This is not to be missed. A startlist almost worthy of a Monument includes Cancellara, Sagan, Moser, Betancur, Evans, Phinney, Van Avermaet, Pozzato, Cunego, Kolobnev, Paolini, & Boom; plus Valverde starting his first race in Italy in six years.

All welcome to play

This the second race of the Classics Predictor Game, similar in concept to our GT stage predictor game. There's no commitment to a season-long team of riders here. Instead, you pick 4 riders that you like for each spring classic, one race at a time. There's a season leaderboard for 13 spring cobbled & hilly classics through to Liege-Bastogne-Liege, but you're also welcome to play for any standalone race.

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This is all you need to know to play

Pick 4 riders that you like for this race and post them in a comment below, the order doesn't matter. Riders score points down to 10th place. Less obvious riders are worth considering: if they get a decent top-10 result, they can score more points in this game than a big-name favorite.

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Entry deadline Saturday 11:30 CET (5:30am EST)

The deadline is half an hour after the race start, before the first of the 8 unpaved sectors. If you enter after the race starts you can't pick anyone in a break! Earlier entrants are not disadvantaged - you're free to change your picks (but just once, please) until the entry deadline. Do this in a reply to your original entry.

CyclingFever startlist

Results history

Official Site

Last 20km:

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RESULTS

Our winner for this race was Ed K, with Moser, Sagan and Van Avermaet. Here are the top 10 scorers for Strade Bianche, with special mention to Toadie for all 4 picks in the top10.

Ed K also took the lead in the overall season competition:

pdf of Strade Bianche results

Excel spreadsheet of all results

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Scoring details

All 4 of your riders can score.

The top 10 finishers score points according to this basic scale from race winner down to 10th place:
100-60-50-40-30-25-20-15-10-5

However, if riders of all abilities scored the same, we'd all just be picking the big favorites all the time. So we multiply the scale above by a rider's payoff percentage based on the number of players that pick him. More picks, lower payoff.

If you're not familiar with this kind of scoring scheme from the Giro & TdF Stage Predictor games last year, just play along for a couple of races and it will soon make sense. All you need to do is pick the 4 riders that you like for the race. A good strategy might be to go for two big names and two outsiders that you fancy for a breakout result.