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. [Update] Courtesy of the ever-generous holmovka, there are again some fabulous prizes and trophies:
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Results Stage 2
An unusual set of results, with none of the top favorites except Sky performing. The high scoring picks were Movistar in 2nd and Katusha in 4th; and potentially Vini-Fantini and Lampre, although none of us foresaw those two beating Garmin et al.
"sparta and ther00kie16 share the stage win, both picking the entire podium, not an easy task today, plus Garmin.
Fausto Coppi's Handsaw came a close 3rd on the stage, and takes the lead in the overall cappello rosa competition.
Spreadsheet download with all results
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Stage 3
Monday 6th May
Sorrento - Marina di Ascea 222km
Published start time 11:40 CET
Roadbook
Stage divided into three parts. The first on the Amalfi peninsula with a circuit to be covered twice before passing San Pietro and following the coast to Salerno. From Salerno (intermediate sprint), largely straight and fl at roads to Agropoli (intermediate sprint). The fi nal part in Cilento has many curves. It rises and falls continuously. There are two GPMs with technical descents, the second of which levels out 1500 m from the finish line.
Stage profile
San Mauro Cilento
Cat 2a - 7.8km @6.7% - GPM @69km from finish
Sella di Catona
Cat 3a - 8.0km @6.6% - GPM @20km from finish
The Giro roadbook looks incorrect in saying that this climb rises 526m in 8km, I think it's a typo, since the preceding climb does rise 526m. climbbybike.com has the following, pretty much all big-ring stuff.
Final kilometres
Roadbook
The final kilometres are descending with demanding sections on well-surfaced roads of medium width. The final 1.500 m are flat with a finishing straight 400 m long and 6 m wide, surfaced with asphalt.
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Useful links
Download "Garibaldi" official roadbook (huge file 92Mb)
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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.
Here's an example result, based on last year's Stage 1:
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.