Archive for July, 2007

Stage 20

Published
by
Bif
on July 30, 2007
in Fantasy Tipping
. 1 Comment

Good very early morning Fantasy TdFers. I must apologise if the lateness of the hour or proof of the Cognac affects the quality of this last dispatch, but I was determined to stay til all was done. While none but the gods of wheel and whim can predict the outcome on the Champs Elysee, it wasn’t hard to predict a calm affair on GC and a sprinter’s shootout. Bennati was missing-in-action early in the Tour but has finished strongly for two wins.

The final stage augured well for the top few with Thor Hushovd scoring 75 points for Cannibal, Robbie Hunter scoring 40 points for Flirty O’Dirty, and that man Fabian Cancellara scoring 22 points for Blinder. So after allocating points for the final stage, we have Flirty O’Dirty on 981 points leading Blinder (814) and Cannibal (801). Two Phat (687) and Digger (653) remain menacing.

Allocating points for the Polka-dot jersey changes the scene considerably. Flirty holds on to first without scoring a point while Cannibal moves into second on 901 points while Blinder slips to third on 866. Late movers Ted (829) and Water Boy (780) now round out the top five.

Allocating Green jersey points shakes things up again. Robbie Hunter helps Flirty hole first on 1131 points while Cannibal moves to second on 1013 points thanks to Thor Hushovd and Cadel Evans. Blinder slips to third on 914 with Two Phat (887) moving back into contention thanks to winner Tom Boonen and Ted (829) slipping to fifth.

So it’s all on the yellow jersey… Well the big bad news dear reader is that thanks to Taadjec Valjavec sneaking into nineteenth place Zippy has pipped me for last place. At the misguided end of the table where points seem to matter Cannibal has taken out first place on 1313 points thanks to our boy Evans finishing second. Water Boy (1208) has leapt from obscurity to second on Contador’s skinny back and Ted (1185) has rounded out the top three by placing Sastre, Soler, Karpets, and Mayo in the top twenty, The much maligned Flirty O’Dirty slipped to fourth, the place no-one will recall, while competition strongman Blinder was completely and utterly sixth. Ted has also romped home in the teams classification thanks to strong rides by Sastre Soler and Karpets.

Here’s where the points went:

Stage 20
Shorty scored 100 for Daniele Bennati coming in first place
Cannibal scored 75 for Thor Hushovd coming in second place
Paddles scored 55 for Erik Zabel coming in third place
Flirty O’Dirty scored 40 for Robert Hunter coming in fourth place
Two Phat scored 32 for Tom Boonen coming in fifth place
Digger scored 26 for Sébastien Chavanel coming in sixth place
Blinder scored 22 for Fabian Cancellara coming in seventh place
Ted scored 18 for David Millar coming in eighth place
Ribs scored 16 for Robert Förster coming in ninth place
TechnoBoy scored 14 for Manuel Quinziato coming in tenth place
Nigel scored 12 for Martin Elmiger coming in eleventh place
Tommy scored 10 for Freddy Bichot coming in twelfth place
Sick Note scored 8 for Bram Tankink coming in thirteenth place
Water Boy scored 6 for Inaki Isasi Flores coming in forteenth place
Two Phat scored 4 for Sven Krauss coming in fifteenth place
Water Boy scored 20 for Alberto Contador Velasco leading the general classification

Polka dot jersey
Ted scored 200 for Mauricio Soler coming in first place
Water Boy scored 150 for Alberto Contador Velasco coming in second place
O’Dirty scored 110 for Yaroslav Popovych coming in third place
Cannibal scored 80 for Cadel Evans coming in fourth place
Monster scored 64 for Laurent Lefevre coming in fifth place
Blinder scored 52 for Juan Manuel Garate coming in sixth place
Ted scored 44 for Carlos Sastre Candil coming in seventh place
Digger scored 36 for Juan Jose Cobo Acebo coming in eighth place
Digger scored 32 for Levi Leipheimer coming in ninth place
TechnoBoy scored 28 for Haimar Zubeldia Agirre coming in tenth place
Ribs scored 24 for Gorka Verdugo Marcotegui coming in eleventh place
Cannibal scored 20 for David De La Fuente Rasilla coming in twelfth place
Ted scored 16 for Iban Mayo Diez coming in thirteenth place
Tommy scored 12 for David Arroyo Duran coming in forteenth place
Nigel scored 8 for Mikel Astarloza Chaurreau coming in fifteenth place

Green jersey
Two Phat scored 200 for Tom Boonen coming in first place
Flirty O’Dirty scored 150 for Robert Hunter coming in second place
Paddles scored 110 for Erik Zabel coming in third place
Cannibal scored 80 for Thor Hushovd coming in fourth place
Digger scored 64 for Sébastien Chavanel coming in fifth place
Shorty scored 52 for Daniele Bennati coming in sixth place
Ribs scored 44 for Robert Förster coming in seventh place
Blinder scored 36 for Fabian Cancellara coming in eighth place
Cannibal scored 32 for Cadel Evans coming in ninth place
Water Boy scored 28 for Alberto Contador Velasco coming in tenth place
Nigel scored 24 for Gert Steegmans coming in eleventh place
Sick Note scored 20 for Bernhard Eisel coming in twelfth place
Nigel scored 16 for Martin Elmiger coming in thirteenth place
Blinder scored 12 for Marcus Burghardt coming in forteenth place
O’Dirty scored 8 for Murilo Fischer coming in fifteenth place

Yellow jersey
Water Boy scored 400 for Alberto Contador Velasco coming in first place
Cannibal scored 300 for Cadel Evans coming in second place
Digger scored 240 for Levi Leipheimer coming in third place
Ted scored 220 for Carlos Sastre Candil coming in fourth place
TechnoBoy scored 200 for Haimar Zubeldia Agirre coming in fifth place
Shorty scored 180 for Alejandro Valverde Belmonte coming in sixth place
Cookie scored 160 for Kim Kirchen coming in seventh place
O’Dirty scored 140 for Yaroslav Popovych coming in eighth place
Nigel scored 120 for Mikel Astarloza Chaurreau coming in ninth place
Paddles scored 100 for Oscar Pereiro Sio coming in tenth place
Ted scored 80 for Mauricio Soler coming in eleventh place
Stuey scored 60 for Michael Boogerd coming in twelfth place
Tommy scored 48 for David Arroyo Duran coming in thirteenth place
Ted scored 36 for Vladimir Karpets coming in forteenth place
Tommy scored 28 for Chris Horner coming in fifteenth place
Ted scored 20 for Iban Mayo Diez coming in sixteenth place
Digger scored 16 for Frank Schleck coming in seventeenth place
Blinder scored 12 for Manuel Beltran Martinez coming in eighteenth place
Bif scored 8 for Tadej Valjavec coming in nineteenth place
Digger scored 4 for Juan Jose Cobo Acebo coming in twentieth place

And here’s the final teams classification:

Team classification
Ted: 273:49:32 (Sastre, Soler, Karpets)
Digger: 274:10:51 (Leipheimer, Schleck, Cobo)
Tommy: 275:21:32 (Arroyo, Horner, Moreau)
Blinder: 276:12:33 (Beltran, Manuel, Lopez)
Sick Note: 276:30:15 (Vande, Fofonov, Tankink)
Cannibal: 276:49:54 (Evans, Knees, Fuente)
O’Dirty: 276:50:19 (Popovych, Gutierrez, Vaugrenard)
Paddles: 276:57:03 (Pereiro, Voigt, Aerts)
Monster: 277:10:52 (Hincapie, Botcharov, Florencio)
The Doctor: 277:15:02 (Halgand, Fothen, Gerdemann)
TechnoBoy: 277:19:00 (Zubeldia, Kohl, Flecha)
Two Phat: 277:22:26 (Vila, Siutsou, Perez)
Shorty: 277:27:58 (Valverde, Duenas, Bennati)
Cookie: 277:37:04 (Kirchen, Vasseur, Portal)
Nigel: 277:45:12 (Astarloza, Gadret, Lövkvist)
Ribs: 277:46:14 (Goubert, Turpin, Verdugo)
Bif: 277:59:51 (Valjavec, Barredo, Scholz)
Water Boy: 278:06:45 (Contador, Merckx, Mercado)
Stuey: 278:07:08 (Boogerd, Wegmann, Pineau)
Zippy: 278:28:58 (Dekker, Landaluze, Martinez)
Flirty O’Dirty: 280:02:17 (Txurruka, Vogondy, Righi)

Single-speed madness!

Published
by
Bif
on July 29, 2007
in Ride Report
. 0 Comments

A plan hatched over a Leffe blond always seems like a good plan, until the time to execute it draws near. This was certainly the case with WaterBoy’s rather bonkers idea of posting an official single-speed time up the Coglioni time-trial benchmark of Kalamunda hill. During the week as the fateful time approached there were calls of “Madness” from O’Dirty who was obviously looking at a way out of this drunken plot.

But it was at 7am on Thursday 26th July, hereby known as mad-Thursday that the three fools met at the official start at IBM. Water Boy was riding his Specialized Langster, the sultry mistress that had drawn him back to the fold, riding a 71″ gear. O’Dirty was on his trusty Hillbrick built Clamont pushing the popular 69″ gear, good enough for Oppy in the Paris-Brest-Paris, good enough for the Dirty one. Bif, not having a road-going single-speeder, brought his Giant, promising to keep it in the same gear for the whole ride, which was a girlie 67″. However to even-up the obvious advantage of the easier gear on the climb, he made sure that he had attached every possible accessory to his bike, power meters, halogen light systems, kitchen sink, to the point the weighty Giant had probably piled on an extra 2kg.

The roll to the hill was uneventful, apart from each little rise reminding us of the pain we were likely to feel a little later. Due to time constraints Ridgehill Rd was avoided (phew!) and we soon reached the more direct route of Kalamunda Rd and it wasn’t long before the BP station was in sight. Nerves were tingling now at the prospect of what we had signed up for, but there was no turning back now. Survival was the key over the steep bit to Greys Rd and then just hanging on.

Stopwatches were started as we rolled over the start line, but a more sedate start than the previous Kalamunda attempt was made (incidentally won by a magnificent ride by O’Dirty by 1 second over Bif, in case you missed that ride report). Bif started the first move with O’Dirty performing a Cadel Evans manouvre of immediatly sucking his wheel. Your scribe unfortunately did not look back once, so was unsure of the exact position of Water Boy during the ride. O’Dirty moved to the front as the first serious rise started, trying to stay on top of the gear, but as the steep section started Bif went around O’Dirty, having visions of pushing on to the top. It was at this point that the stupidity of this venture suddenly became evident. While Bif’s heart was maxing out at 171, O’Dirty was in the mid-180s, well above threshhold. Water Boy, cleverly, had not worn an HRM so he didn’t know he was stuffed.

I thought that once over the steep section, then it would get easier. But 2 minutes spent deep in the red zone meant that the rest of the ride was going to be a war of attrition, man against mountain. Bif was obviously feeling much the same, as he was still in view and not steaking ahead, which had been his plan.

Not much can be said for the rest of the climb. Survival was the key, and in O’Dirtys case just trying to stop his heart exploding. The flat section after the servo was a welcome site, and Bif put a big effort in there, obviously having saved something, or maybe some of the attachments he had fitted to his bike were rocket boosters.

At the Gum-nuts Bif posted a time of 11:56.0, O’Dirty had a 12:29.9 while WaterBoy posted a 15:20.3. The latter proving that this was one of the few times in life that having an extra inch was actually no use…..

Stage 19

Published
by
Bif
on July 29, 2007
in Fantasy Tipping
. 0 Comments

Well it was certainly a nailbiter and one to make you reflect on where things might have been different in earlier stages. Blinder wisely ended his rider’s protest while Cannibal and Digger were the big winners in the top five. At the back end of things Zippy finally scored some more points to push me into my rightful place as lanterne rouge.

Here’s where the points went:

Digger scored 100 for Levi Leipheimer coming in first place
Cannibal scored 75 for Cadel Evans coming in second place
Ted scored 55 for Vladimir Karpets coming in third place
O’Dirty scored 40 for Yaroslav Popovych coming in fourth place
Water Boy scored 32 for Alberto Contador Velasco coming in fifth place
O’Dirty scored 26 for José Ivan Gutierrez Palacios coming in sixth place
Monster scored 22 for George Hincapie coming in seventh place
Paddles scored 18 for Oscar Pereiro Sio coming in eighth place
Monster scored 16 for Leif Hoste coming in ninth place
Nigel scored 14 for Mikel Astarloza Chaurreau coming in tenth place
Zippy scored 12 for Thomas Dekker coming in eleventh place
Blinder scored 10 for Fabian Cancellara coming in twelfth place
Cookie scored 8 for Kim Kirchen coming in thirteenth place
The Doctor scored 6 for Linus Gerdemann coming in forteenth place
Monster scored 4 for Stefan Schumacher coming in fifteenth place
Water Boy scored 20 for Alberto Contador Velasco leading the general classification

Ted still leads the team’s classification from Digger:

Ted: 262:15:48 (Sastre, Soler, Karpets)
Digger: 262:37:07 (Leipheimer, Schleck, Cobo)
Tommy: 263:47:48 (Arroyo, Horner, Moreau)
Blinder: 264:38:39 (Beltran, Manuel, Lopez)
Sick Note: 264:56:46 (Vande, Fofonov, Tankink)
Cannibal: 265:16:10 (Evans, Knees, Fuente)
O’Dirty: 265:16:40 (Popovych, Gutierrez, Vaugrenard)
Paddles: 265:23:19 (Pereiro, Voigt, Aerts)
Monster: 265:37:23 (Hincapie, Botcharov, Florencio)
The Doctor: 265:41:18 (Halgand, Fothen, Gerdemann)
TechnoBoy: 265:45:26 (Zubeldia, Kohl, Flecha)
Two Phat: 265:48:57 (Vila, Siutsou, Perez)
Shorty: 265:54:59 (Valverde, Duenas, Bennati)
Cookie: 266:03:32 (Kirchen, Vasseur, Portal)
Nigel: 266:11:28 (Astarloza, Gadret, Lövkvist)
Ribs: 266:12:20 (Goubert, Turpin, Verdugo)
Bif: 266:26:16 (Valjavec, Barredo, Scholz)
Water Boy: 266:32:51 (Contador, Merckx, Mercado)
Stuey: 266:33:24 (Boogerd, Wegmann, Pineau)
Zippy: 266:55:04 (Dekker, Landaluze, Martinez)
Flirty O’Dirty: 268:28:23 (Txurruka, Vogondy, Righi)

Note: in the previous teams classification posting Blinder and Zippy both seemed to share an enigmatic rider called “De”. This split-personality phantom was a by-product of my (feeble) attempt to allow for the Spaniards normally being referred to by their second-last name. So Blinder’s De was Lopez and Zippy’s was Martinez.

Team’s classification

Published
by
Bif
on July 28, 2007
in Fantasy Tipping
. 0 Comments

Good early afternoon Fantasy TdFers. With the final stages approaching I’ve abrubtly realised that I’ve been completely ignoring teams classification. You may remember that the winner of this contest within the contest will be the team having the lowest aggregate time of its three fastest riders. It’s a shame we haven’t been following this because as you will see below it paints a completely picture of the Tour, rewarding consistency and punishing those who put all their drugs into one rider. So I’ve dedicated my Saturday morning to writing some code to analyse the general classification standings and report the team classification standings. It’s going to be a tight contest tonight with Digger lining Levi Leipheimer up against Ted’s ITT specialist David Millar. But of course in this contest it’s just as important how their other riders go… The times below are hours, minutes and seconds as contributed by the list of riders. Of course the contributors can change in the remaining stages if a rider outdoes one of his fantasy team-mates.

Ted: 258:54:35 (Sastre, Soler, Mayo)
Digger: 259:18:47 (Leipheimer, Schleck, Cobo)
Tommy: 260:22:40 (Arroyo, Horner, Gusev)
The Doctor: 262:17:09 (Halgand, Fothen, Gerdemann)
Sick Note: 261:34:52 (Fofonov, Vande, Tankink)
Monster: 262:10:52 (Hincapie, Botcharov, Florencio)
Cannibal: 261:51:21 (Evans, Fuente, Knees)
Ribs: 262:41:13 (Goubert, Turpin, Verdugo)
Blinder: 261:11:34 (Beltran, Manuel, De)
Two Phat: 262:23:00 (Vila, Siutsou, Perez)
Cookie: 262:37:55 (Kirchen, Vasseur, Portal)
Zippy: 263:28:31 (Dekker, Landaluze, De)
Stuey: 263:05:57 (Boogerd, Wegmann, Pineau)
Nigel: 262:47:13 (Astarloza, Gadret, Lövkvist)
Paddles: 262:00:10 (Pereiro, Voigt, Aerts)
Shorty: 262:25:11 (Valverde, Duenas, Bennati)
Water Boy: 263:07:23 (Contador, Merckx, Mercado)
Bif: 262:57:12 (Valjavec, Barredo, Scholz)
O’Dirty: 261:55:44 (Popovych, Gutierrez, Vaugrenard)
TechnoBoy: 262:20:22 (Zubeldia, Kohl, Flecha)
Flirty O’Dirty: 264:58:18 (Txurruka, Vogondy, Righi)

Stage 18

Published
by
Bif
on July 28, 2007
in Fantasy Tipping
. 0 Comments

Good morning Fantasy TdFers. The Tour is starting to take its toll on even the toughest competitors. Your humble scribe shamefully admits he nodded off during the vital final kilometres of last nights stage. Was it too much French sunshine absorbed through the screen, the wine, or the torpor induced by a break with a seventeen minute margin? No matter, Casar finally got his stage and Evans was sharp on the wheel of the sprinters to pick up three seconds on Leipheimer and Contador. The controversial team of Flirty O’Dirty proved it was not a one-horse show by increasing its lead at the top of the table. Blinder’s rider’s protest, while morally sound seems tactically suspect. We will see tonight what instructions he gives Cancellara. Still in the race for the podium Two Phat made a huge comeback to tie with Cannibal for third while Water Boy scored points from an unexpected source to jump ahead of Digger in fifth postion. At the bottom of the table Stuey’s nerve has cracked with Boogerd coming in fourth, his face miserable with the shame of it all. I don’t see that he has any hope of reclaiming the flamme rouge. Zippy may be able to score well when the final assessment is made, but Bif seems to have no hope at all.

The race is almost completely and utterly over. Tonight will be a thriller for the top three. The only upside to all the scandal is that I’ll be strangely less disappointed if Evans doesn’t manage to pull it off than I might otherwise have been. Which is a shame because if he does win it will be a mighty achievement despite this being probably the most farcical Tour ever.

Here’s where the points went:

Two Phat scored 100 for Sandy Casar coming in first place
Water Boy scored 75 for Axel Merckx coming in second place
Monster scored 55 for Laurent Lefevre coming in third place
Stuey scored 40 for Michael Boogerd coming in fourth place
Two Phat scored 32 for Tom Boonen coming in fifth place
Flirty O’Dirty scored 26 for Robert Hunter coming in sixth place
Paddles scored 22 for Erik Zabel coming in seventh place
Digger scored 18 for Sébastien Chavanel coming in eighth place
Sick Note scored 16 for Bernhard Eisel coming in ninth place
Cannibal scored 14 for Thor Hushovd coming in tenth place
TechnoBoy scored 12 for Claudio Corioni coming in eleventh place
Ribs scored 10 for Robert Förster coming in twelfth place
O’Dirty scored 8 for Yaroslav Popovych coming in thirteenth place
Cannibal scored 6 for Cadel Evans coming in forteenth place
Two Phat scored 4 for Sébastien Hinault coming in fifteenth place
Water Boy scored 20 for Alberto Contador Velasco leading the general classification