Geelong Game - A world's fantasy game

Rejoice, rejoice, for the battle of the rainbows is upon us once again. On 3 October the best, the brightest and those fortunate enough to be born in a nation sans cyclists will be fighting it out for the title of best road racer of the year. The course in Geelong, Australia has been described as Brabantse Pijl Down Under, the Canadian races at the other side of the world or Flanders without cobbles. The race is 263 kilometers long and the local circuit includes one nasty hill, one slightly less nasty hill and a bit of an uphill finish. You can read more about it at Ed’s excellent site, here.

If you are sat reading this thinking "oh, I so know who’d be perfect for this", you’re in luck. Playing this Geelong Game will let you proof that you know exactly what you’re talking about.

You will do so by picking a team of ten cyclists to defend your honour. They must all race for different countries. And the total cost of your team must not exceed 75 points.

The cost of each rider has been determined using two factors: their team cost and their individual cost. The team cost is easy: it’s exactly the same as the amount of riders their country gets to send. So Mark Cavendish’ team cost will be 3 points, André Greipel’s will be nine. For their individual cost, I scored the top ten for 16 different races. Choosing the races was more difficult than it was last year, but I think the result turned out ok (in as much that you will not be able to afford Gilbert unless the rest of your team is crap).

The sixteen races were: Brabantse Pijl 2010, 2009 and 2008, MSR 2010, 2009 and 2008, World Champs Varese, World Champs Mendrisio, Paris-Tours 2009 and 2008, Vattenfall Cyclassics 2010, 2009 and 2008, Gent-Wevelgem 2010, 2009 and 2008. You can find the full scores at the end of this file.

The top ten highest scorers are:

1. GILBERT Philippe 35

2. FREIRE GOMEZ Oscar 30

3. DAVIS Allan 25

4. PETACCHI Alessandro 21

.FARRAR Tyler 21

6. WEGMANN Fabian 20

. BENNATI Daniele 20

8. BRESCHEL Matti 18

. PAOLINI Luca 18

10. MCEWEN Robbie 17

. BOONEN Tom 17

. CANCELLARA Fabian 17

75 points may not seem a like a lot to spend, but all my test subjects managed (thank you, trusty test subjects), so so can you. Have faith in thyself. The complete team selections aren’t in yet, so keep downloading this file or keeping checking this page – wherever you’re reading this – as it’ll be updated with all the selections as they come in.

Now, on to the way to win. The key to this game is time. The time of your six best finishers will be added, lowest sum wins. Don’t worry, out of the 30 something teams that played last year only one – R2D2’s Team Random – had less than six finishers. There are time bonifications at the line too: 30s for the first rider and then 20, 15, 10 and 5 seconds for the second to fifth place. In case of a tie he or she who predicted the most positions right wins. If there's a still a tie after that the highest correct prediction wins (so he who correctly predicted first, third and ninth spot will win over he who got fifth, seventh and eighth right). If there's still a tie after that we'll have joint winners.

To play, you can email your team to subconsciouscycling at gmail dot com. You can also post them in the discussion forums used to discuss the game, but your participation won’t count unless you email it. I learned that from last year you know: centralization makes gs go less something something. Deadline: when September ends, whenever that is in your part of the world.

If you wanna read all this again but on a different webpage, click here.

All the data, costs and such, will magically appear if you click this link.