Fantasy Cycling

My mother and I enjoy trying to guess who the winner of various major bike races will be. We have developed this into a full scal game of fantasy cycling for each race. The night before the start we draft our teams from the official start list. We usually flip a coin to determine who gets first pick of the riders. Each team consists of nine riders. Sometimes we bet on whose team will win (I still need to clean the outsode of my parents windows after getting pasted at Paris - Robaix).

The Tour de France is no different, and this past Friday, while the rest of my family was sitting around visiting before watching fireworks, Mom and I were off to one side picking our teams and trash talking each other's picks.

Since the Tour is a three week race, scoring is updated daily based on how the riders finish on the stage. Riders are scored as follows:

1st Place - 10 points
2nd Place - 9 Points
3rd Place - 8 Points
4th Place - 7 Points
5th Place - 6 Points
6th Place - 5 Points
7th Place - 4 Points
8th Place - 3 Points
9th Place - 2 Points
10th Place - 1 point

Bonus points are awarded daily for a team winning and retaining one of the four leader jerseys as follows:

Yellow Jersey - 10 points
Green Jersey - 8 points
Polka Dot Jersey - 8 points
White Jersey - 5 points

Finally, if a rider on a team is caught doping and is disqualified, the team he is on will forfeit all of the points that rider may have earned.

Here are the our teams for this year.

Ryan’s Team

Andy Schleck
Tom Boonen
Christian Vande Velde
Lance Armstrong
Mark Cavendish
Jens Voight
Bernard Eisel
Cadel Evans
Oscar Freire

Mom’s Team

Carlos Sastre
Alberto Contador
Levi Leipheimer
Frank Schleck
Denis Menchov
Tyler Farrar
Stijn Devolder
Cyril Dessel
Kim Kirchen

I will post score updates daily so you can check to see who is in the lead. By the way, there is no bet for this year's Tour. However the winner does get bragging rights for an entire year.