While Omloop Eve is drawing ever closer, there were some rumblings over on my 5 to watch post over the last week about a possible U-25 VDS league. I jumped all over the idea (originally proposed by Lopex) and created a spreadsheet and a few simple rules. I will task myself with all of the score keeping as a lot of the scoring relies on the FSA DS scores but all of this will be explained in full.

The whole purpose of this game is to give some of these younger guys some attention. All riders 4 points and above are excluded from this game. No Sagan, EBH, Phinney, etc. I want to give a the spotlight to younger guys who aren't priced quite as high but still have a ton of talent...Trust me, it will be fun!

With that, lets go to the flip and get all this explained! =]

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Merde! As I look at the country flags from proposed FSA DS teams, one country seems to be largely ignored: France.

Yes France. The country that held the first bike race. The country that invented gothic art, the guillotine, codeine, the rabies vaccine, the oboe, the bikini, and, without a doubt, the country that perfected polka dots (yes ant1, you should click this link).

Here are 5 French cyclists (and a couple of bonus picks) that should make every FSA DS team better - or at least far more fun to support.

[All this week we will be featuring different angles on playing our year-long fantasy game, the FSA Directeur Sportif. Remember, deadlines for submitting your teams are Feb 22 for the women and Feb 24 for the men. Don't miss out!]

Photo*: Thomas Voeckler being awesome, 2011 Paris-Nice.

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A friend* of mine tipped me of on a quite interesting study conducted by a Belgian economist. Daam Van Reeth studied how a number of different variables - like the parcourse, doping news, uncertainty about the outcome, and patriotism - influence the TV audience during Tour de France. He only use data from Flemish television, but since Podium Cafe is the site where people dream of Belgium, we might learn something from the study anyway.

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As part of my annual delusion that I will eventually manage to spend more time on my bike and less time getting fat, drunk and stupid, I am thinking of getting myself a decent bike computer. By "decent" I mean one that will stop me getting lost. I have a Garmin 200 Edge, but it doesn't have live mapping to show you where you are, how far you are from home, and whether there are any emergency bail out points anywhere beyond this ****ing hill. As I have the sense of direction of a blind marble, this needs fixing.

Clearly, upgrading to the Edge 800 would do the trick, but at £500+ it is a bit pricy (a bit???). Also, I know that my iPhone can do the trick, but being my iPhone, if I ask it to do something complicated it will comply smartly, quickly and efficiently - for about 2 hours, whereupon it will huddle up into a small, power-free ball, and whimper "no more".

So I was wondering if there is a relatively cheap option which would give me the mapping and other basics, but not require me to sell a kidney and / or a G-pack (sorry - been watching too much Wire).

Any suggestions gratefully received.

(They don't like it--and have let us know.)

Picture of Euskaltel-Euskadi in action at the Tour de France 2011: By VirtKitty [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Yes, the Tour of Oman is on from Feb 14 -19 and here we will get a first glimpse of the competitive nature of the current crop of tier 1 fastmen. Everybody knows Cav is pretty quick, but how far behind are Greipel and Kittel this year? Ok, this is an early season race, and we may hear lame excuses, but the action here could be vital information, if you plan to select a top end sprinter in the FSA DS game.

There are several flattish stages in the race. Stage 6 below:

via www.letour.fr

More info below the cut:

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Is it too early for a post like this?

Nahh, it's never too early to dream of the Giro. Especially not with the teams already announced. While we won't know exact squads for a couple of months, of course, we can surmise who will attend. And that's got me thinking...

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Podium Cafe is a magical place where people of all nations gather in peace and harmony to talk cycling, and happy little internet gnomes translate tweets and articles for us. So it's no surprise that we have our very own unicorns, too! And they're ready and willing to help you pick your 2012 FSA DS team.

Because, face it--it's a hard task. Is Eddy worth the premium, especially now that he's given up the yellow shoes? Does a victory in Qatar prove Boonen is back to his winning ways, or are early-season SSR results meaningless? How's Renshaw going to do now that he's not towing Cav to the front? How many freaking points can Bert rack up after August 6th, anyway?

Take the anxiety out of it and ask the unicorns instead! Go to the links below, enter a name in the box, and see what they have to say. There. Now you have time to obsess over your women's team properly.

Are you pure of heart and full of sparkling goodness? Ask the White Unicorn!

Um, not so much? Ask the Black Unicorn!

Somewhere in between? Try 'em both, and average the two! It's still better than spending hours hunched over a spreadsheet. And, sadly, in my experience has at least as much predictive value.

BROWSER NOTE: The unicorns work for me in Safari, IE, and Firefox. For some reason, they utterly refuse to answer in Chrome (perhaps you consider selling your Google stock?). Your mileage may vary--the internet is weird. But I thought I should warn you. Thanks to the incredible help of SuperTed, the unicorns should now work in ALL browsers! I so owe Ted a beer. Or three.

Picture credits: Virgin Majope and Unicorn, Domenichino [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; Abduction of Prosperine on a Unicorn, Albrecht Dürer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

So I figured that there might be one or two people out there that are looking at this FSA DS (formerly VDS) thing and thinking that it seems too complicated or requires too much effort or something. So as I have successfully completed two FSA DS Seasons, and I must say this is the easiest game around (much thanks to SuperTed for his Brilliant site). The rules and everything are on the FSA DS Site I thought I would go for some pointers on team construction.

Am I qualified to help? Define Qualified, If you need a past winner, not me. if you need someone who has finished in the top 50, again not me. Going on the basis that those who can't do teach (not a slag on teachers, wonderful souls those), I must be eminently qualified. I have finished in the top 150 and top 100 so I don't totally suck.

Tips on the Flips.

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I'm sure many of you might be struggling with your FSA DS rosters at the moment, especially with some of those pesky 1-2 point riders. As painful and frustrating as it was for people who had Peter Velits (74 points at a cost of 10) or Glorious Heinrich Haussler (290 points at 12 points) last year, you can mitigate some of that pain by making a sweet 1 or 2 points pick. The focus here is on newbies...guys that are wet behind the ears still in the sink or swim world that is cycling. There will be a breakdown of newbies from the past and then 5 (or so) guys that I'll

Now, let's do this...

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