Fantasy Cycling: Amstel Gold Race round-up

Well, no-one predicted that. Actually, not quite no-one: 29 of you out there had Gasparotto in your squad. That's 29 out of 3,282 teams. A massive 75 picked Jelle Vanendert. Voeckler wasn't popular either. 'Out of form' Philippe Gilbert was a bit more fancied, but still only about ten percent of players picked him, the same as Oscar Freire.

That meant one thing: low scores. Tony and Oli topped the office scoring with a mighty 26. Dave got a solitary one for 20th-placed Gerrans. The man responsible for bringing you the previews and tips for the Amstel Gold Race, Simon MacMichael, didn't trouble the scorers at all. And he wasn't the only one, not by a long stretch.

It's not all doom and gloom though. road ronin NG5 managed to rack up 113 points from Gasparotto, Sagan, Giblert and Iglinsky. That was enough for top of the table, easily in fact: second-placed Accident prone managed just 99, two ahead of Team Valle in third. They won't be muscling in to the season-long high score league with those numbers, but fair play for making the best of a difficult day.

At the top of the Spring Classics table scores of 31 and 36 were enough to catapult Threeleggedtoad and TEAM JAMESWEBB79 into a share of first place, at the expense of Pangbourne Pedallers who scored just one point and dropped to sixth. it's still extremely tight at the top, with just 14 points separating the top ten.

In the purist league a single point for Gerrans was enough to keep Pukey Otter at the top of the standings for now, although Chicken Dinner are making a charge for the lead, amassing 70 points and jumping six places for a share of second with Chippy's Ciclistas.

Next up is the Fleche Wallone, which is on Wednesday ahead of the Liege-Bastogne-Liege on Sunday to wrap up the Spring Classics season. And then we're off to Italy for the first of our three Grand Tours: it's less than three weeks to the start of the Giro d'Italia now. Here's hoping we've all learned something from the early season races!