New Competition – Fantasy Directeur Sportif of the Year

For many years we have set up fantasy leagues for the grand tours and occasionally the Tour of Britain using the Velogames fantasy cycling website. Now for the first time we’ll pull them into an overall competition. We will simply add up the points scored across the designated tours and whoever gets the most will be crowned the winner. The competition will be open to members and friends of WVCC. This is your chance to channel your inner Dave Brailsforsd or Patrick Lefevere. Will you have the knowledge (and let’s face it – the good fortune) to beat your opponents.

In Velogames you pick your team of 9 riders before the race starts and you don’t have any transfers so unlike a lot of fantasy competitions there is no advantage to keeping on top of it and making transfers. This means that there is also a large element of luck if some of your riders  retire early. As a hypothetical example you could pick G thinking he had a good chance for the overall and then he could crash out after riding over a bottle in the neutral zone.

As well as the men’s tours we will also include the equivalent women’s tours.

The tours that will be included are as follows:

• La Vuelta Femenina – 4-10th May
• Giro d’Italia – 9 May – 1 June
• Tour of Britain Women – 5-8 June
• Giro d’Italia Women – 7 – 14 July
• Tour de France – 5 -27 July
• Tour de France Femmes – 26 July – 3 August
• Vuelta a España – 23 August – 14 September
• Tour of Britain Men – 2 – 7 September

We will set up a WVCC mini-league in Velogames and use the same one for all of these tours (rather than a separate one for each one) – and we ask that you use the same directeur sportif name throughout the season so that it is easy to keep track of who’s who.

We will post reminders of when the teams need to be finalised – typically just before the grand depart on the first day. The plan is to give regular updates at the end of each one week tour and on the rest days of the longer races.

We will also set up a WhatsApp group for sharing information and banter – but please no spoilers – not everyone can watch the racing live. We will add the usual suspects and you’ll be able to join from the Welland Valley CC community, but otherwise please message Adrian Killworth or email your mobile number to offroad@wellandvalleycc.co.uk.

Update – if you miss entering a team for a race we’ll still give you a score of 90% of the lowest score in our mini-league so you still have a chance at the overall.