FSA-DS Winter/Summer Final Results!

Yesterday crack PdC poster asked THE question, “Can we vote on whether or not we should count the races from the TdU until Omloop for VDS this year?”

Hmm, I thought. The voting part sucks cause would take too long but he’s got an idea there. So I woke up this morning and started adding races into the FSA-DS calendar. And then I couldn't stop and I added results to those races and look! Here we are!

Lemme back up a sec. The first thing I did was add in all the winter races that would have qualified for our little VDS competition if we had started on January 1st. Here’s the categories I placed the races in using our criteria:

• Obviously NO cat 1 or cat 2 races
• Cat 3 races (Top stage races): TDU, Valenciana, Provence, Algarve, UAE Tour plus Paris-Nice.
• Cat 4 races (Top Classics): Race Torquay, CEGORR plus Omloop, KBK
• Cat 5 races- a while mess of ‘em: San Juan, all the Trofeos, GP Marseillaise, Saudi Tour, Herald Sun Tour, Etoile des Besseges, Tour Colombia 2.1, Murcia, Almeria, Andalucia, and Maritimes Var plus Faun Ardeche, Royal Bernard Drome, and Le Samyn
• Cat 6 minor races: Trofeo Laigueglia added to GP Jean-Pierre Monsere.
• Cat 7 national championships of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Colombia!

Then I slapped in the results for all 36 races. Go to the FSA-DS site to see how your team did and everything else. I’ll wait here.

.

.

.

.

.

Okay! This wasn't a fair competition because none of us made our team thinking that these races were gonna count. Otherwise Richie Porte would have been a GOD. Jens would have picked him like 10 times for his team.

So analysis? Please do so in the comments section. Here’s a couple of top line thoughts:

• Remco and Pogs were on the top five teams and a whole bunch of teams after that. Most of the top teams had at least one of those kids. Usually they also had Nairoman and often HiguitaMonster. I think you have to go down to the 11th team, Team Pot Belge, to find a team that has just one of those four.
• But it not solely that those four riders (and other high scores like Cosnefroy and Jakobsen) were the best. Even more important was that they rode several of these races. Contrast to say Adam Yates and Fuglsang, both of whom rode only one race, dominated it, then headed off to some sunny and uninhabited island in the Bahamas.
• Cheap riders who cleaned up-and were their results a portent to a big season for them (if there was gonna be a season)? Nizzolo, Impey, Cosnefroy, Vlasov, Kangert, Geschke, Kelderman, Bouhanni, Kamna, Hugo! Van Baarle, Hindley, Groves & Dainese who raced head to head in 5 sprints.

One final thing: when/if we start racing again this year I will take down these winter races and go back to the regular calendar. Too many people would be confused and/or not happy to see these races added after we selected our teams. What might happen with the calendar next year is another question.