First off, a couple housekeeping matters: the new spreadsheets for the last week are up. No change at the top. Also, I will award a prize of some nature to the overall leader after Liege-Bastogne-Liege, so you all have two weeks to dethrone Jered. As for the main course...
Newcomers and Fence-Sitters: Join the Action!
As announced a month ago, we will have special Virtual Directeur Sportif competitions for each of the individual Grand Tours. The first of these, the Giro d'Italia competition, begins along with the race in less than four weeks, so I'm going to open the competition now.
- 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 Giro-Only competition... for the simple reason that you already have one.
[N.b.: this is one competition, including all the teams from the yearlong comp as well as all the Giro-Only teams. The following rules should place you all on a level playing field... but if for some reason the year-longers have an advantage over the Giro-only teams, or vice versa, I will create separate prizes somehow.]
- How does it work? For the Giro-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.
[N.b.: ten riders/50 points = 5pts per rider. In the yearlong it was 150/25 = 6 pts per rider. Fair? Probably... because the Giro-only people will be able to pick guys who are actually riding the Giro. But like I said, we'll see.]
- 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 Friday, May 2, Noon Pacific. My email address is:
vdsentry2008@yahoo.com
For a variety of other information or to check in on how things are going in the yearlong comp, go here or use the VDS link in the Menu sidebar. Good luck!