You've been informed/warned of the impending registration deadline for the Virtual Directeur Sportif Tour de France-Only Contest, which closes next Wednesday, July 2. Follow the link for details, and join our game. But, alas, we're not the only game in town. If you're looking to spice up July, compare and contrast the following options, and choose one or all accordingly...

The VDS! 

The Podium Cafe's original contest, free of creepy-sounding, overused references to "fantasy." Sure, a Tour-only team only gets you a spot in the contest for the race among the 150+ year-long players, but you'd be surprised how few of them actually know anything about the sport.

Pros: Free, simple, not too competitive, nice wool jersey to the winner.

Cons: Risk humiliation in the forums of the Podium Cafe. Also, a number of us are pretty bitter. Particularly the ones with Petacchi eating up 10% of the budget.

Cycling Fever Tour de France Challenge

Our friend DZI is once again running the internet's most sophisticated, free Cycling virtual contest around. Cycling Fever Tour de France Challenge Register, pick your guys, and watch the points roll in! There are sprint challenges, stage challenges, and of course an overall. Better still, Cycling Fever is now offering private groups for mini-competitions among friends within the overall competition, and have created a special Podium Cafe group!

Pros: Free, prizes, sophisticated, ideal for people who want a more hands-on experience.

Cons: Members mostly Dutch, maybe Flemish too(?), and they seem to know an awful lot about Cycling. Translation: I have no chance of winning. Do you?

Fantasy Le Tour Competition (UK) 

I'm not entirely sure who runs this, though it's advertised on CyclingNews.com. Don't quote me on all the rules, read up here instead. Seems like a nice, sophisticated game. If you pay.

Pros: Big prizes. Can't be all bad if CyclingNews is involved.

Cons: Reference to "fantasy." Costs €10.50 per team ($725.44 US) to play. Lacking in personal touches. Where's the love?

The new post-Dauphine standings are in, with little change. Congrats to Herman for sneaking back onto the podium, for now, and to Jered for his continued excellence in lucky fake-bike team decisionmaking. One thing about picking a Tour de France contender for your team is knowing that they can also score some easy points in June while they tune their form... as all four Valverde owners know. Whether this is enough to propel the likes of Crevaison and Pigilito up the standings remains to be seen.

Full year-long and Dauphine-only spreadsheets at the links in the left sidebar.

Newcomers and Fence-Sitters: Join the Action!

Welcome to the Podium Cafe's internal competition, where you become a directeur sportif and select a team of riders for the Tour de France and hope they accumulate more points than other such teams, whereupon we all sing your praises and send you a wool jersey in about six months. It's like fantasy sports, only with a less creepy name. Note, there is a year-long competition ongoing, and all those teams are entered into the Tour de France competition. For the grand tours, we also reopen the competition for people who aren't playing all year, to enter a team. Hooray! 

To the relief of at least me, the Giro-only VDS competition results (see left sidebar, down a bit) did not show any distinct advantage in the interplay between the year-long players and Giro-only players. Basically, the competition favored whoever drafted Emanuele Sella. So the format for the Tour-Only Competition will be essentially identical to what we just did. Without further ado:

• What the hell is it? The Podium Cafe Virtual Directeur Sportif Competition is a fantasy-sports-like event where you select a roster of riders and accumulate points based on their actual results. The team with the most points gets a prize, despite having paid nothing to enter. Last year, thanks to generous donations, winners received wool jerseys.
  
• Can I Play? Yep. The only prerequisite is that you create a login here at the Podium Cafe (and that login doesn't really require any information, though I urge people to provide working email addresses). But! If you already have a team entered in the year-long competition, you cannot enter a team in the Tour-Only competition... for the simple reason that you already have one.
  
• How does it work? For the Tour-only VDS competition, you select a roster of TEN riders, and you have 50 points to spend. Open this spreadsheet to see how much each rider will cost you. If a rider isn't listed, his cost is 1 point. You must pick ten riders and spend your points within that budget.
• Who Should I Pick? Well, that's for you to decide, but here's how the points will be awarded:

Final GC (top 20): 600-450-375-325-300; 275-250-225-200-175; 150-135-120-105-90; 75-60-45-30-15
Final Points Jersey (top 5): 120-90-60-40-20
Final Other Jerseys (top 3): 60-40-20
Stage placings (top 5): 80-50-35-20-10 (TTT's: each rider finishing with team gets 20%)
Jersey Holders each day: GC 20pts; others 10pts

• How Do I Enter? Email me your roster by Wednesday, July 2, Noon Pacific. The email address is: vdsentry2008@yahoo.com.

For more information, explore the competition HERE or click on the Virtual Directeur Sportif section for more articles. Enjoy!

 Barring math errors, check the left sidebar for your final Giro VDS results. Congratulations Vamos Alejandro! It was pretty tight, with Pigs on Wheels falling a mere 22 points short. Nobody wants to check my math... except maybe the Pigs. Anyway, I haven't done much analysis, but I'll be surprised if there's a single team in the top 10 that didn't have Sella, who edged out Ricco for most points. Personally, I have little to say; Ricco kept my squad afloat, but otherwise it was over early. As for the rest of you... Let the recriminations begin!

Whoops! Thanks to a spelling problem, Josep Jufre Pou's points in the Volta had gone missing. And now that they're back, Pigs on Wheels is down to 4th, just, behind Team Davis Wheelworks. Betcha can't guess who figured out my error. Sorry Pigs for misleading you... but it's a long season.

Latest results are posted in the left sidebar, along with a link that (hopefully) will allow everyone to peruse the whole spreadsheet. I personally have nothing to discuss, though I suspect others will be more than happy to engage. I still hold out hope that Ricco will be the VDS MVP, with a real shot at three jerseys, and a seemingly clear path to the young rider at a minimum. Not that that will change much for me. Alas...

Anyway, take heart several of you, the winning teams probably haven't shown their hands yet.