Apologies for the slight delay - it seems ages ago that Vicenzo Nibali was lifting the big spirally trophy in a maelstrom of pink confetti, and now we're cracking on with the Dauphiné. But we need to round up the last week of Fantasy cycling and announce all the winners. So here goes!
First of all, let's hand out the random prize: a Bryton Rider 21 bundle to one of the users who entered a team for stage 1. We've spun the electronic tumbler and pulled out the name of… pschristian. Lucky old them, a nice GPS unit for doing nothing more than picking a team on time.
Stage winners next. We've run down the first two weeks in our previous round-ups, but here's the final list of all the stage winners for the 2013 Giro. Each player gets a natty Birzman Infinite Air pump worth £26.99:
livestrongnick
garycox
mrpt5
Alex Cyclist
robfarrington
DoNRaDu
jmorrisseyd
jaahe
934864
marobertson
sori
jacquesbonquetil
djb123
Dr Plumbster
silas chime
STEVESPRO 79
Rigobear
2wheelzgood
marxtrom
thorolf
Well done to all those players for some impressive scoring.
On to the overall, and a drum roll to announce that… presenrumu08 is this year's Fantasy Giro winner! Their team Atle Kvasvoll took the top spot on stage 17 and kept it all the way through the last week, finishing on a very impressive 2664 points, an average of over 133 if you discount the non-scoring stage 19. So that's the Bianchi Via Nirone road bike on its way to (checks user profile) San Sebastian, it would seem.
Second place overall goes to tony kappler who finished just 37 points adrift after three weeks of racing, with karlake2 a further 15 points adrift in third. A big chapeau and a special Giro Edition Limar 777 helmet to both of them.
Just the purist league to wrap up then, and no surprise that Flizyt took the crown; they'd been out in front since stage 14. In the end, though, the margin of victory could not have been tighter. Just one point separated them from R Massey in second place.
So that's about it for the Giro. Currently the Dauphiné is in progress, and after that the premium bods get a crack at the Tour de Suisse, and then it's time for the big one. The Tour de France is less than a month away and we've got one of our favourite road bikes to give away as the top prize, as well as a bunch of other shiny stuff. Stay tuned for an announcement on that; The Fantasy TdF game will open on Monday 17 June.
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