Volta a Catalunya

Nah - its definitely Christian Meier in the break, Travis is spelt Meyer (as is Cam). Confusing tho!

Its Travis Meier in the break not Christian by the way

Damn! Forgot about it! Haven't got a purist team at all and going to drop after today!

So I completely blanked on this until right now Doesn't bode well

Cool - I have Salerno in my purists - a rare breakaway for team Chris!

Standard
Davis, Meersman, J Simon, Gavazzi, Poulhies, Priedler, Betancurt, J-Rod, Valverde

Purist
Salerno, Betancurt, Eijssen, Landa, Spilak, Uran, J-Rod, Valverde, Quintana

Always fun making the random cheap picks. Got to fancy Movistar at the mo, they look darn good...

Passo Collsacreu Alt (km 15.9):

1 Salerno 2 Meier 3 Txurruka 4 Jeannesson

Special Sprint Sant Esteve de Palautordera:

1 Meier 2 Salernao 3 Pineau

Oh, and at the first sprint:

Quote:

Sprint especial de Sant Esteve de Palautordera: 1. Meier; 2. Salerno; 3. Pineau

Quote:

#VoltaCatalunya KoM 1 - 1 Salerno 2 Meier 3 Txurruka & 4 Jeannesson

Quote:

#VoltaCatalunya Gap up to 8'10" after 32km

Salerno and Meier out front at the minute, no time gaps or details but apparently they've gone over the first climb ahead of the peloton.

Standard

Davis
Dumoulin
Meersman
Horner
Quintana
Wiggo
Santamorita
Machado
Pineau

Purist

Wiggo
Ryder
Kohler
Horner
Santamorita
Caruso
Gavazzi
Astraloza
Rujano

Purist:
Wiggins
Pinot
Zubeldia
Kadri
Quintana
Lopez
Spilak
Szmyd
Ruijgh

Standard

Meersman
Uran
Dumoulin
Rodriguez
Wagner
Spilak
Pate
Kadri
Kohler

Picked Wiggo for purist and J-Rod for standard as i feel one of these will win overall.

STD:

Davis
Dumoulin
Kohler
Guardini
Clarke
de Gendt
Rodriguez
Niocentini
Cam Meier

PURE:

Rodriguez
Niocentini
de Gendt
Betancurt
Rujano
Machado
Ten Dam
Fugslang
Navarro

My purists:

J-Rod
Valverde
Jeannesson
Elissonde
Majka
Domagalski
Horner
Spilak
Fenn(last minute swap in for the non runner Matthews).

My Standard:
Valverde
Jeannesson
Elissonde
Quintana
Nocentini
Meersman*
Davis*
Fenn*
Dumoulin*

The * denotes that they are coming out for stage 3 for climbers(and I'll have enough credits to accomodate J-Rod and 14.9 for the remaining 3 spots!!)

Feeling confident about this one(always a bad sign!!)

Standard
Valverde
Meersman
Davis
Simon
Guardini
Dumoulin
Cardoso
Haedo
Kreder

Purist
Rodriguez
Valverde
Horner
Meersman
Simon
Cardoso
jeandesboz
Ruijgh
Arroyo

Well here are my teams, this could go horribly wrong

Standard

Simon
Dumoulin
Meersman
Wellens
Ratto
Machado
Majka
Hesjedal
Uran

Purist

Simon
Dumoulin
Arroyo
Spilak
Aru
Majka
Martin
Valverde
Uran

Simon 15.7 or Quintana 15.5 for my purists? Keep changing my mind. Its a tricky one this - lots of big names but many of them won't have hit form yet - who'll be going for the overall I wonder? Last year was basically the Albasini and Simon show, but the 2 big summit finishes look more severe this week...

My team is very similar to all the rest at the mo, purist filled with climbers etc etc and my standard has 2 sprinters in for stage one and they will be swapped out for the rest of the race starting tomorrow.

Teams picked, my purist is loaded with climbers, my standard with strong sprinters.

Hoping to get a jump on everyone by having more sprinters than the rest tomorrow. Plus at 10 points each I can make a load of penalty transfers if I need to.

I don't know if I'm daft or not but there's a bloke on my standard team who might do well in the first 2 stages but he just raced MSR so he'll surely be ill by tomorrow morning. Imagine doing that race one day then jumping on a plane to Spain and starting a stage race the next day! I think I'll probably take him out! He didn't finish MSR but got way too deep into it before dropping out!

Yeah I've just talked myself into a change.

For the vuelta in north east spain,
Picking my purists was quite a pain
Bit now ive picked my man Losada
With the columbian, Nairo Quintana

Two of my purists arent riding. Bye bye marcynski hello euskatel rider

Thanks Dr

Start list has been updated. A few changes, and full Caja Rural roster up now too. Pick away!

Will do a final update in the morning in case of last minute changes.

Same my purist team is 2 sprinters and 6 climbers/GC type guys and 1 cheap guy who could climb, could be in a breakaway who knows

As for my team for stage 1 Ive gone for 5 stronger sprint types (so no Guardini, although i do have a teammate of his) along with 4 for the climbing/GC in aid of having 4 transfers for stage 3 to get rid of 4 of the sprinter types

Re: stage 1.

Always best to look at the description of the route for detailed information (etepa detallada on the official site), profiles can be misleading, eg stage 6 TA. None of the average gradients or ramps are anything to bother a reasonably strong sprinter. Most commentators seem to think stage 1 will come to some kind of sprint. Always best to remember when choosing teams that different tours have different descriptions of categorised climbs so although it's categorised as 1 here, in a Grand Tour it would probably be 3; it's only 6km at 5.6% early in the race after all, so unlikely to be a turning point. The official description is:

Rampas en 6 kms. - Desnivel medio 5,6% - Rampas maximas 8%

As far as the game goes I don't look at the stage descriptions at all. How the values are calculated is how the values are calculated. Last year and the year before it was more intuition, this year it's more maths-based. They're the same for everyone after all.

With regard to choosing a team I'm looking at the stage description more now and less at the profile, whereas before it was the other way round. I would have won TA purist if I'd done that for stage 6 and seen how tough it really was and had fewer sprinters in my purist team. Luckily I checked before choosing my standard team.

For VC though, in spite of what I've just said about stage 1, my purist team is going to be packed with climbers.

MY BAD,

I just checked the official site, which does NOT show the profile very well at all. Check else where and you will see that Dr H has it set up right.