FanPost

GIRO STAGE PREDICTOR GAME: Stage 4

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 3

Six of us picked Paolini today, good for a 75-point haul. But that was only good enough for joint 2nd place. With two astute picks in GC riders who can descend and sprint, Seahorse takes the solo win on Stage 3.

Stage 3 top 10:
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With a stage win yesterday and 2nd place today, and having picked the winner of all three stages so far, ther00kie16 takes a well-deserved lead in the cappello rosa competition.

Overall top 30:
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Spreadsheet download with all results

pdf of all results

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Stage 4

Tuesday 7th May

Policastro Bussentino - Serra San Brun 246km

Published start time 11:15 CET

Roadbook
Long stage at 246 km. The first 190 km are mostly flat with slightly rolling sections along the SS18. Road surface in good condition, with some lit tunnels along the race route. The other side of the Lamezia Terme plain, the climb begins towards Maierato and Vibo Valentia (GPM) with very ‘pedalable' gradients despite short, very steep stretches (road surface paved with stone slabs in some villages). Beyond Vibo Valentia, the road descends as far as the final climb up to Croce Ferrata (Intermediate Sprint at Soriano Calabro, the half-way point of the climb) with gradients of around 5%. Stage finish is 7 km after the GPM.

Stage profile

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Vibo Valentia
Cat 3a - 14.9km @3.0% - GPM @39km from finish

Croce Ferrata
Cat 2a - 12.8km @5.5% - GPM @6.7km from finish

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Final kilometres

Roadbook
After the GPM at Croce Ferrata the road loses altitude quite quickly, first narrow and twisting, then from -6 to -3 km along a wide road. Final 3km climbing towards the town centre. At 600m the road narrows and the surface is stone slabs. The finishing straight is 550 m long and 6m wide with a slight upward gradient.

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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.