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In the Tour de France 2002, Lance Armstrong (USA) showed that he is the best contemporary stage race rider. He won his fourth consecutive Tour. Next year he will probably attempt to win his fifth and equalize with the record number of overall wins held by Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain. There were some doubts about Armstrong after the first time trial but in the first mountain stage he showed that he was the major contender for the yellow jersey. After that, the most exiting part of the race was the contest for the green sprinter's jersey between Robbie McEwen (Australia) and Erik Zabel (Germany). McEwen won the jersey in the final sprint in Paris thereby denying Zabel his seventh consecutive green jersey. The top three of the overall rankings in the Tour did not change anymore after stage 14. The three participants that occupied the top-three positions in the game after stage 14 could also be found there in the final table. Only their order changed.
This year 36 of the 189 cyclists that have started the race, have failed to reach Paris. This is the lowest number of dropouts in the nine years that the game has been running. In the eight previous editions of the game, on average 61 cyclists abandoned the race. The maximum number of dropouts was 93 in 1998 and the previous minimum 39 in 1999.
Fifteen participants have managed to keep a complete team of 15 cyclists throughout the game: Chris Wolf, Daniel Garcia van rooijen, David Napper, Greg Shackle, Jonathan Bertram, stage winner Lars Aagaard, two-time stage winner Maaike Kuipers, Migue D, Mike Peach, Nick Franks, Peter Yates, Robert Bartsch, Robert L. Brandfass, Steve van Braam and Tiziano Urgert. Most of these participants are from The Netherlands (five), four are from the USA, three from the UK, two from Australia and one is from Denmark. The best of these participants is Migue D at place 206. 94 participants have finished the game with a team of 14 cyclists.
The teams of stage winner Erix Schokker, Lagadoue, Mark Allebach, Randall Cockroft and Roger Bishop have suffered most from riders abandoning the race. Each of them have lost seven cyclists. Still one of them, Randall Cockroft, did quite well with a final overall position of 169, better than any of the participants with a complete team. The team of Dan Ayers has remained the smallest in the game. He started with five cyclists and arrived in Paris with four. The winner of this edition of the game, Martin Smits (The Netherlands), has lost two members of his team during the race. The team of our artificial participant Jan Modaal, who did well by finishing 120th, lost three cyclists.
At the first rest day and the second rest day, we have looked at the performance of fourteen country teams. These teams have been constructed in the same way as that of our artificial participant Jan Modaal, which is composed from the list of the most favorite cyclists in the game. Each of the country teams contains the most favorite cyclists of the participants of that country. Teams have only been compiled for countries that supplied ten or more participants. Here are the final scores of the teams in this edition of the game:
Plc Pnt Name 40. 592 Team The Netherlands 55. 586 Team Germany 71. 580 Team Belgium 88. 575 Team Switzerland 93. 574 Team Sweden 96. 573 Team UK 120. 568 Jan Modaal (United Nations) 136. 564 Team South Africa 141. 563 Team Finland 165. 556 Team Australia 169. 554 Team New Zealand 204. 548 Team USA 213. 546 Team Norway 246. 539 Team Canada 342. 521 Team Denmark
The country teams have performed excellently. Six of them would have finished in the top 100 of the overall rankings, thereby doing better than more than 90% of the human participants. The top three of these teams is the same as on the two rest days. However, this time it is the Dutch team which is best with the German and Belgian team being second and third respectively.
At the second rest day, we have also looked at alternative rankings, namely those that use the rankings for the four main jerseys. Here are the participants of whom the teams best reflect these rankings (see the official site).
Top ten yellow jersey rankings
1. 86 Lars Aagaard (Denmark)
2. 85 Wicher Otten (The Netherlands)
3. 81 Natalie Hotrum (The Netherlands)
4. 80 Joe Capuano (USA)
5. 78 Senne Van Hoof (Belgium)
6. 76 Ana Gonsalves (Portugal)
76 Tore Högman (Sweden)
8. 74 Steve Hart (USA)
9. 73 Hans van der Schot (The Netherlands)
10. 72 Arnaud Heijmerink (The Netherlands)
72 Erik TKS (Belgium)
72 Maaike Kuipers (The Netherlands)
72 Wee Gracie (UK/Scotland)
Top ten green jersey rankings
1. 83 Michel Verbeke (Belgium)
2. 82 Arno Bakker (The Netherlands)
3. 81 Martin Smits (The Netherlands)
4. 80 Adam Kulik (Poland)
80 Clive Roper (Australia)
80 Hans Splinter (The Netherlands)
7. 79 Benoit Flasque (France)
8. 78 Stefania Hoffellner (Austria)
78 Steve Scotcher (Australia)
10. 77 Akke Vellinga (Belgium)
77 Bob Aube (USA)
77 Toni Flink (Finland)
Top ten polka dot jersey rankings
1. 78 Ivan Schamp (Belgium)
2. 77 Eric Vandewalle (Belgium)
3. 70 Robert L. Brandfass (USA)
4. 64 Carole Ugen (Luxembourg)
5. 61 Benoit St-Onge (Canada)
61 Bernard Costello (Ireland)
61 Ian Storrar (UK)
61 Nick Xenos (Australia)
61 Steve Verhulst (Belgium)
10. 60 A. Nobels (The Netherlands)
60 Edmond Huntjens (The Netherlands)
60 Jacob Flintholm Pederen (Denmark)
60 Jon Van Arkel (USA)
60 Senne Van Hoof (Belgium)
Top ten combativity rankings
1. 42 Eric Vandewalle (Belgium)
2. 35 Vince Facchini (Canada)
3. 32 Archie Simpson (UK/Scotland)
4. 31 G.A. Collins (The Netherlands)
31 Steve Verhulst (Belgium)
6. 29 Martin Ollerenshaw (UK/England)
7. 28 D. Sandila (Canada)
28 Jim Nicholson (USA)
9. 27 Cor den Heijer (The Netherlands)
10. 26 Lars Sandberg (Norway)
26 Lucsan de Sain (The Netherlands)
26 Rattaplan Kappie (The Netherlands)
26 Thomas Isacson (Sweden)
Top ten white jersey rankings
1. 29 Archie Simpson (UK/Scotland)
2. 23 Andrew Tombs (UK)
3. 19 Huw Roffe (UK/Wales)
19 Scott Young (USA)
5. 18 John Doak (UK)
6. 16 Willem De Beer (South Africa)
7. 15 Brian George (UK)
15 David Vinson (USA)
15 Lance Taylor (New Zealand)
10. 14 Davide La Mattina (Italy)
14 F. Vackie (Belgium)
14 Jan Brems (Belgium)
14 Jeff Nyman (USA)
14 John Rutherford (USA)
14 Kelly Kaye (UK/England)
14 P. Sturm (The Netherlands)
14 Rick Aelen (The Netherlands)
Although the participants of The Netherlands did very well in this game, surprisingly enough none of these alternative rankings is headed by someone from that country. Belgium is doing very well here with three first places of three different participants.
Both game winner Martin Smits (The Netherlands) and runner-up Arno Bakker (The Netherlands) ended up high in the rankings which corresponds with that of the green jersey. This shows that the green jersey rankings are an important clue when constructing a team that should do well in the overall rankings of this game.
Getting a lot of points in the white jersey rankings is not difficult since there were only 23 riders born after 1975 started in the race. For example, a team of the top 15 of the young riders rankings after stage 1 would have earned 77 points. Apparently no-one has constructed a specialized team for this purpose.
A separate page contains information about the optimal team for the 2002 edition of the Internet Tour de France Game.
After the last stage of the 2001 edition, we examined the performance of the game veterans, participants which have participated in nearly all editions of this game. There are three participants which have taken part in all nine editions of the game: Erik TKS, Gosse Bouma and Tako Molanus. The artificial participant Jan Modaal has also participated in all game editions. Nine more participants have missed only one edition: Benoit Rey, Erix Schokker, Frank Koper, Guus van Zadelhoff, Marcel Spanjer, Michael McQuillen, Nicolas Wienders, Wim Penninx and Xavier Pons. It is interesting to compare the performance of these game veterans and check whether their performance is improving. In the following list we have also included the winners of the game:
## 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 avg.
Benoit Rey 8x - 85 30 62 71 28 44 90 88 62
Erik TKS 9x 13 46 37 44 7 0 17 24 27 24
Erix Schokker 8x - 39 92 37 94 98 85 63 39 68
Etienne Gaasenbeek 6x - - - 83 96 34 100 81 75 -
Frank Koper 8x - 100 43 98 42 83 94 67 90 77
Gosse Bouma 9x 80 78 85 67 85 72 89 81 51 76
Guus van Zadelhoff 8x - 82 45 79 64 83 80 79 82 74
Jan Modaal 9x 63 95 81 97 55 72 69 89 90 79
Kees Winder 1x - - - 100 - - - - - -
Marcel Spanjer 8x - 5 89 68 91 95 25 64 64 63
Marko Borst 1x 100 - - - - - - - - -
Martin Smits 2x - - - - - - - 97 100 -
Michael Botzet 6x - - - 78 51 100 96 91 93 -
Michael McQuillen 8x - 76 68 78 94 90 86 98 99 86
Nico Wienders 8x - 90 63 95 23 95 84 98 90 80
Reinier van Olderen 4x - - - - - 76 87 100 70 -
Tako Molanus 9x 27 88 23 36 100 58 48 91 70 60
Wieger van Brug 2x - - 100 65 - - - - - -
Wim Penninx 8x 75 97 84 32 68 67 23 74 - 65
Xavier Pons 8x - 72 92 93 48 53 69 47 89 70
Immediately behind each participant name there is a number indicating how often the participant has taken part in the game. The other numbers show what percentage of the other players obtained fewer points than the participant. So 100 means the participant was first and 13 means that only 13% of the field obtained fewer points.
The average scores are close to those of last year. Michael McQuillen still has the highest average overall ranking of the game veterans: 86%. Nico Wienders (80) is the only other participant that has an average of 80 or higher. The artificial participant Jan Modaal (79) is just below that average. Wienders is the most successful of the veterans with five positions among the best 10% of the field (1995, 1997, 1999, 2001 and 2002). Two of the game veterans have managed to win an edition of the game: Frank Koper (1995) and Tako Molanus (1998). Only one member of this list has improved his position every year: the 2002 winner Martin Smits. However, he has only participated two times. Michael Botzet, winner in 1999, is the only one of this list that has managed four consecutive top 10% places (1999-2002). Two more participants which are not present on the list have managed this as well: Michiel Kokke and Cameron Henderson.