolland, Romain Sicard, Nicolas Vogondy.

Dumoulin and Bouet allow me to not finish at the bottom after this week-end but obviously, March-April will be a rough time for me…

It was interesting. As I was figuring out my team I started shying away from BMC more and more. Not exactly sure why but I just have a bad feeling about them; Evans possibly exempted.

Last year’s “uhmm, yeah, that sounds good” approach was not that bad. So this year I ended up with a team without Swedish riders, but with 3000 Danes and Norwegians and a couple of riders that I don’t really like.

i like the idea, not practical with my name though.

I was one of the 86 teams that despite everything they know about the man, the myth and the legend, felt that two points was still a deal they could not pass up on Bubble Boy

Who’s with me?

The rest of my team is owned by a good portion(~30%) of everyone else’s teams, so success won’t be exclusive. I need the Trio to have a good season in order to have any kind of presence on the leaderboard.

& I only stopped tinkering because I had to. I’m clearly the Claudio Ranieri of VDSs. I guess I ought to have written about Martin Reimer (5 other teams) in the Hidden Gems thread, except I can’t for the life of me remember why he’s on my team. It was just he was still there when the music stopped.

All of my favorites are on it.

if Contador, Basso, Sastre, CVV fail to win or podium a GT this year, I have few guys for the classics as well, Barbie, Devo, Quinzi and Pippo.
Peraud is my dark horse.

are quite inconsequential.

that does interest me will be the cobbles/grand tour balance. Obvy you want a guy who scores in both, which augurs toward the green jersey dudes and the GT winners who sometimes go for classics (at least the ones not staring into the abyss). But I know we’ve pumped up the classics a lot, and I do get the sense a lot of teams focused on classics riders more this year??

My first rule was I could happily root for the team, then I have used the following categories:

Awesome: Tommeke & Spartacus (so cool to root for a guy that wins a sprint while wearing the yellow jersey)

Kool Aid: Farrar, Roche, Mollema, Boom (thanks Chris, Irish Peloton and Frinkles)

I have sympathy for their history (meaning they had a lot of accidents or a humble family or a house stolen: Vande Velde; Horner, Zabriskie, Uran, Oscar Pereiro, Van Impey

Aussie/Baske/Brazilian Love: Gerro, Txurruka and Fischer (this category has intersection with the young guns)

Young Guns: Bobridge, Meyer, Pinaut, Sagan, Selander, Sicard and Velits

Descenders: Nibali, Popo (Nibali gets in for a cool nickname also and Spartacus also fits here)

And the cherry on the cake: the 3rd best climber in the world!!!! His climbness Rujano!! Huahuahua.