Vuelta a Espana

It's been a hard race to call. The scoring is lower than the Giro or TdF in terms of the leaders score.

So many breaks, the GC riders have scored very few points compared to TdF & Giro.

My purist score is abysmal.

Hopefully my switch to more break riders pays off.

Same for me. Took Vine out after crash yesterday but he's made it into early break. Hopefully not going to go KoM crazy! 

And Vine goes for KoM while Soler doesn't.... sums my decision making up!

DSM were pulling in the peleton but it looks like that is the break for the day now.

I risked keeping Vine in, hopefully he will go for it tomorrow too.

I have a rule of not trusting riders the day after a crash so took Vine out. Wanted to get Soler in as he looked favourite to go for KoM points so took out Carapaz  and brought in Lipowitz to keep my GC rider quota. No looking too clever currently....

Lipowitz is good for tomorrow too.

I dropped Carapaz & Gaudu, I never thought today would be a GC day and I needed to do something to try and win the competition and at the same time mark some other players who had Soler.

Yes, I felt I had to roll the dice to stand any chance of winning. I'll have to settle for top ten realistically. 

Looking like some GC teams want a win today. Boo hoo

Looks like an utter disaster for me.

One of those days where having plenty of transfers available was a curse. Sat on my hands today, I decided the mental pain of making bad decisions outweighed the pain of no decision.

Six transfers available for tomorrow, how many do I use to screw things up with.

I had to do something to try and win, so dropped Gauda & Carapaz for Soler and Zana.

It didn't work out and Dunbar winning made it even worse.

I went the other way and threw 3 transfers at it. Got the winner but other 2 were wasted. 

Dunbar has been a curse for me in this race.

I agree. I try and save up transfers and often don't use them when I should. Mountain Renegade has always had the best transfer strategy. He's never afraid to use transfers  when they are needed, even very early in a race. I tend to squirrel them away for a rainy day!

Used 5 of my 6 transfers, and I think they all worked out today. Could have been much more beneficial to have used then earlier in the race.

If I used the last it would have been McNulty for Vine and at the early checkpoint I was regretting not going for it.

Normally the GC riders perform better in TT's near the end of a long race so you don't need a lot of transfers. This race had very few decent TT riders in the top 10 so having a decent number of transfers was a help. I planned to have 5 but used an extra one on Dunbar on stage 20 which was OK (although I took Schmid out for him so not perfect)

Is that going to be the last Fantasy Cycling competition ever?

It does seem to be petering out. Renewi Tour & Autumn Classics haven't appeared in game &  Guangxi Tour is a bit of a waste of time & wasn't played last year. Hopefully it can be organised to have a full programme next year.

Someone started pulling in the peloton (Soudal I think) so the initial break never quite got away. It briefly came back together after the first cat 1 climb and then the break went again with a lot of the same names but minus Poole. Not sure why he didn't go second time round, maybe inexperience? 

I read/heard that Poole thought the break was going to be caught so decided to save himslef.

Can you watch the start of stages anywhere ?

Discovery only start showing live coverage at 15:00 CET

No found anything live. Just follow PCS live feed and build a mental picture of TdG marshalling the break before breaking their hearts!