Competitions SCS Road Cycling Championships

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Hawthorn
#1
As many of you know, each year @Beg2Differ runs a Tour de France fantasy competition which attracts a reasonable number of entrants (27 in 2022). I was lucky enough to win this in 2022, and mentioned at the time that it might be interesting to have a year long cycling competition for any of the cycling fans to take part in, or even non-fans who are addicted to joining any competition that they can. This contest I am running will not and is not intended to replace this stand alone Tour de France contest - I'm hoping to be back to defend my title in July! Instead, this will cover all of the major events throughout the year. I had a look at a couple of other online competitions and to be honest, didn't like their format. I personally think this is far superior. :)

So which events are covered? There are 37 events which will be covered, which sounds a lot of commitment. To ease this, standings will be based on your top 12 event scores in a rolling 12 month period. Different events will be worth a different amount of points, as detailed below:

2023 Calendar of events:

1673094859058.png

With regards to the colours above:
Green coloured events are Grand Tours. These will have by far the most points associated with them, and it is highly recommended you participate in all of these to be competitive.
Dark pink events are the World Championships. As these are possibly the most sought after titles after the Grand Tours, they are worth the second most amount of points.
Blue events are the Monuments. These five races are the most revered one day races and are worth more than the standard events.
Yellow events are Tours and Tan events are Classics. Tours are basically 5-8 stage events, Classics are single day races. Both of these formats carry the lowest points totals, but due to the amount of races, will still be included in your best events in any 12 month period.

As you can see, this schedule is fairly packed, and some events even overlap. Cyclists do not compete in every event in a year, as most riders specialise in certain types of races, so you will not be picking the same riders in every event. Late February through to April in particular seems to have a lot of events - which is great.

How to enter:
In each Classic, Monument and Would Championship race, you will be selecting 3 cyclists. For Tours, you will select 4 cyclists. For Grand Tours, you will select 6 cyclists. Each cyclist's results will contribute to your score for the event. The points breakdown for each category of race is shown below:

Tour events:
1673096707109.png
These are multi stage events. Points will be awarded to the top 10 in each stage, the top 8 overall, and the top 3 in the final overall spinter/mountain classifications (where awarded).

Classic, Monuments and World Championships scoring:
1673096461541.png
Points shown above are for Classics events. Monuments will be worth DOUBLE the points above. World Championships will be worth TRIPLE the above points. Points will be awarded to the top 10 in each of these single day events.

Grand Tour scoring:
1673097119584.png
These are multi stage events that contain 21 stages. Points will be awarded to the top 10 in each stage, the top 8 overall, and the top 3 in the final overall spinter/mountain classifications. Plenty of chances for points in these with twice as many riders as in a normal event!

I will stick with these points for 2023, however if I find things are too imbalanced in any way, will adjust for 2024 and onwards. As this is based on a rolling 12 month schedule, the leaderboard at any time after the first year will be based on the last occurrence of each event (pretty much every event on the calendar is held annually). As an example, if an event is held in March this year, then August next year, any points you are defending from that event in 2023 will not expire until it is held again in 2024, they won't expire exactly 12 months later. It'll definitely be clearer as we go!

How to find startlists / other information:

There are a few good sites that I recommend. Procylingstats (procyclingstats.com) is great for start lists, rider history, stage profiles, past results and event results. I definitely recommend checking this site a day or so before an events begins, as you'll find often start lists are not locked in until not long before a race begins.

For cycling news, cyclingnews.com and sbs.com.au/sport/topic/cycling are two that I like. Cycling News is generally the most up to date site for news (but does have a lot of rubbish to filter through you are probably not interested in). SBS do a great job covering cycling - possibly one of the best covered sports in the country. Their website is possibly more local rider focused, but still should provide ample coverage for most events on the calendar.

There is just over a week until the first race on the calendar, which should allow enough time for anyone to research the event. Being one of two races held in Australia, you will find a lot of the teams will have at least a few local riders, and that a lot of their regular riders (mainly based in Europe and South America) will not be competing. Having a look at the current start list now, it does still seem a reasonable quality field though - there's quite a lot of depth in the local talent here in Australia.

Good luck. Hopefully there's some interest in this, I'll be keeping it going even if I'm the only one who enters, so you may as well keep me company. :)

Happy to answer any questions you may have. There's a lot to take in, especially for those where cycling is a bit of a foreign sport, but I think you'll find it's quite simple once you digest it all.
 
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Hawthorn
#2
Also, for anyone interested, the Australian National Championships are being held later today (this race is not a part of the competition, but still an event with a lot of prestige for Aussie cyclists). These are held in Buninyong and it's quite a tough course, especially when the temperature is in the 30's as forecast. There's a near full strength peleton this year too, with no covid restrictions impacting entry to the country. The road race will be televised on SBS later today if you are hungry for some cycling action after a few month break between major races. Definitely recommended.
 
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#3
Velogames is good TBF -Pick once and forget.
Velon Fantasy i like but that includes 1 trade per stage and setting a captain each day
which means a lot of commitment.

Will play this as well though (y)

Only 3 cyclists per race seems very stingy though.
Why not 6 and 12 ?
 
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Hawthorn
#4
Velogames is good TBF -Pick once and forget.
Velon Fantasy i like but that includes 1 trade per stage and setting a captain each day
which means a lot of commitment.

Will play this as well though (y)

Only 3 cyclists per race seems very stingy though.
Why not 6 and 12 ?
Thanks for your feedback.

The reason I originally chose lower numbers was to make it easier for people to pick a squad who might only know a few cyclists. With points only going to the top 10 in general, if I asked who you thought would make the top 10, those with more knowledge are probably going to get around 6-7 in some races, a lot here might be able to predict 1-2. I thought it fairer picking lower numbers, once you increase it, it favours those with more knowledge and removes some of the luck element that is a key part of cycling.

On the flip side I guess the teams entered are likely to be more similar with a lower number of picks. There will also be rounds where all your riders do very badly which might put people off,but was the main reason for having it be your best scores only.

I think 6 and 12 might be a bit high, but thinking more about it, 3 and 6 is probably slightly low too. 4 and 8 or 5 and 10 might work better? I'll run some numbers to see if the points still work as expected later this morning. Can still modify these.

I might send you a PM to discuss, as you seem to be fairly experienced in other cycling fantasy comps. I hadn't checked out Velogames when looking at existing versions, but had seen the Velon fantasy (which I remember you previously mentioning) and PCS fantasy where you give stars to riders - neither of these seemed suitable to me.
 
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Hawthorn
#5
Important rule change.

I have slightly tweaked the numbers for Tour type events (Note: the first race on the schedule is this type) to be 4 riders rather than 3. This allows for a bit more flexibility in picking stage winners and overall performers, and I think it is a better result overall. Thanks to @tso for this suggestion. :)

I forgot to mention it initially, but the way the points scoring works encourages both casual participation, and regular participation. It doesn't matter if you miss 1 or 2 events, or even half a season - as the leaderboard is only based on your best 12 events scores, you will still be competitive. Have a dud score among your 12 best? Enter another race and improve it. It's a bit different to most other competitions in this respect, and I think you'll find it works well once this gets going.
 
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Hawthorn
#6
Also, for anyone interested, the Australian National Championships are being held later today (this race is not a part of the competition, but still an event with a lot of prestige for Aussie cyclists). These are held in Buninyong and it's quite a tough course, especially when the temperature is in the 30's as forecast. There's a near full strength peleton this year too, with no covid restrictions impacting entry to the country. The road race will be televised on SBS later today if you are hungry for some cycling action after a few month break between major races. Definitely recommended.
Starts in 20 minutes for anyone who wants to watch.

Luke Plapp is really good around this circuit. Back to back national champion, and he only just turned 22 at Christmas. Broke away from Clarke and Matthews in the last few K's and held them off - strong podium there when you consider the other two are former Grand Tour jersey winners.
 
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#7
terrific idea @Ironhawk - do enjoy watching some top quality action on two thin tyres. On the mechanics (no pun intended) pm to you? Not sure that posting selections in this thread is optimal.
 
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#8
terrific idea @Ironhawk - do enjoy watching some top quality action on two thin tyres. On the mechanics (no pun intended) pm to you? Not sure that posting selections in this thread is optimal.
Yeah definitely a PM. He might even do a google form.
 
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Hawthorn
#9
terrific idea @Ironhawk - do enjoy watching some top quality action on two thin tyres. On the mechanics (no pun intended) pm to you? Not sure that posting selections in this thread is optimal.
PM is probably best, but once we have more idea of the "regulars", I might set up a Google Forms entry. I will always post my entries here for openness, but I don't expect this to be the best for everyone.
 
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Hawthorn
#11
The first event of the season, the Tour Down Under starts on Tuesday evening. Start lists are now finalised for all teams.

https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/tour-down-under/2023/startlist

You can either just post your picks here, or send them to me via PM prior to the race starting. Either way is fine.

There appears to be quite a few who could win this race. The time trial at the start will give an early advantage to the pure time trialists, but they still need to hang on through all 5 stages with the route having quite a few climbs. Might favour all rounders a bit more by the end of the race.

My picks for this race:
Michael Matthews
Ethan Hayter
Caleb Ewan
Jay Vine

Went for a bit of a mix myself. I doubt Ewan does well overall, but hoping he gets a stage win or two as the best sprinter in the field (there's probably only a couple of stages where he's a realistic shot at it). The other 3 are more all round chances, not necessarily the 3 favourites, but those I think are strong chances. Who knows, Rohan Dennis is favourite for the TT and may hold that lead all the way - definitely possible.

Good luck.
 
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#13
Hard to assess the form for the first event of the Ironhawk Cup; going wide fully expecting the TDU to quickly become a discard.
Michael Matthews
Jay Vine
Luke Plapp
Gerben Thijssen

Thanks for organising this Ironhawk, hope it gets the level of participation it deserves.
 
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Hawthorn
#14
Hard to assess the form for the first event of the Ironhawk Cup; going wide fully expecting the TDU to quickly become a discard.
Michael Matthews
Jay Vine
Luke Plapp
Gerben Thijssen

Thanks for organising this Ironhawk, hope it gets the level of participation it deserves.
Thanks. I expect we'll get 4 entrants, but I'll post a link to this in my BBL combined thread tonight to give it one shot at extra entries. The good thing is you can join at any time with little disadvantage, so maybe it will build over time too.
 
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#15
Thanks. I expect we'll get 4 entrants, but I'll post a link to this in my BBL combined thread tonight to give it one shot at extra entries. The good thing is you can join at any time with little disadvantage, so maybe it will build over time too.
Could send the TDF players a PM or tag them in a post ?
See if they are interested.
 
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Hawthorn
#16
Could send the TDF players a PM or tag them in a post ?
See if they are interested.
Not a terrible idea.

I just noted names who posted since the start of the TDF last year in that topic. Some of the following may be interested in this comp too? If not, sorry for bothering you. :)

@7/11
@fgoespinheiro
@Diabolical
@Beg2Differ
@Leroy
@Connoisseur
@bunlit
@jaca
@stephen
@Russty_
@Manikato1
@Crabby Skills
@shardlow
@wolfbunny
@Amazing Bombers
@BarkingGhecko
@Johnnyboy123
@threetay

As I haven't really promoted this competition, and with less than 24 hours until the first race commences, in an attempt to get more entries, I will leave entries for the Tour Down Under open until the start of Stage 1 (for both new entrants and also allowing existing entrants to change their tips) for this opening race only. The race kicks off with a time trial prologue tomorrow (Tuesday) evening, followed by Stage 1 commencing Midday, Wednesday.

Stages will be shown live on 7TWO in most states, I believe there's late night highlights too if anyone wants to watch.

Good luck. If you happen to miss the first race, and are still interested in joining - do it. There's very minimal disadvantage joining late, you'll be back on equal footing after tipping 12 races.
 
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#18
Just joined this thread from the BBL combined supercoach team thread and it did catch my eye a bit.

I usually play the annual Tour de France Fantasy competition and follow that race pretty well but other smaller races I tend to not follow too much.

I would be keen to try this one out though! @Ironhawk

Edit: I am also keen to join a TDF league or comp for this year
 
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