Catalunya Stage 1

1,2,8, but more luck than judgement. Serious lack of profile/gradient info... a Cat 1 that's 4% average might have the all-rounders winning the stage, a Cat 3 with a 15% ramp will make it climbers-only. Bonkers.

I think the fantasy cycling game is fantastic, but when I don't have much time to choose a team I rely on the brief stage descriptions in the game. Todays stage was classed as 'High Mountains'. The race results show it clearly wasn't! This not only affects todays result but makes the whole tour seems more mountainous than it is, so I filled both my teams with climbers. I think I probably scored 0 for both my teams today.
Where do these classifications come from? An official website?
Oh, well at least I know not to put too much trust in them again. I'll have to hunting for badges for the rest of the week.

Went with no sprinters in my purist team and I think I may have a big fat zero there today

It was more a medium mountain stage ....if you check pcs they are pretty good with parcours description , so I've found .....I made a mistake by not checking the profile something I learnt to do last year and am gutted about this evening

Apologies about the confusion. It is always, without exception, worth looking at profiles yourself.

Last year the top 10 for this stage (almost identical) was full of climbers but the stage was won by Meersman so that tells you a lot about the parcour. This year it was a full on sprint but it still contained a cat 1 mountain topping out above 600m in the latter half of the stage so it's all subjective.

The problem with this race is that it's very hilly and every day is just full of climbs, what looks like a hilly day today turned out to be easier than expected but it could have gone the other way so easily.

As a rule of thumb a stage that consists of multiple climbs including a category 1 climb is probably borderline between MM and HM and in hindsight today was probably on the easier side of the MM/HM line but if Sky or Movistar had chosen to force a selection we could have seen GC guys battling for the win.

Anyway, always check the profile. The official site has proper profiles with heights - see http://www.voltacatalunya.cat/ca/etapa/2/ - and this page is very useful in that it shows all the climbs included in the race along with gradients - http://www.voltacatalunya.cat/ca/etapes/

my purist team scored a big fat zero today- which makes it 666th equal. A worrying portent?

My scores were better thankfully.

Standard 5
Purist 2

I saw a tweet from a betting site and put in the top 4 favourites for the stage in at the last minute(119pts on the stage and 30th for the race)......but I still want to know how Wig_Billy got Martens and Van Der Sande(load of old tosh) and perhaps have a little loan of his time machine!!

Just out of interest, is there a particular reason that more riders score on the mountains in the race than in the game? That's not ususally the case, is it?

Just to add to what Dr, the above scoring is easiest when its an ASO race, as they always use those points above, and are set out in one of there scoring documentation, which means the dauphine, TdF, Vuelta are all scored that way, the same as the race. I gonna use the word care quite frivolously, but when its an RCS race they don't seem to care too much regards mountains jersey (except for the Giro), so all climbs seem to carry the same weight regardless of category, and thus generally 5 down to 1 scoring applies. Then other races such as this race carry there own scoring which may be higher, but we fall back on the standard of above, as it has worked from when we had less races.

Just one more question - how will the HC climb on stage 3 be scored? - there's no mention in the scoring information of HC, only cat 1 to 3

HC: 15, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1 points (assuming that 7 riders are scored on the HC in the race and I can find names for all seven).

And you were right, the Tour Down Under had KoM points awarded based on number of riders scoring points on a climb.

Like I said, some races do things differently. I was tempted to adopt the Volta Catalunya's own points for this one but that would end up inflating the points on offer for breaks quite a lot and I simply couldn't find any points on their website in advance. The smaller races seem very hit and miss when it comes to confirming details of the jersey competitions in advance.

Porte is just back from illness / injury so dont expect anything big from him this race.

I think i have Ratto in my standard and thats it

This race is always misleading, you can have days with a couple of major 1st cat climbs won by sprinters and climbers winning stages that look fairly tame in advance. It's a mess of a race but more fun because of it

Mezgec in my purist and that's about it today..... Didn't really look at that profile tbh

I haven't really been keeping track to the same extent this season so didn't realise Nizzolo had been injured - having said that I remember not picking Tony Martin last season in his first race back from injury - thought I was being clever but he won. So the moral of the story is, its all random, just guess!

Just Mezgec

Yeah, Nizzolo was a let down but in fairness this is his first race back from injury so it would always be a big ask for him to compete at the sharp end of the race. In hindsight he maybe wasn't a great pick but c'est la vie, you win some, you lose some.

Looks like Sky's leadership is clear, Porte lost nearly three minutes today.

Solid but unspectacular - 1,2,9,11. Nearly brought in Alaphilippe this morning but decided my last-minute fiddling normally does more harm than good. Disappointed Nizzolo didn't get up there tho'...

I think I made a bit of a miscalculaaaaation

1,2,4,5,6,9 and possibly 12.

No one in top 15 in either of my teams. Oops.

1 MEZGEC Luka
2 HOWARD Leigh
4 ALAPHILIPPE Julian
4 MARTENS Paul
5 VAN DER SANDE Tosh
6 RATTO Daniele
7 BURGHARDT Marcus
8 FERRARI Roberto
9 DUMOULIN Samuel
10 BRAMBILLA Gianluca
11 ROUX Anthony
12 VIGANO Davide
13 KERN Julian
14 KREDER Michel
15 KOHLER Martin

1,2,3,6,9 on my standard team, 1 & 2 purist (and oh so nearly 3 ).

alaphillipe ! in twice, out for me in the end silly boy. 1,2,6,9 standard.

I suspect I have had an absolute nightmare today.

Just to pile on the pain, I swapped out Alaphilippe for Agnoli from my purist team this morning

Mezgec wins, Howard second.