Fantasy Cycling: Giro d'Italia winners announced!

As so often, life imitates art. And whilst Contador was heading to the finish in some style, in the fantasy leagues it was team jauman who made the running from the end of week one to the finish line, never relinquishing top spot even in the face of a surge from Punctured who narrowed the gap at the top to just eight points after stage 20. But team jauman weren't to be denied, and a fifth-equal haul of 144 points in the final time trial was enough to pull away, finishing on 2243 points to Punctured's 2225.

So it's user jau who's picked up the first prize for the Giro, a Fuji Altamira 3.0 worth £1,729 from Evans Cycles. Congratulations to them, and thanks to everyone that played along. There's people all over the world currently basking in the warm glow of victory in a league of their work colleagues or mates. Well done to you all. Big Dave won the road.cc teamster's league, but since he has unfettered access to the game database it's probably a stitch-up.

Here are the final standings for the Fantasy Giro for the top 10:

1 jauman            jau       2243
2 Punctured         homer187  2225
3 oiuroior          oieroiar  2187
4 Dave's Dawdlers   davidh    2179
5 Maximum Pasty     ourdave   2176
6 mas y mas         mas       2131
7 fdringo           antomeno  2126
8 Scattered Pedals  BoredMan  2115
9 J&J               jjlm      2106
10 rjl              rjl       2100

Congratulations to our top ten, the others may have missed out on the big prize but they'll still be getting runners-up schwag. There's plenty more to play for this season too. For a start, it's only just over a month until the Tour de France starts and there's an even bigger prize up for grabs for the biggest of the Grand Tours: a £2,399 Trek Madone! In between then and now there's the small matter of the Dauphiné Libéré and the Tour de Suisse, and their confusing overlapping schedules which means you'll need to pick riders from both for a couple of days. Still, it all adds to the intrigue, eh. The provisional start list for the Dauphiné is now live, so why not head off and pick your team?

Once we're into the Tour de France we'll also be past the halfway stage in the season, and that means we'll start posting average stage scores for everyone who's been in from the start. If you've played more than half the stages then you'll automatically get entered into the Mr/Mrs Consistency league and there's a £600 Evans voucher up for grabs in that one - the average of your best 45 scores. And, of course, there's the overall prize for the season, a £1,000 Evans voucher. Plus all manner of spot prizes as and when we see fit, just to give everyone a chance of winning some schwag. Happy days!