Prologue, Sat 30th June. Liège, 6.4km ITT.

The Tour de France Stage Predictor Game is underway. For the prologue only, the entry deadline is extended beyond the stage start time. Your entry just needs to be timestamped before the earliest of your three picks leaves the start ramp.

Prologue flyover video

Prologue preview from Steve at Steephill

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Prizes

Holmovka is once again kindly providing prizes, details to follow. We'll call the leader of our competition the casquette jaune, although I'm not yet sure if first prize will actually be a cap. These were the fabulous trophies and prizes for the Giro competition - the cappello rosa awarded to the winner was autographed by Sergey Lagutin.

Rules

Pick 3 riders for the stage, the order of your picks doesn't matter.

That's all you need to know to play. If you miss making an entry for a stage you score zero for that stage, but you're still in the competition - so even if you missed a stage or two, feel free to join any time.

The points awarded are higher for less popular picks, as follows:
[ EDIT: note the slightly adjusted point schedule due to the large number of entries ]

The first 6 riders on a stage score points, 2nd-6th place score 60%, 40%, 30%, 20%, 10% of above.

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Example Result

The sliding scale in points makes things more interesting than just picking the 3 obvious favorites for a stage. For example, in a flat sprint stage the result might look like this:

Here, two unpopular outsiders (Van Hummel, Renshaw) who picked up decent placings scored better than the obvious favorites that almost everyone picked (Cav, Sagan).

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Entry Deadline

The STRICT entry deadline is the official start time of the stage - timestamp one minute late, your entry doesn't count. Subject to the deadline, you may change any or all of your picks, but only one time, in a single reply to your original post.