Fantasy Cycling: Tour of Qatar stage 5

Stage 5 of the Tour of Qatar was a difficult one to predict and the fantasy points were more evenly spread than usual. Boonen and Farrar marked each other and stayed out of trouble, preserving their places on the GC, leaving Cavendish, Oss and Sagan to fight it out for the stage win; a fight the Manxman won fairly easily.

That meant more scoring riders and a harder job getting a big haul. A look at the dream team showed the maximum achievable score to be 197, whereas normally it's well over 200. That being the case, 180 is a considerable haul, and that's what team TeamMattFinish managed to accrue. Up until now they'd been putting in solid if unremarkable performances on the Arabian peninsula but it all came good yesterday, with a 1-2-3 from the big guns plus scores from every other team member. Team Gasworks ran in second with 171 points and Team Sanchez were third with 161.

That means MattFr gets the stage prize of a Green Oil Eco-Rider kit and it goes to show too that you don't need to be troubling the top of the table to be in with a shout of running off with a stage prize. Talking of the top of the table, team SBABES are still in the hot seat on 645 points but it's tight, with team rjl just four points back and Team Cairns jumping six places to third. All to play for... In the purists league The Peloton Pundit jumped a whopping 8 places to hit the front with a stage to go. Good luck on stage 6, everyone!