Tour De Romandie

I put a Giro team together, but its slowing falling apart....

Easily the most difficult race of the season to pick for so far, really struggling to get a team I'm happy with.

Anyone had a crack at a Giro team yet? Please tell me it's easier than this...

This is doing my NUT in, here are my purist changes so far.

Lieuwe Westra
Patrick Gretsch
Simon Spilak
Gustav Erik Larsson
Jeremy Roy
Vasil Kiryienka
Svein Tuft
Jesse Sergent
Mathias Frank

Alejandro Valverde
Jurgen van de Walle
Marcel Wyss
Johnny Hoogerland
Matteo Montaguti
Thomas Danielson
Peter Velits
Roman Kreuziger
Christopher Sutton

Ivan Basso
Alejandro Valverde
Christopher Froome
Johnny Hoogerland
Mikel Astarloza
Alexandre Geniez
Vladimir Karpets
Romain Sicard
Steve Morabito

Pro-cycling stats appears to have crashed

Froome, 100%, can't see them giving Porte the nod unless Froome crashes or has a total mare one day. I think they'll use Porte as a back up but it's all about getting Froome the experience of leading and winning races.

Porte for the Giro next year though.

I think it'll still be a TT/GC showdown but perhaps with more emphasis on climbing than you might get in a normal prologue. Plus at over 7km it's not the short burst you've had in previous years where the likes of Cavendish were up there.

I'd like to pick Hesjedal but he's expensive and last year he didn't try to keep up throughout the race so he may be taking it easy by the time we get to the last couple of days. Froome should be a good bet as he's doing a Wiggins and looking to win everything, he's not cheap though and will some potential GC points be worth keeping him in for the three MM days?

Glad to see people are having the same issues as me...

Will tomorrow's climb cause problems for the pure TTers? If so, which of the GC guys will actually be trying? And which sprinters will get to the finish on Weds/Thurs? All? None?

I've picked a team and I'm just gonna stick with it (with a quick check in the morning that no-one's pulled out). Could be here all day otherwise - so many options and they all seem to be the wrong one!

There will be a KoM standing at the end of the prologue because the climb used is rated as a category 3 climb. That means there'll be KoM points awarded to the quickest couple of people (or that's my understanding at least).

Don't see it changing much in the grand scheme of things because we'll all already be going after the fastest. At least it shows though that this is potentially a climbers prologue rather than the standard sprinters/track specialists prologue.

A couple of questions

1)The initial prologue is going to decide the KOM jersey on the timed hilly part.......are we scoring the KOM Pts during/after the prologue?

2)Anyone know the cut off point for youth eligibility? Is Talansky eleigible?

I have all sorts of team's going on at the minute. There are too many question marks around too many of the 10-20 priced riders.

Can Betancur sustain his form? Is Westra likely to do better than in Paris-Nice? What's Spilak's plan for the race? Is Valverde riding as leader or are Costa/Capecchi worth a punt? What about Gadret or Sorenson?

And then we get onto those you'd expect to do well but might not be targeting the race like Porte, Talansky, Peraud, Gesink, Rolland, Van den Broeck or De Gendt?!

Add on top of that the stupid route (three stages which aren't clear cut sprint/climb, what's that about?) and it makes for a very confusing race to pick for.

The transfers are unlimited for tomorrow, is that right?

both my teams just look a mess, also im unsure who is gonna wanna show any form, for example id put albasini in my purist team as he can sprint from a small group, but he just doesn't seem bothered at the moment or in any form.

Agreed, stages 1-3 might come to sprint finishes but also might be break aways or small GC bunch sprints. It's hard to see how they'll play out and with just one proper mountain stage I don't want to just pick the GC climbers...

It's too hard!

I think im settled on my purist team, but keep changing my standard team, really confused what to do. Its gonna be one of those, will either do well or really badly. Im unsure whats stages are gonna suit Cav/Goss

Yeah, the value of a lot of the riders in form has shot up making it difficult to pick for this race, especially with the 'mountain' prologue on the first stage. Hard to get the balance between the prologue/GC and then stages 1-3.

This is a hard race to pick a team for. So much choice, not enough credits.

I think a safe assumption is that the last to be update is the game start list.

When updating the riders for the game we're working off the same lists as everyone else (cycling fever and pro cycling stats usually) so we're relying on them to be up to date. That usually means that if they change then we need to try and catch up so we're always behind.

It's also a safe assumption that unless an official race start list is released on the eve of a race that it will be out of date quite quickly. If a race issues a start list a week before the race then it's 100% guaranteed that it'll have changed within a day or two.

I think the parcours for Romandie includes 3 MM stages which is what the Ardennes classics were rated as. That means his form from the Ardennes directly translates to a much higher value for Romandie. Add into that his showing at Pais Vasco (which was after his value of 3 credits was set for the classic) and you get a huge, but deserved, jump in price.

Crikey! Betancur's value has gone from 3 shekels to 19.3