Tour of Dubai

Who wants to get to Qatar without a prep race? Not me! So, here we go. A Forum competition for those who can't live without a race!

The Tour of Dubai runs for just 4 days. It's the perfect race to tweak your team for Qatar and Oman!

The Tour starts on Wednesday Feb 5 and runs through Saturday Feb 8.

Its stages look something like this:

Stage 1 Time Trial
Stage 2 Flat
Stage 3 Hilly - 6.8 km flat run-in to the finish
Stage 4 Flat

But don't take my word for it. Here's the race profiles link:

http://dubaitour.com/

Here's the start list I've been using:

http://www.procyclingstats.com/race/Dubai_Tour_2014-Startlist

Here's the officail Tour of Dubai Twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/dubaitour

The rules:

1. Pick 9 riders from the list below.
2. Use the rider values listed below.
3. You have a budget of 150 credits.
4. Deadline will be the start of Stage 1. Stage 1 starts at 1:05pm local time Wednesday Feb 5 (9:05 CET/ 4:05 AM ET USA).
5. Follow the special rule.

The Special rule!

Yep. A special rule. And here it is. You cannot use any (!) of the following 5 riders in your team

Peter Sagan 36.4
Mark Cavendish 30.1
Fabian Cancellara 27.1
Tony Martin 28.3
Marcel Kittel 19.3

Hope you like it.

Notes:
1. If you enter a team, please check your math(s). I could not catch all the budget mistakes in the last game and we had a hiccup there. To make it easier to spot a mistake please list your riders with the rider value next to the name and a budget total for your team after the list.

2. If there are Sprint points along the way, Sprint points will be awarded. If there are no Sprint points along the way those riders in the break of the day will receive 5 points for being in the break. More or less, that will apply to groups of riders that make a break stick and lasts either until the finish line or until the peloton catches the group that has been away for the majority of the race. If there's any confusion, the race organizer will determine what constitutes the 'break of the day'

3. If you want to use a rider not listed, let me know and I'll look up the appropriate value. In most cases if they are not listed they will probably be a 3.0 credit rider.

4. I may not be able to post the team scores quickly. In fact I cannot say for sure I will do an update every day. Please be patient. I think I have a rough week ahead. If anybody wants to take care of the daily stage scoring for any particular day or days, please, I'll take the help!

The riders

START LIST SORTED BY RIDER VALUE

Alejandro Valverde 37.5
Vincenzo Nibali 31.1
Rui Faria Da Costa 29.0
Ryder Hesjedal 23.5
Luca Paolini 21.1
Alessandro Petacchi 20.9
Joaquin Rodriguez 20.9
Thor Hushovd 20.8
Taylor Phinney 19.7
Alex Dowsett 19.3
Lawson Craddock 18.7
Peter Velits 17.8
Mark Renshaw 17.7
Tyler Farrar 17.3
Jonathan Castroviejo 17.0
Giacomo Nizzolo 16.8
Jose Herrada 16.8
Roberto Ferrari 15.8
Reinardt Janse Van Rensburg 15.7
Damiano Caruso 15.0
Angel Vicioso 14.9
Adriano Malori 14.7
Alexey Lutsenko 14.4
Julien Vermote 13.4
Danilo Hondo 13.1
Marco Marcato 12.4
Jesus Herrada Lopez 12.4
Daniele Ratto 12.2
Fabio Sabatini 11.9
Andrea Guardini 11.7
Nikolay Trusov 11.7
Nikolas Maes 11.6
Filippo Pozzato 11.0
Juan Jose Lobato 10.8
Kristof Vandewalle 10.8
Sebastian Langeveld 10.8
Sebastian Lander 10.8
Enrique Sanz 10.5
Maciej Bodnar 10.5
Bob Jungels 10.3
Jacopo Guarnieri 10.2
Klaas Lodewyck 10.1
Davide Cimolai 9.9
Rory Sutherland 9.9
Edward King 9.9
Alexander Porsev 9.8
Matteo Tosatto 9.5
Janez Brajkovic 9.4
Martin Velits 9.4
Tom Veelers 9.1
Juraj Sagan 8.9
Lucas Sebastian Haedo 8.4
Yannick Eijssen 8.1
Steven Cummings 7.9
Francisco Mancebo Perez 7.8
Bert De Backer 7.8
Vladimir Gusev 7.7
Nelson Oliveira 7.2
Dmitriy Gruzdev 6.7
Alberto Losada 6.6
Oliver Zaugg 6.4
Rafael Valls Ferri 5.9
Wout Poels 5.8
Ramon Sinkeldam 5.6
Koen De Kort 5.4
Pavel Brutt 5.2
Jay Mccarthy 5.2
Cheng Ji 5.1
Evan Huffman 4.9
Sergey Chernetski 4.6
Alexandr Pliuschin 4.5
Fumiyuki Beppu 4.4
Johan Van Summeren 4.4
Nick Nuyens 4.0
Raymond Kreder 3.7
Rick Zabel 3.7
Adil Jelloul 3.0
Ahmed Yousef Almansory 3.0
Alessandro Malaguti 3.0
Alex Coutts 3.0
Andrea Palini 3.0
Antonio Viola 3.0
Boris Shpilevsky 3.0
Bruno Matos Sancho 3.0
Bruno Pires 3.0
Daniel José Pereira Mestre D 3.0
Diogo Nunes 3.0
Dylan Van Baarle 3.0
Eduard Michael Grosu 3.0
Eugenio Alafaci 3.0
Fabio Silvestre 3.0
Henrique Madeira Casimiro 3.0
Ivan Rovny 3.0
João Pereira 3.0
Keon Woo Park 3.0
Khaled Altani 3.0
Kim Magnusson 3.0
Lasse Norman Hansen 3.0
Maher Hasnaoui 3.0
Majed Albalooshi 3.0
Manabu Ishibashi 3.0
Mansoor Albalooshi 3.0
Manuel Amaro 3.0
Michael Valgren 3.0
Mohamed Hasan Almurawwi 3.0
Mohammed Almansuory 3.0
Niccolo Bonifazio 3.0
Oscar Pujol 3.0
Pier Paolo De Negri 3.0
Qayed Ahmad 3.0
Rafaa Chtioui 3.0
Rafael Reis 3.0
Ruslan Karimov 3.0
Simon Buttner 3.0
Sun Jae Jang 3.0
Takashi Miyazawa 3.0
Tan Peng Yuan 3.0
Valentin Iglinksiy 3.0
Valter Pereira 3.0
Wen Chung Huang 3.0
Willie Smit 3.0
Yousef Mohamed Mirza 3.0