Fantasy Tour Rest Day - Inside the Pance

As you can imagine, as a hugely successful and influential blogger, I get a lot of fan-mail. Normally I let one of my staff take care of the mountains of letters, gifts and underwear that I receive every day. But sometimes, I like to take a personal interest. Like when I read this:

“I know you'll be struggling for things to say on the rest day, so can I get some insight into your team selection tactics please? You always play your cards close to your chest, but a few tip might make it more challenging for you next year. Whoever had heard of Kwickatwatski and yet he's bagged you 200 points ffs!” - R.Harrison, York

Well, this little message is a little out of date. As Kwiatkowksi has now bagged me 519 points so far, but what the hey? Let me spill the beans on how I pick the Beans.

Firstly, here are some things I have learned:

• Pay close attention to the sport of professional cycling and who is and isn't winning races. I find signing up to Fantasy Cycling races on a site such as Velogames is a good way to do this.
• Get an idea of the way the scoring system works. The main ways to score are:
• Top tens on stages, this makes a good sprinter or two a wise investment
• Having someone in the top 5 or so on daily GC
• Having someone in a Jersey
• Shit loads of points are available at the end of the race for the top GC guys, mountain and sprint jersey competitions
• If you have a poor memory, check who did well last year. Then you see who has a good cost to points ratio, (last year the Froome-Dog managed 214 points for every Velocredit you spent on him).

With these things in mind, let's have a look at my boys:

We'll start at the top shall we?

• Chris Froome - Easy choice, him and Sagan were the two boys who I knew I had to buy, then I just made up a team with my leftover cash. The Froome-Dog was second last year and had been going well all season. The only man who has beaten him this year is Nibali and he's not at the Tour.
• Dan Martin - After blowing all that money on Froomey, we had better save some cash, so in you go Dan. Garmin are a bit accident prone at the Tour, but Martin has had a good year so far and won Liege-Bastogne-Liege. I figured he'd might get a stage and maybe scrape into the top 5.
• Jurgen Van den Broeck - He's a handy climber and has finished in the top 5 before. Shame he fell off.
• Bauke Mollema - He's been a Bean before and done nicely for me before, so I have a soft spot for the lad. Belkin seem to have given up on Robert Gesink as a Tour contender and Mollema should benefit from being team leader.
• Peter Sagan - He may not be a pure sprinter, but he makes up for it by scoring points on pretty much every kind of stage apart from the high mountains. Seems to have the Green Jersey sewn-up already.
• Michal Kwiatkowski - Good early-season rides meant he was called-up for the Bile Beans Classics squad, where he did nicely. He's young and at his first Grand-Tour, so a risk, but so far he's paying off nicely.
• Andrew Talanksy - He's another young up-and-comer. Has been hanging up with the Sky train on a few climbs this year so he's got some good climbing legs. Doesn't seem to be working out as well as Kwiatkowski so far and may have to work for his team-mate Martin.
• Romain Bardet - Another one from the Bile Beans classics team of earlier in the year. He's cheap and has had some good solid rides so far this year. Had a good try at winning the stage on Sunday.
• Tony Gallopin - He's also had some good rides this year and I'm convinced he's going to get some big wins soon. I'm not sure it will be at the Tour this year though. The Tour usually has a lot of sprints so I like to use my wildcard spot for an extra sprinter. I actually had 8 credits to play with, but didn't fancy any of the 8 pointers. I very nearly went with Alexander Kristoff and now I wish I had as I would be winning right now.

So if I knew then what I know now, I would have gone for this line-up:

Rider	Team	Cost
Christopher Froome	Sky Procycling	26
Daniel Martin	Garmin Sharp	10
Nairo Quintana	Movistar Team	14
Peter Sagan	Cannondale Pro Cycling	18
Bauke Mollema	Blanco Pro Cycling Team	8
Michal Kwiatkowski	Omega Pharma - Quick-Step	8
Simon Gerrans	Orica Greenedge	6
Romain Bardet	Ag2R La Mondiale	4
Alexander Kristoff	Katusha	6

A few words about Stage 10; A sprint.