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GIRO STAGE PREDICTOR GAME: Stage 8

It's Giro time, and the Stage Predictor Game is back. Everyone is welcome to play. Feel free to join with us at any time and compete for stage wins, but most important will be the hotly-contested overall competition. Since last year's winner got a pink Giro cap signed by Sergey Lagutin, we'll continue the tradition and call the overall competition the cappello rosa. Courtesy of the ever-generous holmovka, there are again some fabulous prizes and trophies:

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Results Stage 7

Wow, this Giro isn't slowing down. Benzene stays upright to take a fine solo stage win on a wild day. One of three players to get the big points from Battaglin, and scoring also with the best finishers of the elite GC riders in Santambrogio and Evans.

Stage 7 top 10:
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Seahorse has done it, taking her first cappello rosa! After sticking around the top of the overall standings for several days with some strong results, sentiment goes out the window, and a cold-hearted pick of Di Luca makes the difference. I've never seen it so close at the top of the overall standings, with Palm Pro Cycling only 6 points back, and Benzene's stage win taking him up to 3rd overall and only 11 points off the lead.

Overall top 30:

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Spreadsheet download with complete results

pdf of complete results for last 3 stages

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Stage 8

Saturday 11th May

Gabicci Mare - Saltara 54.8km ITT

Published start time 12:20 CET 12:10 CET
The start time has been changed. I'll allow entries up until the original published start time of 12:20 CET provided the entries don't include any rider who has already started at the time of posting.

Roadbook
54.8 km time trial. First 24 km on Monte di Gabicce: climb, false flat and descent, continuous left and right bends with no straight sections worthy of note. Crossing of Pesaro (split time point) with some sections of narrow road with road surface in paving slabs. A mostly flat section follows as far as the short climb (steep in parts) at Novilara. There follow several kilometres of narrow roads, sometimes descending with technical bends, leading to the long straight of Via Flaminia. After about 12 straight and mostly flat kilometres the final climb begins.

Stage profile

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Finishing climb

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Useful links

Gazetta Giro home page

Download "Garibaldi" official roadbook (huge file 92Mb)

Steephill Giro page

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Rules

Pick 4 riders for the stage, the order of your picks doesn't matter. All your riders can score.

Riders score points down to 10th place. Less popular riders score more points than heavily-picked favorites. See below for scoring details.

The strict entry deadline is the official start time of the stage. There's no disadvantage to getting your entry in early, since you may always change your picks before the deadline. Feel free to revise your picks when you see which riders are more or less popular with other players. Post changes in a reply to your original post.

Scoring

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. The highest possible payoff for a really unlikely outsider picked by less than 5% of players is 100% of the scale above; the lowest possible payoff for a hot favorite picked by more than 80% of players is 15% of the the scale above.

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For example, here's the result from Stage 1:

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If you're not familiar with this kind of scoring scheme from previous games, just play along for a few stages and it will soon make sense. All you need to do is pick 4 riders that you like for the stage - maybe go for two obvious favorites and try two outsiders that you fancy for a decent top-10 result.