Fantasy Tour de France: the 2010 winners

So, the Tour is over for another year. All that's left are empty bidons squashed beneath the wheels of the Champs Elysèes traffic, and other similarly poignant metaphors. Still, it was a good race this year, made all the more exciting, we're sure you agree, by the inaugural road.cc Fantasy Tour de France competition. And it's time to announce the winners!

So, step onto the podium, alexlnumber1. The Pedal Os have been there or thereabouts for most of the race, and 1800 points over the life of the race is a remarkable total. That's an average of over 85 points per stage, which makes everyone in the road.cc office look like a dismal no-hoper. We can't compete with that kind of scoring, although Simon would like to point that he came a very creditable 36th.

So that means that alexlnumber1 is our first Fantasy Tour winner, and will be taking delivery of a very smart KHS Flite 300 bike courtesy of game sponsors Cyclesurgery. Well done!

There were ten Cyclesurgery jerseys up for grabs too, and they'll go to the following teams who ranked from second to joint tenth overall:

simonking (simonking): 1782 points
azkune (meninblack): 1704 points
saioarri (saioarri): 1685 points
Yella Jersea (djtrax): 1668 points
fdringo (antomeno): 1664 points
going nowhere fast (lessthanross): 1648 points
conquistadors (only1ghost): 1642 points
Devolder (ben1991): 1642 points
peloton de fer (lordthorne): 1639 points
Get off and push... (homer187): 1639 points

Well done to all of you chaps too.

Lastly there's a few more spot prizes to announce for the final three stages. Friday's sprint-friendly run into Bordeaux was taken by second-placed team simonking, with 109 points. Team Bean were the time trial specialists, picking up a haul of 85 points in the race against time, and on the Champs Elysèes it was simonking again, making a late run for the line with 106 points and closing the gap on the Pedal Os but just coming up short in the end. Since he's just won a tee though (and a jersey, the lucky scamp) we'll award the spot prize to next-placed team Vagabonds with 89 points, who edged out conquistadors on the same score by dint of not just having won a jersey for a top ten place.

Well, thanks to everyone who played. It's been fun, and much more successful than we ever could have imagined. In the end we had over 1,800 teams entered, and while some fell by the wayside there were still over 1,500 people playing when the peloton reached Paris. Needless to say we'll be doing it all again next year, so tell your friends.

Next up is the Vuelta. We'll be running a Fantasy league, and we want your input. What has and hasn't worked for you in the Tour? Maybe you'd like some scoring changes, maybe you needed/wanted more transfers. Or less. Whetever, post a comment below and we'll take them all into account as we take the spanners to the game engine ahead of the Vuelta rollout in August.