Taking Part in Fantasy Tour de France? We'll Help You Not Come in Last Place
“Hearst Magazines and Verizon Media may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below.”
Ah, fantasy Tour de France—that glorious moment when you can finally show the world your inner genius as a savvy General Manager, wheeling and dealing your roster to a championship. Or become a cautionary tale like Lee Sanderlin, who had to spend 24 hours in a Waffle House after finishing last in his fantasy football league.
Don’t be Lee. Sure, he was able to carve nine hours off his sentence by scarfing a bunch of waffles, but it’s far better to just…not finish last.
Well, it depends on which fantasy game you’re playing. There are several around the Tour, all with different rules, and some of them get a little arcane. We’re focusing on two: the official fantasy Tour from the organizers, and VeloGames’s long-running fantasy competition, simply called VeloGames XXIII for trademark reasons.
How the games work
Both leagues require you pick a certain mix of riders for a balanced team; you can’t go all sprinters, for example.
VeloGames is the simpler of the two: you have a 100-point budget to pick nine riders (which, after the UCI reduced official team sizes to eight, is one more than the teams in the actual race get). Each rider scores points based on his ride on each stage, including finish placing, time in the breakaway (if he joined one), any King of the Mountain (KOM) and intermediate sprint points scored, and overall standings in each of the various jersey competitions. You also earn points when a teammate of your chosen rider does well. That all sounds complicated, but it’s pretty basic: you pick nine riders you think will find success individually or through their teams, and you’re set with them the whole Tour: no substitutions, even if a rider drops out. If you want to set your team and not check standings daily, this is your league.
The official game from Tour promoter ASO seems similar on its face: you have a budget (120 stars, as ASO calls its currency) to pick eight riders. There are similar points scales for stage finish, KOM and sprint points, and position in various jersey competitions. You can score points in the combativity classification, but only for the rider awarded each day’s prize; there are no breakaway or teammate points.
The big differences in the ASO game are:
You can swap riders midrace, for 50 credits (how this works isn’t entirely clear; the ASO’s rules don’t specify how one earns credits).
You can designate one rider each stage as your Stage Winner Bonus—all points that rider scores that day are doubled.
That requires you to change your designation each stage. If you want to tinker with your lineup like you do with weekly picks for fantasy football, ASO’s game is your huckleberry. (If you REALLY want to nerd out, ProCyclingStats’s game has more intricate rules and an arbitrage-like theme to it, where you buy and sell riders as they appreciate or depreciate in value. It’s cool, but complex.)
Broad advice for both games
Don’t skimp on your GC guy: The way both games are designed, the favorites for the overall will cost the most points. That’s because it’s difficult, albeit not impossible, to win your mini-league without picking the overall race winner. We can’t tell you who that’s going to be, but what we can say is this is the one place where you should spend whatever points you think will get you the best possible choice, a.k.a. the rider you really think is going to win. Don’t try to get cute and budget points picking who you think will finish in second and third place. The math of the games is not kind.
Go reliable and versatile on sprinters: This is one place where consistent finishes can outpoint a winner over time. The cumulative point totals with a guy who’s regularly hitting top-five finishes is higher than someone who wins once or twice and is out of the top 10 on other stages. Good picks here include Peter Sagan, Michael Matthews, Mathieu van der Poel, and Wout van Aert, all of whom are contenders for the green jersey and are capable in both field sprints and trickier finishes with small hills. Bear in mind: van der Poel will likely leave the race early due to his plan to race the Olympic mountain bike event, which is close to the end of the Tour. His point cost is lower to reflect that. And van Aert is recovering from appendicitis and is nominally riding as a teammate to leader Primož Roglič; he may not be contesting sprints as much, or as effective when he does.
Don’t get locked in on rider classifications: Because the games are predicated on balanced rosters, each assigns riders to distinct categories: all-arounder/general classification, climber, sprinter, etc. But that may not match up with their own goals, or your view of how the race will unfold. INOES’s Richard Carapaz, for instance, is listed in VeloGames as a climber, but he’s actually a threat for the overall. Julian Alaphilippe is classed as a leader in the ASO game (because he’s French), but his fifth-place overall at the 2019 Tour notwithstanding, he’s actually a stage hunter: a climber who can sprint. As you pick, keep your goals and predictions in mind—if you think a climber’s going to win the overall and he’s not listed in the All Arounder group, pick him anyway, and use an All Arounder pick for different purposes.
Check your lineup against confirmed rosters the night before: With COVID still looming, it’s entirely possible someone will positive-test right out of a start spot. As well, the official ASO game currently has some riders in the selection board who aren’t scheduled to start (sprinter Sam Bennett is still listed in the ASO game more than a day after his team confirmed he won’t race). Make sure the guys you’re racing are actually in the race. It’s not official, but the most accurate roster list is on ProCyclingStats.
VeloGames strategies
Use a “barbell” strategy to boost points around your GC contener: This strategy leverages VeloGames’s teammate points awards. Option 1: pick a low-cost teammate who won’t score his own points, but could be a goldmine of points based on his team leaders. This is a good strategy to fill out a roster if you don’t have a lot of points left after picking GC riders and sprinters. A good option here would be someone like Jumbo-Visma’s Mike Teunissen or UAE-Emirates Oliviero Troia, guys doing the thankless grunt work for high-profile team leaders.
Option 2: Pick a versatile, higher-pointed teammate who can also get his own results. Good options here are Jumbo’s van Aert, a threat in TTs and sprints, or INEOS’s Tao Geoghegan Hart, an all-arounder who won last year’s Giro d’Italia but is here in a support role to Geraint Thomas and Carapaz. Your best bets are teams able to win multiple stages of different types, like Jumbo and Bora, but only if they fit your GC strategy.
Hedge your sprint pick: Fully a third of this year’s stages are, on paper, likely sprint finishes. And breakaway success on flatter stages of the Tour has been abysmal the past decade. The teams are simply too good at timing the catch. So sprinters are going to play a big role this year. Flat stages favor pure sprinters like Caleb Ewan and Mark Cavendish. But more versatile types like Sagan, Matthews, van Aert, and van der Poel merit a look because they can score points in a variety of scenarios. The best strategy may be to hedge: pick one higher-cost sprinter of one type, and a lower-point sprinter of another as your wild-card selection. Again, bear in mind van der Poel’s and van Aert’s issues this year. (Riders who drop out will still keep all points scored to that stage, but are not eligible for teammate points after that.)
Roll the dice on breakaways: Breaks are a fool’s game to try to predict, with few exceptions (hello wild card teams and Thomas de Gendt). Your best bet this Tour is to go one of two ways with affordable options: with time-trial style guys who will give it a go on transitional stages (neither flat nor mountainous) and also have a shot in the two TTs themselves, or climber types who will have their shot in the uphill finishes. In either case, pick from teams that are at the race to focus on stage wins. TT-style riders who are promising selections are Kasper Asgreen and Victor Campanaerts. Climber-break specialists include Bauke Mollema and Alexey Lutsenko. Riders like Asgreen, Mollema, or Lutsenko are also compelling because their teams have multiple stage-win options, meaning you’ll be better positioned for teammate points.
ASO strategies
Maximize your stage winner bonus with the right roster: The ASO’s bonus function is a significant potential point booster. So your team should be tilted toward likely stage winners for various situations. Once you’ve got your GC riders selected, go with versatile breakaway threats like Alaphilippe, or BikeExchange, with Yates and Michael Matthews. And don’t forget to change your designated rider for different types of stages!
Focus on KOMs: Through a quirk, ASO is awarding the same points totals in fantasy for the two highest categories of climb (HC and Category 1) even though it doesn’t do this in the actual race. And there are 12 Category 1 climbs this year, more than any other category. Many of them will be crossed first by breakaways. So pick a climber you think might target both breaks/stage wins and the KOM competition. A few likely options are Astana’s Omar Fraile, Ag2r-Citroen’s Ben O’Connor, and Total Energies’ Pierre Latour.
You Might Also Like
