The inaugural Velominati Super Prestige continues the with Tour de France edition, on Saturday July 3rd in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, just kilometers from the start of the Giro d’Italia in Amsterdam (Dutchland is a small country). This will be the second Grand Tour of the series, and at this stage the Grand Tour rules and regulations are fairly well-defined, so take a moment to review them on the VSP Page.
The Tour is, of course, a major event. My personal preference lies with the Giro, but there is no denying the magnitude of the Tour and the appeal it holds. For three weeks, the world pays attention to our sport, and – provided the Tour doesn’t coincide with the World Cup football matches – this is the biggest sporting event during this time of the year. (An interesting observation: the last time these events coincided, the winner was eventually stripped of his title.)
Having run the VSP Giro edition where we tested the ruleset for Grand Tours, we’ve managed to set up a scoring system that seems fair and helps to close down the competition to afford newcomers the ability to catch up with some good picks; the Giro proved that lineup switches and the associated penalties kept the point gains pretty small while allowing strategy to play an interesting role. There is a full overview of the rules and standing at the VSP Schedule, Rules, & Results page, but here is the ten-second overview:
Every contestant is to choose their top five General Classification picks of the race. The final podium of le Grande Boucle is worth 15 points to the winner, 10 points for second, 5 points for third, 3 points for fourth, and 2 point for fifth. Given the effect crashes can have on a tour, we’ve set up some guidelines around making changes to your lineup during the race: you’re allowed to change your lineup if any rider in your pick list drops out for any reason without any penalty; rest days will allow contestants to make changes to their lineup, however those changes will come at a point penalty. (Visit the VSP Schedule, Rules, & Results page for a complete breakdown of these points.)
Every day, the leader in the points standings will have the honor of wearing the Yellow Jersey when posting on the site; the overall winner will wear the Yellow Jersey for the remainder of the season and will also earn an “Obey the Rules” bumper sticker. All reader’s points qualify towards the final prize of the free Velominati Shop Apron. As always, if you are inclined to enter, simply post your predictions for the top five placings.
New to the Tour de France edition is the addition of naming the winner of the Green and Polka-dot jerseys for the Tour. There will be no points awarded towards these two jerseys, but the leader of the competition of these jerseys will have the honor of commenting with a Green or Polka-dot jersey badge throughout the competition and the winner will earn the right to comment with that badge until next year’s Tour. The contestant who picks both the final Green and Polka jersey winners correctly will win a Velominati Logo bumper sticker. Tie-breakers will go to the first contestant who posts their entire lineup (all 5 GC picks plus Green and Polka-dot jersey winners). Given that this sub-competition has no points, pick substitutions will only be granted under the DNF regulations of the VSP; no rest-day substitutions are allowed.
Sub-competitions will be conducted while the Tour is underway for specific stages. These stages will be chosen a few days prior to the stage being held and will be selected based on the current race conditions with the aim of choosing the most decisive and exciting stages of the race, so check back often to make sure you don’t miss out. Sub-competitions will be held in separate editions.
Good luck!
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View Comments
Agreed Guy, he blew great yesterday, today he hardened up and rode like he is paid to.
@Guy, @Souleur
Agreed absolutely. He's still a fucking prick, but that was a well-deserved win today. I'm even a little bit (a very, marginal, little bit) happy for him. Well done, that's for sure. It's much easier to buckle under this pressure than it is to rise above it.
If he could just be less of a douchebag, it would be much easier on all of us.
Farrar! What a stud doing that with busted bones!
Good, emotional salute, and some good, genuine tears on the podium. Well done.
@Guy
Indeed you're right, Guy. Not a huge Cav fan, but I'm always impressed when he lays it down and I'm interested to see what this does for HTC. Rogers stepped up in the final 5K today, but the lead-out wasn't perfect. Can'twinwellIjustdidish still put the hammer down and made it happen. If you're HTC, you have to have confidence now that if you can get your ducks in a row you have one hell of a horse running at the end. Not that these guys need it, but that's good incentive to get their shit together and dominate the front end toward the end of the race with a little more authority in the days to come. If Le Grand Douche Qui Ne Port Pas Vert would start putting in a little effort for the intermediates, he might even compete for green...
I just looked at the points distribution for the final sprint for the first time. I've never much cared about the green jersey. 35 for 1st. 30 for second. 26 for 3rd. 24 for 4th. I don't know, but first place doesn't seem weighted highly enough. And, only two points less than 3rd place for finishing off the podium in 4th. Worse than that, you get 10 points for 16th place. Near one third of the points of the sprint winner for rolling across the line on sprinter's wheels! Here's my suggested distribution.
1-26
2-18
3-15
4-10
5-8
6-5
7-4
8-3
9-2
10-1
11-fucking nuthin'
Apparently, the points winner would be the one who could win outright once or twice and get few podium finishes, which is about what you'd want I think.
@david
Interesting. Would you alter the points for the intermediate sprints? Thor seems to cagily keep up with his closest rival and make sure not to lose points in the overall. Under your schema, I guess he'd also be a little more pissed off about losing points for Stage 2. And, Frank will tell you what happens if you cross him.
I don't know about intermediate points. It depends I guess on what you want the winner of the green jersey to be? The best sprinter? If so, I think you'd want to de-emphasize intermediate sprints somewhat. If you wanted the green jersey winner to be just a damn hard strongman and competitor, then you emphasize them more. So, if you had int. sprints at 8 for first, 4 for second, and 2 for third, a strongman like Hushovd or Boonen could really put pressure on the sprint specialists like Cavendish or Petacchi buy going after significant points in the middle of the stage. Thus, Cavendish would either have to contest them, or send members of his team out to take points away from Hushovd or Boonen, wearing them all out. Hmm. I kind of like this. We could change the jersey color to black, and call it the hardman competition--a point that would be doubly emphasized by wearing black in the July heat.
@david
That's an interesting point, but historically, the competition runs pretty tight - which is good for entertainment purposes - so I'd be inclined to leave it as is. Also remember that it's a misconception that this is the "Sprinter's Competition". It's actually intended to be awarded to "the most consistent daily finisher"; meaning the rider who places on the stages most consistently. It's skewed towards the sprinters because the majority of stages are flatish to then extent that a number of them make it to the finish inside the points. (I also think they may have started giving less points on mountain stages, but I can't remember, and looking it up would be too much "work".)
With consistency in mind, you'd want to keep the points as evenly distributed as possible, because it's important to finish consistently, which is what makes the competition so hard - the riders who go after it can't just win a bundle of stages and sit out the rest, they have to fight for points from start to finish, and even get over some mountains to get to the intermediate sprints. Zabel gets a tip o' the hat for how he'd pull this off - sometimes without a single stage win. Now that McEwen has lost some of his top-end, he's really well positioned because he's been in it every day despite not winning (yet).
Cav, after finishing out of the points twice, is largely out of the running, unless he makes an amazing comeback. And, based on consistency, to finish so far down twice and to win once is not deserving of the jersey, at least at this point with how many stages have been contested.
I have never been able to keep track of all the Giro competitions, but I think one of them is actually skewed more like you're suggesting, and the spinsters tend to clean up on it. Again, I'd have to research that to make sure I've got that right.
@david
Ha! I love it!
Was that a typo or deliberate? Either way, I love it!