Tour De France - Étape 1

Cavendish
Greipel
Kittel
Kristoff
Bouhanni
El Fares
Mederel
Bono
Fischer

Basically a 5 man team (unless one of the cheapies gets in the break). No crashes please.

Cavendish
Kittel
Gerrans
Hoogerland
Gasparotto
S.Dumoulin
Kristoff
Navardauskas
Fischer

Yes it begins

Kittel
Cav
Griepel
Bouhanni
cimolai
D V Poppel
mederel
willems
Ugalde
2.7 credits spare

Cav no Sagan(straight swap tomorrow) plus one other out and out youth sprinter(swapping out tomorrow also) plus 7 guys you could describe as 'useful in a reduced bunch finish' mainly for stages 2,3,5 and 7.

aiming to bank at least one transfer between stages 2/3,3/4,4/5 but with crashes or an unexpected cheap KOM leader that's open to change.

Rider most anticipated:Geraint Thomas
Stage most anticipated:summit finish to Ax-3-Domains
Predicted first Goss crash:stage 1,probably with O'Grady involved
Predicted Winner:J-Rod
Predicted Polka:Hoogerland
Predicted Green:Sagan
Predicted White:Van Garderen
Predicted Most Aggressive:Clarke

I am looking for 2,400 points and a top 50 place in the Tour game overall and have no Cav, Sagan or Greipel in my team for Stage 1.

I've got 7 sprinters of whom 4 are young and 3 who I reckon can get decent points tomorrow as well. The other 2 are fillers!!

Good luck everyone!!

Sprinters, No spreadsheet, Gonna wing it from here, got some nice youngsters I am going to blood later on. Very excited!

Thank God Farrar withdrew, one less to worry about, now if Gossy can just get sick......

Cav in, no Sagan for me.

Cue Matthew Harley Goss winning...

Off boozing tonight with work so no changes for me after about half 4, teams pretty much settled so not really an issue.

Tingling with anticipation....Will have one last tinker tonight, but I think that I am more or less sorted...

Standard team is fairly predictable and will be the same as most peoples...

Purist team is picked from the heart and not the head...If they don't float my boat, then they are not in, no matter how well I think they will do...

I too have Cav but not Sagan, and about 3 credits in hand so I have the option of switching them for Sunday. Also gone for Kittel and Bouhanni, and three guys who may sprint for top 10, and can deal with the lumpy stuff too. Really think Greipel could match Cav on the flat stages this year, but as he won't be going for the intermediates (so he says), I've not picked him. Yet.

Have a rough plan of what to do for the next 4 stages, but keeping it flexible until we see who is in the spotty jumper (as my girlfriend calls it) after Sunday...

Are we confident? NO! Mainly just excited about the race, and am starting with low expectations - we'll see where we are after the TTT...

Looking forward to having a laugh on the forum, trying to keep it light and not take it seriously but that will change if I'm top 50 this time next week!

Hope you don't mind a shameless plug, my weekly sports show on www.cambridge105.fm will have a totally slapdash TdF preview this Sunday from 6pm if anyone is plumbing the depths of boredom to the extent that you need something to listen to...

I've got a spreadsheet with a column per stage and minor analysis of what I think will happen, got two or three guys listed that I think will feature on each stage up to stage 7...

Anyway, for stage 1 I have Cavendish but I don't have Sagan.