It's had its twists and turns and it's deposited us here: in Madrid, with the oldest Grand Tour winner ever. Chris Horner wrapped it up on the Angliru before the procession into Madrid, leaving a string of European talent in his wake. But you already know about all that. What you want to know is: what happened in Fantasy Cycling? There was a bunch of great prizes from Halfords to be handed out, so who ended up with what?
What happened to long-time leaders team Dag Otto Lauridsen, unfortunately for them, was that they were finally overrun on the slopes of the Angliru to be replaced at the top of the overall table by team Scorekeeper. And as if that wasn't bad enough, they slipped a further place on the final day to cede second place to team jayna by just one point (3,134 to 3,133), with team Scorekeeper ending up victorious by a fairly impressive 72 points on 3,206.
So it's team Scorekeeper that wins the Boardman carbon fibre road bike, with teams Dag Otto Lauridsen and jayna netting a pair of posh Lake CX331 shoes respectively. Over in the Purist league, team Rouleur's revenge took the win by a comfortable 135 points from team blackheath wheelers to become the winner of a Gore Phantom 2.0 jacket.
On to stage winners. We've already announced the winners from weeks one and two but we'll recap them here, along with the top scorers for the final run-in. Here's the whole list of stage winners:
Stage 1: eoghan39 (eoghan39) (174 points)
Stage 2: Dag Otto Lauridsen (martinlaes) 168 points)
Stage 3: dash (Etsuko Hama) (202 points)
Stage 4: dinbsky (dinbsky) (163 points)
Stage 5: Gouwe Kouwie (Gouwe Kouwie) 183 points)
Stage 6: dlewis1a (dlewis1a) (166 points)
Stage 7: tts bristol - chris (chrisgnewman) (134 points)
Stage 8: BMC (Bald Manc C___) Racing (bradders1980) (226 points, on a coin toss)
Stage 9: The Burghfield Cycle Club (ianthegecko) (211 points)
Stage 10: mshamster (mshamster) (228 points)
Stage 11: Nick Ost (239 points, wins on a coin toss from a tie)
Stage 12: liamsmale (liamsmale) (157 points, wins with most scoring riders from a 3-way tie)
Stage 13: Team Lucas (lucas) (145 points)
Stage 14: GetJohn (johcar) (233 points)
Stage 15: NONDOPINGBASTARDS (stukas666) (223 points)
Stage 16: NathanLukeTickner (NathanLukeTickner) (127 points)
Stage 17: Team Morales (jacobo) (168 points)
Stage 18: Fiona41 (Fiona41) (194 points)
Stage 19: Liestronger (tfrawley) (205 points)
Stage 20: karlake2 (karlake2) (231 points)
Stage 21: Anaheim Dreamers (capitalgull) (185 points)
So that's everyone! With the exception of our raffle winner, who gets an Adidas outfit worth £150 just for having a go. And that prize goes to snorbitz. So well done him-stroke-her.
We hope you've enjoyed playing our Fantasy Vuelta, and a big thanks to Halfords for supplying the prizes. That's the last Grand Tour of the season out of the way but there's still more racing to come and it'll all be bigger and better next year too. Stay tuned for that!
I hope you're all checking your insurance policies, helmets, test certificates and road tax, it's the 2024 round-up...
200 people out of a close by population of how many? Just build it and stop being a wuss
To paraphrase Field of Dreams, "Build it right and they will come: and use it!"
And a Happy Christmas to you, road.cc staff!
The odds of not being able to find a single pedestrian - just one, note, "any pedestrian" - in an area containing more than about ten of them who...
I love how wannabe racer reviewers talk about fork flex under braking like their tyres are made of glue. I find traction gives long before fork flex.
They don't make them like they used to
Thanks for using my picture of chocolate in your opening picture. The original can be found here, chocolate! | LongitudeLatitude | Flickr.
Fair comments. I'll put my hands up and say I got the wrong end of the stick with this one. ¡Feliz navidad! Here's a pic for the season of goodwill.
A trip down memory lane (or street) for me - Harry Quinn's bike shop was at the top of our Street and I used to spend time staring at the bikes and...