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FSA-DS: One Week To Go Warning!

Deadline is next Friday, February 22nd at 9pm Pacific, 12 midnight Eastern, Feb 23rd at 5am, GMT. Don't be late!

By ursula

One week to go to submit your teams for the FSA-DS, and people...I don't know about you but I am geting seriously torqued about whoever set these prices! Gah! I'd set him straight if I ever got a chance to meet him! Grrrrrrr.

Anyway, while we are collectively fretting about our teams and, what's that? People have already submitted their teams? How could they? Do these people live in some calm bubble where they can just pick riders' names and go on with their lives? I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

But, yes, that happens. In fact let's bow down to the people who submitted the first me's and womens teams:

- First womens team: sqclarke is the team owner, "Golden Eagle" is the team name, one of five women's teams submitted on the opening day of the competition.

- First mens team was submitted by vickic with the team name "individual time trial" was the first of 28 teams submitted on the opening day too.

So those of us who are carefully researching their teams: if any of these 1st day submissions gets anywhere close to winning, you know what that says about all of your research? Yes you do.

Let's look at some stuff while we are here. Most popular riders so far. What? You think I'm gonna tell you who is most popular? Piss off! But I will note how popular the most popular are and compare them to last year's most popular riders. Note that for this I am combining the teams that have already submitted and the teams that are works in progress so these numbers and percentages will vary a bit in the next week.

For the men, here were the most popular riders and the percentage of teams they were on. The first name is the rider who was most popular last year (Boonen) followed the % of teams he was on. Then the most popular rider from this year (rider A) followed by the percentage of teams they are on. Then repeat for the second most popular riders, etc.

  1. Boonen 46.5% of all teams Rider A 37.1% of all teams
  2. Renshaw 36.9% Rider B 33.9%
  3. Van Den Broeck 36.6% Rider C 30.1%
  4. Greipel 33.5% Rider D 30.09%
  5. Porte 30.9% Rider E 29.2%
  6. Sagan 30.8% Rider F 27.2%
  7. Brajkovic 32.2% Rider G 27.0%
  8. Roche 30.2% Rider H 26.4%
  9. De Gendt 26.4% Rider I 23.4%
  10. JJ Haedo 25.9% Rider J 20.0%
Several interesting things here.

- I very much like the fact that there is no Boonen type ultra popular rider this year. Add to that that all of the 10 most popular riders this year are respectively les popular than their counterparts from a year ago and I am one happy price fixer. Hopefully we will see among this year's top teams very different teams. Hopefully.

- Popular riders are all over the price spectrum. Expensive guys and 1 pointers and several different price points in between. Oh and the most popular riders from last year is quite a bit different than this year.

- I could say a whole lot more-a helluva lot more-but I will wait a week when we have a countdown live thread. Now the women:
  1. Vos 40.1% Rider A 41.5%
  2. Fahlin 34.7% Rider B 37.8%
  3. Hughes 31.4% Rider C 32.6%
  4. Armistead 29.8% Rider D 29.6%
  5. Stevens 27.7% Rider E 29.6%
  6. Arndt 25.2% Rider F 29.6%
  7. Ferrand-Prevot 24.8% Rider G 25.8%
  8. Bronzini 24.4% Rider H 25.2%
  9. Teutenberg 24.0% Rider I 22.0%
  10. Pooley 23.6% Rider J 21.1%
- For the women with this being the second year, I think we are still in a feeling out process.However, even though it seems like the players here have more of a consensus on who to pick, the reality is more complicated than that. You'll see in a week!


All right. That's just a taste of both competitions. remember to get your teams on in time. Let's keep talking about our teams and riders and in a week all wil be revealed-except of course the best teams. For that we need to play out the season.

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