TOUR DE FRANCE - TIPPING

Thanks again to Gatesy for organising the Bastardi Tour de France tipping contest.

For those not on the emails check out the instructions and advice below:


Its that time again for another tipping comp.

I have set up a league again on the SBS website with the league name of bastardi and password grassi all lower case. Same rules seem to apply as last year, just check the scoring system to work put which riders to choose.

http://www.sbs.com.au/cyclingcentral/home/fantasy


Good luck and choose your riders carefully.

No riders seem to being showing great form yet, will Alberto "the butcher" be too tired from the Giro, will Andy's chain stay on in the important moments, will Cadel finally string his good form through July and can Mark "the Missile" Cavendish concrete on cycling instead of tweeting long enough too finally win the green jersey. Then there are the usual outsiders such as Basso, Wiggins, Sanchez, Van de Brocke etc fighting for top 5 placing. Should be a cracker of a race again.

Get your tips in ASAP and start watching from Saturday night…..

- MG

TDF Tipping comp

It's almost July and the TDF starts on Saturday. So it's time to start picking your team for the tipping. We'll use the same system as last year from the
SBS website tdf.sbs.com.au/tdf2010/fantasy
Check out the scoring system to help you pick your teams. Again it is $10 entry, winner takes all.

The league name is Bastardi and the password is grassi.

So check out the website and get your teams organised.

MG

TDF - TIME TO MAKE SELECTIONS

IMPORTANT CHANGE TO TIPPING COMP

We are running with the SBS site for the grand pool prize, with $10 entry, winner takes all!!!

http://fantasytdf.sbs.com.au/

If you have not recieved the password or username, hollar to fsmith@hassell.com.au

Good morning Gentlemen,

With the news this morning that one of Cadel's top domestiques has been kicked out for EPO has put another dent in his attempt to win the Tour. It did look at bit wrong at the time when Dekker left Rabobank and has now been done for an EPO test retested from a sample taken in December 2007.

With only 2 more proper nights of sleep left before the kick off it is time to get your teams selected for the tipping competition. Boonen still hasn't been confirmed either whether he is competing or not but it looks like Alby will get the ride instead, which is great to see another Aussie riding.

For those of you who are keen, I have actually set up 2 tipping comps to see which one is best. You are welcome to go in both, but the one which the Bastardi kitty will be decided upon is the SBS competition. I will include details for both but the SBS comp has a bit more flexibility, and has weekly prizes up for grabs, as well as a $10,000 kitty for the winner. With this site you can change riders if one is having a bad race or stops racing, plus you need to pick a bonus stage which you score double points on. It also shows whos hot and whos not to help with any transfers during the race. You have a limited number of tranfers available during the race, but you can change your team to suit the different terrain. But as pointed out in the rules, your selections for final GC positions, stay with your original selection. - M. Gates

Here is the link for the PRIZE POOL site http://fantasytdf.sbs.com.au/

**Note, it list stage 4 as a individual time trial, this is actually a team time trial**

With the Velogames, you pick your team, and just sit back and watch, there are no adjustments that can be done during the race.

The link for the velogames site www.velogames.com

Thanks to Gates-e for setting up the tipping comp -FS

A new website for the Tour

In addtion to the cyclingnews.com and sbs pages, a new one for this year can be found at

http://www.theage.com.au/sport/tour_de_france/index.html

Tour De France Tipping - riders listing

As of last night the Velogames website had started listing riders on the website. To make your team you have to select 9 riders from the 100 points you are given. I can't remember the exact break down of riders that you need but it is something; You need to select 2 overall riders, 2 climbers, 1 sprinter, 3 domestiques and 1 rider from any category. The details are listed on the website http://www.velogames.com/tdf09riders.php

As expected, Contador is the strong favourite so he costs an expensive 26 points (more than a quarter of the budget for a team), the Evans for 20 points and a bit of surprise is Armstrong, also at 20 points while Sastre is a relative bargain at 18 points. Cav, the hot selection for the sprints is 20 points while you can pick up the Norwegian God of thunder for about 14 points. Boonen is not on the list yet, court case pending.

So start selecting your teams. I haven't set up the league yet as that wasn't open yet, but you can start working out your team(s).

Good luck - M Gates

Tour De France Tipping

The Tour is only just over a week away and the anticipation is growing. To help celebrate the action this year we are looking at setting up a Bastardi tipping competition. We have decided to use a online system that we can create our own league and the website will look after itself. The website site is http://www.velogames.com/ but at the moment the tour competition is not yet up and running, but you can still check out the site and see how it works. I will request our own league and send the details on when I have them.

Prizes
According to the website there is no prize (there is no entry cost) but bastardi's will have a $10 each prize pool. winner takes all!!!

Rules
Basically all you need to do is select 9 riders as your team and hope for the best. If one of your riders pulls out or is done for drugs during the tour you are not allowed to substitute them. You can only change riders if one of your selected riders does not make the teams final roster and you need to change before kick off next Saturday.

According to the website, each person can have only one team, but if you would like to register a team under partners name, then that is ok, I presume you will just need a different email address and password..

Scoring is detailed on the website so check it out, might help you select your team. The scoring system is quite complex and riders can earn points for being in breakaways, helping their team leader, wearing the yellow jersey, sprint and mountain points and of course, final overall position.

Hint
If you don't know the website http://www.cyclingnews.com/ then I highly recommend checking it out. It will give you all the latest goss and list who is on what team. Important to look at if you are wanting to select riders like Boonen or Valverde who may or may not be riding (depending on court cases), and was Contador really about to change teams??

Cheers and good luck
Michael Gates