Monday 14th May

San Giorgio del Sannio - Frosinone 166km

STRICT DEADLINE = STAGE START TIME 13:20 CET

Steve's preview at Steephill:

Although this stage should end in a sprint in Frosinone, at 5 km from the finish things will get interesting. There are twists and turns and a 2 km descent on a wide 4% gradient road. The last 2km are flat but the twists and turns continue up to the final corner at the 200m marker. So look for a strung out sprint finish.

Stage 8 Results

Pozzovivo, Intxausti, J-Rod.

Domenico Pozzovivo attacked the large group of favorites at the steepest part of the climb, and a 25 second gap at the summit was more than enough to hold off the hard-chasing Intxausti, with the pack just behind.

Honorable mention to Amsterdam Admirals, kom vuelta and wannabe_scatista who shared the 1st place bonus for Pozzovivo. But VirtKitty continues to toy with the ball of yarn that is the Stage Predictor Game. Scooping up the entire bonus for Intxausti and with J-Rod too, she wins a third consecutive stage. VirtKitty is now 10 points clear of wannabe_scattista in the cappello rosa competition, with a tight pack led by pablo777 a further 10 points behind.

Link to spreadsheet

Rules

For each stage, pick three riders. The order of your picks does not matter.

The first three riders on the stage score. The basic score is stage winner 4 points, second place 2 points, third 1 point.

In addition there are bonus points awarded. Stage winner bonus is 24 points, second place bonus 12 points, third place bonus 6 points. The bonus points are split equally among all the DS's who picked that rider.

The entry deadline is the official start time of the stage. Now, people may want to be sneaky and change their picks before the stage starts when they see what other people's picks look like. That's fine, it's a normal part of the game and quite acceptable - but we'll allow strictly one change. You can change all three riders if you want, but it has to be in one new post. If you want to make a change, post it as a reply to your original post.

If you miss making an entry for a stage, no problem, you're still in the competition - you just score zero for that stage. Also, there's no limit to how early you can make picks, so if you're going on vacation, feel free to enter ahead of time for as many stages as you want.