Fantasy Tour De France

On Saturday 2nd July, the Tour de France rolls out of Mont-Saint-Michel for a three-week race around France via the Pyrenees and the Alps. This year some of us in the FFS community will be using Road CC for their Tour de France cycling games at fantasy.road.cc. To join in, you need to sign up on their website and then join the Fantasy Football Scout league with the code 76935.

The Games

Road CC run three games with the same scoring systems but different selection criteria. Firstly, the Standard game gives you a budget of 175 to pick a team of nine riders. You get 45 transfers over the course of the race so you can build a team for stage 1 and then adapt as stage profiles change, riders crash out and other riders come into form.

The Purist game also gives you a budget of 175 for nine riders but you do not get any transfers to use so your stage 1 team must be built with the whole race in mind.

The French Riders Only game is a mini version of the Purist game but you only have a budget of 100 for 5 French riders.

The Scoring

Scoring happens on a daily basis, rewarding both riders who do well on the day and riders who are at the time sitting high in the jersey classifications. The criteria and scoring are as follows:

First over the finish line:

35, 30, 25, 22, 20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 points are awarded to the first 20 finishers of the day.

Intermediate sprints:

15 points for the first rider, down to 1 point for 15th rider in the day’s intermediate sprint competition.

Classified climbs:

All notable hills and mountains in the Tour de France are classified as 4th, 3rd, 2nd or 1st category climbs, or ‘Hors Catégorie’ (beyond classification). Riders cresting a classified climb first will receive points, with more points awarded to harder climbs.

The points are split as follows:

HC: 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 points for the first 10 riders
1st Category: 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1 points for the first 6 riders
2nd Category: 6, 4, 2, 1 points for the first 4 riders
3rd Category: 5, 3 points for the first 2 riders
4th Category: 4 points for the first rider

Finishing the day placed in the jersey classifications:

For the general classification (yellow jersey), points awarded for a top ten position at the end of the day – 10 points for first down to 1 point for 10th.

For the sprinter’s classification (green jersey), the king of the mountains classification (polka-dot jersey) and the young riders’ classification (white jersey) points are awarded for a top 5 position at the end of the day – 5 points for first position down to 1 point for 5th.

Last rider home:

10 points are awarded for the last rider home on a stage.

Most combative rider:

10 points are awarded to the rider adjudged the most combative by the race commissaires.

Team bonus:

5 points to every participating rider in the winning rider’s team.

The Race

Throughout the race, there are different types of stages who suit different riders and for the Standard game you will need to understand which riders are suited to the day’s course, for instance Chris Froome may be favourite to win the Tour de France but he will likely be anonymous in the first six days of racing.

Mass stages where riders ride head to head generally fall into three categories as either flat, hilly or mountainous and then each of these can be differentiated by having a flat or an uphill finish. Then there are two time-trial stages where riders race individually against the clock and these fall into their own special subset of stages.

Heavy sprinters such as Mark Cavendish (25.7), Marcel Kittel (22.8) and Andre Greipel (27.2) are the fastest riders in the bunch and they excel at flat stages with a fast flat finish but they will struggle to stay with the peloton in a hilly or mountainous stage. Puncheurs (fighters) are fast riders in their own rights but prefer rolling hilly terrain and short steep climbs to drop the heavier sprinters who are otherwise faster than them on the flat. Peter Sagan (38.0), Julian Alaphillippe (27.7) and Michael Matthews (23.2) are the big names in this category and we should expect Sagan and Matthews to also place well in the flat sprint stages even if a win seems unlikely for them there. Alaphillippe meanwhile will be working for his teammate Kittel on the flat stages so will be unlikely to feature in those.

Climbers such as Chris Froome (35.5), Nairo Quintana (32.8), Alberto Contador (32.1) and many others will compete in the mountainous stages with Froome and Quintana the favourites on summit finishes. Elsewhere, Alejandro Valverde (31.5) may find himself as the stage favourite if a dozen riders or so crest the final mountain of the day ahead of a tricky descent and a flat sprint finish. In the two time trials expect Tony Martin (15.3), Tom Dumoulin (29.7) and Fabian Cancellara (17.0) to be among the top riders while Froome and Contador will exhibit their versatility to do well in these stages as other climbers struggle.

Stages 1 to 6 are generally flat sprinter friendly stages although stages 2 and 5 will be stages for the puncheurs, whoever picks up the yellow jersey on stage 2 may hold onto it for several days, scoring good fantasy points for leading the general classification at the end of each day.

Stages 7 to 9 are mountainous stages in the Pyrenees and these will be the first stages for climbers to come to the fore. Whoever leaves the Pyrenees with the yellow jersey will then hold onto for stages 10 and 11, a puncheur’s stage and a sprint stage respectively.

Stage 12 is a mountain-top finish on Mont Ventoux, a mountain on which Chris Froome won on when it last featured as a stage finish in 2013. This year may be different though as the stage is on Bastille Day –  a day which many French riders will be saving themselves for and on which a stage win will make their whole Tour de France worthwhile.  Stage 13 is a long time trial which will suit the specialists and climbing all-rounders.

Stages 14 and 16 are sprint stages which sandwich a hilly stage 15 which has six categorised climbs and will see morning breakaway climbers score very well indeed. Stage 17 finishes with an HC climb to Emosson in Switzerland. Back across the border for stage 18 we have a hilly time trial which will suit climbers such as Froome, Contador and Porte (22.1) better than Martin and Cancellara, the time trial specialists.

Stages 19 and 20 are two more mountainous stages in the Alps before the riders fly to Paris for the final stage of the race and a sprint stage on the Champs Elysées.

On some mountain stages, Froome and Quintana may decide to take it easy and mark each other as they worry more about winning the yellow jersey than that particular day’s stage. This will open the door for other climbers such as Louis Meintjes (9.6), Joaquim Rodriguez (24.2) and Daniel Teklehaimanot (11.7) to pick up king of the mountains points in the day’s breakaway. Meintjes is also an interesting rider as he is one of the favourites for the white jersey alongside other under-25s riders Warren Barguil (22.0) and Wilco Kelderman (17.9).

The Strategies

In the Standard game, build your team with sprinters and puncheurs for the first six stages and then take it from there. Try not to get too restless switching sprinters for sprinters in the early stages as it is good to hold as many transfers for wholesale changes as the race goes from flat stages to mountain stages and back again as we go through the race. However, if a cheap rider emerges rooted to the top of one of the jersey classifications, they can prove to be a source of consistent points over the early stages and may be worth getting in. As a rule of thumb I try to get to Stage 21 with 5 transfers intact and this frugality with transfers leaves you in a good position to react well if any of your riders crash out in the later stages of the race.

In the Purist games you want to nail down the best riders for each jersey and a couple of the best general classification riders who will get stage wins and king of the mountains points. Often a team of 7 strong riders with cheap fillers do better than 9 average riders. Finally, the absolute key to the Purist games is to pick riders who don’t crash out or abandon due to illness. Your purist team can look excellent on paper but if only 3 of your riders finish the Tour de France its not going to do very well.

The Deadline

Each game closes at 11:00am BST on Saturday 2nd of July so make sure you are signed up and have your teams submitted before then!