As has become our custom, Lisa & I
will be adding to our interest in this year's professional cycling season
by following the fortunes of our own fantasy cycling teams. We've been doing
this since 1997. We
select our teams on the basis of each rider "costing" his total UCI ranking
points earned last season divided by fifteen and rounded to the nearest five,
with
a
minimum cost of twenty points and a maximum of 200. We allow each team
550 points
on this basis, with nine riders to be selected. No more than two riders
in each team can be selected from the same real life trade team. Throughout
the season we score our riders performances in all the major
races according to the points system
adapted from one used by Roger
Hughes in his Fantasy
Cycling League. The tables below summarise
the fortunes of our teams throughout the season.
[ Period One | Period Two | Period Three | Period Four | Period Five | Period Six | Period Seven | Period Eight | Season Review | Looking Forward ]
As usual, this season's line-up of Steve's Nightowlers looks
fairly familiar compared to last year. The team is spearheaded by
the returning trio of Erik Zabel, Alexandre Vinokourov and Ivan Basso. Domestiques
Mark Scanlon and Bradley Wiggins are also retained and former member David
Millar will return from drug suspension in mid-season. Drafted in to bolster
the team's chances are new boys Alejandro Valverde, Thor Hushovd and
Peter van Petegem. Sadly, this year the
team will have to do without the formerly ever-present Mario
Cipollini.
Unusually for her, there are also a number of familiar names riding for Lisa's Ready Steady Riders. Alessandro Petacchi, Paolo Savoldelli and Robbie McEwan scored the bulk of last season's record total and are all retained with a view to repeating their successes. Also returning are Brad McGee, Roger Hammond and (surprisingly) Joseba Beloki. As she has more than once before, Lisa has drafted in the new World Champion; this year in the shape of Tom Boonen who must overcome the fabled curse of the rainbow jersey. Floyd Landis and Vladimir Karpets complete the line-up.
Again, I'm experimenting with a blog format to record blow-by-blow details of our riders' successes throughout the season. You can see here how far I lasted with the idea this year.
Ordinarily, Steve
would have been delighted for his Nightowlers to
score nearly sixty points in Period
One: Zabel opened the season with fifth place in Milano-Torino
and took second place on two stages of Tirreno-Adriatico where Basso, who dominated
the Critérium International, took seventh
overall. However, their efforts were dwarfed by those of Lisa's Ready
Steady Riders who more than doubled their tally with no fewer than seven
of Lisa's nine riders scoring to compile a total that was easily the best Period
One performance since we started. The team dominated
Paris-Nice, from McGee's third place in the prologue, through
three
stage wins
for Boonen,
to
Landis
taking second on one stage and the overall victory; Petacchi took a stage win
and two second places in Tirreno-Adriatico, a race in which
McEwan took second on a stage and Savoldelli
came
fourth
overall; In Milano-Sanremo Petacchi and Boonen were second and fourth; and
Boonen won the E3 Prijs Vlaanderen, where Hammond was eighth.
Only Petacchi
(third in Gent-Wevelgem) and Boonen (winner of the Ronde van Vlaanderen and
Scheldeprijs Vlaanderen, second in Paris-Roubaix) scored for Lisa's Ready
Steady Riders in Period
Two, so that the team "only" added 78 points to their
total. Steve's Nightowlers had a very successful
Spring Classics campaign with wins from Hushovd (in Gent-Wevelgem) and new
boy Valverde (in the Flèche Wallone
and Liège-Bastogne-Liège) who opened his account with a stage
win and second overall in the Vuelta al Pais Vasco, van Petegem's fourth
in the Ronde van Vlaanderen and minor places for Zabel (Ronde van Vlaanderen
and Paris-Roubaix) and Basso (Liège-Bastogne-Liège). Although
just topping the Ready Steady Riders' first period score, and setting a new
record for a Period 2 team score, Steve's team still couldn't overhaul their
rivals and ended the period training by nineteen
points.
Last
year,
Savoldelli won the Giro d'Italia, thus scoring the first win by either of
us in a Grand Tour. This year, he could only manage fifth overall though
McEwan did bag a bunch of stage wins to boost the Ready
Steady Riders' tally. The overall win this year went to Basso,
riding for Steve's Nightowlers. Dominant though
the Giro
is,
there
is
action
elsewhere in Period
Three and Valverde took third in the Tour de Romandie and
Zabel was fourth in the Rund um den Henniger Turm while Karpets registered
for the first time with eighth in the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya. The
upshot of all this activity was a record single-period score for Steve,
who outscored Lisa 2:1 to take a 55-point lead forward.
As usual, Period
Four was a comparatively quiet time between the excitements
of the Giro and the Tour. Valverde finished the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré seventh
overall for Steve's Nightowlers. Boonen won Veenendaal-Veenendaal
for Lisa's Ready Steady Riders, for whom Karpets took
ninth overall in the Tour de Suisse. In winning the period, Lisa cut Steve's
lead to 35 points going into the Tour.
Period
Five produced shocks even before the racing in the Tour de
France began as Steve lost two potential GC contenders, Basso and Vinokourov
to a doping scandal that also put Beloki out of the race for Lisa.
Once the race got under way things went well: Hushovd won the first and last stages for Steve's Nightowlers and regained his yellow jersey by taking third on stage two while Zabel had two third places and a fourth (on the Champs Elysées) to his credit and these two were second and third in the points competition; first place in the points competition went to Lisa's Ready Steady Riders, courtesy of McEwan who won three stages and took three seconds (including the final stage) and a fourth, while Boonen wore the yellow jersey and clocked up six minor places on stages. The star of Lisa's team was, of course, Landis: winner of a stage (plus four minor placings), multiple regainer of the yellow jersey, second in the Mountains competition and winner overall; a new hero for us all in the post-Armstrong era.
The only problem was that Landis failed a dope test during the tour and will probably be stripped of his win, casting the darkest cloud yet over the sport; our "new hero" became a total zero less than a week after his supposed triumph.
The world of
cycling went through the motions in something of a daze during Period
Six after the doping shocks of the last few weeks. Lisa's
Ready Steady Riders had a quiet time with only Boonen's
three stage wins and thirteenth overall in the Eneco Tour of Benelux
to their credit.
For Steve's Nightowlers, Zabel scored the bulk
of the points, with second place in the Vattenfall (ex-HEW) Cyclassics
Cup plus two seconds and two third places on stages in the Deutschland
tour, while Valverde took eighth in the Classica Ciclista San Sebastian.
For Steve's Nightowlers, Period
Seven was all about the Vuelta a España where they racked
up an amazing 226 points. We completed a clean sweep of the Grand Tours
between us with Vinokourov's win in Madrid, with
Valverde close behind in second overall. On his way to victory, Vinokourov
won three stages and took a brace each of seconds and thirds. He was also
fifth in the mountains competition. Valverde managed just one stage win,
three seconds, two thirds and two fourths in stages, wore the leader's
jersey for a few days and was third best climber overall. Millar chipped
in with a single stage win.
Zabel won two stages (including the last day) and took two thirds and two
fourths while Hushovd won one, took five seconds and two fourths and wore
the leader's jersey for a while. The team's haul was bulked out with their
domination of the points competition: won by Hushovd, with Vinokourov second,
Valverde
third and
Zabel fifth. With McEwan missing the time cut on a stage after scoring
just one fourth place, and Petacchi putting himself out with a self-inflicted
hand injury after taking one third and a fourth, Lisa's Ready
Steady Riders had to rely entirely on the efforts of Karpets, who
took a second and a fourth on his way to eighth overall, for points in
the Vuelta. Outside of the Vuelta, Lisa's riders had more success: McEwan
and Boonen took the top two places in Paris-Bruxelles and the following
day McEwan managed fourth in the GP des Fourmies. With Steve's riders scoring
more in one race than the Ready Steady Riders once
managed in an entire season, it's no surprise that they enter the last
period of the season with a seemingly unassailable 98-point lead.
Of course, we now wait anxiously to see if Vinokourov can break the run of tour winners who are subsequently tainted with doping scandals.
Lisa's Ready
Steady Riders finished the season tamely in Period
Eight with only McEwan and Boonen's fifth and ninth places
respectively in the World Championship Road Race to add to their total.
Steve's Nightowlers finished
a little stronger with Vinokourov, third in the World Championship
Time Trial, and Hushovd, fourth in Paris-Tours, backing up Zabel and
Valverde's second and third places in the World Championship Road Race.
The season
as a whole was overshadowed by doping scandals which inflicted
much serious damage on the sport we love so much. Aside from that, in
our private fantasy world, it was a bonanza year for scoring. Only time
will
tell if this was a fluke, or a side effect of the replacement of ranking
points with Pro Tour points to determine rider costs. It was a see-saw
season, with Lisa's Ready Steady Riders starting stronger,
losing the lead to Steve's Nightowlers in the
Giro d'Italia, only to regain it in the Tour de France and then loose
it for good in the Vuelta a España. Boonen was far and away Lisa's
most successful rider and McEwan scored highly as usual while Landis's
total was almost all accounted for by his Tour results, Pettachi
had a surprisingly quiet season, and Savoldelli and Karpets made modest
contributions. Steve's star performer was new-boy Valverde with major
support in the first half of the year from Basso and throughout the
season from Hushovd and Zabel (the only rider on either team to score
in every single period) while Vinokourov was invisible until his
Vuelta win.
Next
year's line ups look set to be as much influenced by doping cases
as by sporting results with major question marks hanging over the careers
of both Landis and Basso. Steve will hope to be able to afford to retain
the services of Valverde, Vinokourov, Hushovd and Zabel for his Nightowlers and
will doubtless keep Wiggins and Millar for sentimental reasons which may
not leave him with much scope for bringing in major new talent. Lisa's
selection of Boonen was a huge success so he looks certain to spearhead
her Ready Steady Riders again alongside old favoourite McEwan but it remains
to be seen if she has the patience to retain Pettachi in particular among
her less stellar performers.
See below
for Ready Steady Riders' results.
![]() ![]() |
|||||||||||
Rider | Period Scores | Total Score |
Cost | Score /Cost |
|||||||
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | ||||
Ivan Basso2 | 41 | 3 | 95 | — | — | — | — | 139 |
85 | 1.64 | |
Erik Zabel | 11 | 3 | 13 | 2 | 15 | 24 | 19 | 24 | 111 | 85 | 1.31 |
Alejandro Valverde Belmonte | 77 | 25 | 11 | 5 | 72 | 18 | 208 | 85 | 2.45 | ||
Thor Hushovd | 4 | 25 | 12 | 3 | 34 | 39 | 12 | 129 | 65 | 1.98 | |
Peter van Petegem | 2 | 12 | 14 | 35 | 0.40 | ||||||
Bradley Wiggins | 0 | 20 | 0.00 | ||||||||
David Millar1 | — |
— |
— |
— |
5 | 5 | 20 | 0.25 | |||
Mark Scanlon | 0 | 20 | 0.00 | ||||||||
Alexandre Vinokourov | 91 | 15 | 106 | 135 | 0.79 | ||||||
Total | 58 |
120 | 145 | 16 | 49 | 29 | 226 | 69 | 712 | 550 | 1.29 |
1 Millar banned for doping until Period 5.
2 Basso
suspended, on suspicion of doping, from Period 5 on.
![]() ![]() |
|||||||||||
Rider | Period Scores | Total Score |
Cost | Score /Cost |
|||||||
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | ||||
Alessandro Petacchi | 25 | 15 | 1 | 3 | 44 | 130 | 0.34 | ||||
Robbie McEwan | 2 | 19 | 46 | 30 | 12 | 109 | 40 | 2.73 | |||
Bradley McGee | 1 | 4 | 5 | 20 | 0.25 | ||||||
Roger Hammond | 3 | 2 | 5 | 20 | 0.25 | ||||||
Tom Boonen | 41 | 63 | 25 | 19 | 12 | 14 | 7 | 181 | 170 | 1.06 | |
Vladimir Karpets | 10 | 7 | 14 | 31 | 30 | 1.03 | |||||
Joseba Beloki Dorronsoro | 0 | 20 | 0.00 | ||||||||
Paolo Savoldelli | 15 | 37 | 52 | 90 | 0.58 | ||||||
Floyd Landis1 | 32 | 2 | 103 | — | — | — | 137 | 30 | 4.57 | ||
Total | 119 | 78 | 71 | 36 | 168 | 12 | 61 | 19 | 564 | 550 | 1.03 |
1 Landis banned for doping during Period 5.
See above for
Nightowlers' results.