A Christmas Preview of 2018 FSA-DS: the Animals Can Talk at Midnight!

I’ve always found that one of our universe’s most interesting quirks is that when the clock strikes midnight to begin Christmas day animals gain the ability to speak in the local language for exactly one hour. There’s several interesting corollaries derive from that basic fundamental fact. For instance even tough the idea of time zones is a 20th century thing, animals worldwide gain their speaking ability when the clock strikes midnight in their time zone. Before time zones existed, animals would gain their speaking abilities according to the local time. Its like time zones are the 4.5th dimension or something. Another corollary is that the animals want most to talk about FSA-DS.

Depending on their species of they talk about FSA-DS differently. Cats speak of the Black Unicorn and injuring various riders to the benefit of their team. Dogs just cannot believe that any rider would use a motor and if you bring it up with them they start wingeing more than Fabian Cancellara (who is their God). Elk fondly recall how Cadel was once a mountain biker like themselves and are frustrated that Ondrej Cink didn’t pan out.

Overall though they are just as excited as humans to see the unveiling of the 2018 rider price list. So below and for the animals reading this, I give a little tease on how the price list is shaping up. If you have any questions, comments, or reactions, let me know in the comments section and also please state what species you are!

RESTRICTED RIDERS

We got a whole bunch of ‘em. 41 in fact! NONE of them are Mark Cavendish which will make some animals happy. In fact there MIGHT be 10 sprinters that are more expensive than His Oldness. Hopefully he remembers how to get on a bike.

Pop Quiz: Name the 41 restricted riders.

19 of the 41 are double restricted. Geez. I am making this SO easy.

But wait! you say. What are you doing with Froome and won’t Froome’s case affect the prices of other GC guys? The way I’m handing Froome is...ignoring it. I am pricing the riders as if Froome’s case isn’t hanging over him/them. Cause as you know the UCI and TAS ALWAYS handle cases such as this super quick and efficiently and we all expect this case to be figured out before the VDS season gets going.

/s

But really what else can we do? If the past indicates anything, this case will drag on into the season so you, oh VDS player, will have to guess on what the outcome might be. But if Froome’s case gets all figured out before this game goes live then I will adjust things depending on the outcome. Right now though I have Froome priced as a potential double Grand Tour winner: expensive.

More on the restricted riders. Here’s the team breakdown:

1. Quickstep has 5 riders restricted. No, none of them are Boonen. He’s not coming back. Sorry. There’s no Santa Claus either.
2. UAD has 4 restricted riders.
3. Movistar, Sky, Orica, UAE, and Sunweb have 3 riders each
4. FDJ, Lotto Soudal, Lotto Jumbo, Trek, AG2R, BMC, Katusha, and Bahrain have 2 each
5. Cannondale, and Cofidis and Dimension Data have just 1 rider with Cofidis being the only Pro Conty team with a restricted rider.

Of the restricted riders the rider with the lowest 2017 score rides for BMC. One guess as to who it is and if you guess “GVA” you are hereby banned from watching any cobbles races this year.

Now here’s a big clue on how the pricing is a little different than last year:

Last year‘s most popular rider, who cost 8 points, costs 8 points this year too. Do the math. Cheap riders are cheaper than ever and expensive riders are, well, if you have to ask....

Just a little over a month to go before the unveiling of the price list and the Making of Teams!