TdF Rest day: July 10, 2006

After nine days of cycling, the riders have been offered a well-deserved rest day. The first week of the Tour de France we have seen many sprint finishes, one individual time trial and a few crashes. The top five of the 2005 race is not participating and the overall rankings still need some more racing before being sorted out. In the next week the cyclists will enter the mountains.

Dropouts

After the nine racing days 6 riders have dropped out. 13 more, among which Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso, were removed from the starting list by their team one day before the race began. This brings the total amount of missing cyclists to 19. This is only slightly higher than in the earlier game editions. In the twelve previous years that this game has been running on average 15 riders had dropped out at this stage of the race. The maximum was 41 in 1996 and the minimum 5 in 1999.

Despite the reasonable number of dropouts, only 83 participants of 647 (13%) have a complete team. A large number of participants (488) had the Spanish race favorite Alejandro Valverde in their team but he was forced to leave the race in stage 3 after a crash in which he broke a collarbone. There are 420 teams which miss only one rider. The largest loss, 3 riders, was suffered by five participants: Babette Goudbeek (The Netherlands), Jim R.H. (USA), John Barling (Australia), Sola Takahashi (USA) and Brian Power (Canada). The person with the smallest team is Jonathan Rabey (UK). He started the game with a team of ten riders of which one has left the race.

Note that having a complete team is no guarantee for success in the game. Severine Chaumette (France) has a complete team but can be found in the bottom ten of the overall rankings. Our current overall leader Bevo Gallagher (USA) does well with a team that is still complete after nine stages.

Popular cyclists

In the previous editions of the game, we have compared the performance of the robot participant Jan Modaal, composed from the list of most favorite cyclists in the game, with teams that contained the most popular cyclists of the countries that provided 10 or more participants to the game. This year we have built 11 of such country-specific teams. Each of them contains the most frequently chosen cyclists of the participants of that country. The team lists have been constructed in the same way as that of the robot participant team. This is how the country teams are doing after 9 stages:

 Plc  Per Pnt Name
  63. 90% 368 Team The Netherlands
 114. 82% 332 Team Belgium
 151. 76% 317 Team Norway
 165. 74% 309 Team France
 167. 67% 308 Jan Modaal (United Nations)
 188. 70% 298 Team Germany
 205. 67% 293 Team UK
 237. 63% 286 Team Sweden
 239. 62% 285 Team Australia
 253. 60% 281 Team New Zealand
 307. 52% 267 Team USA
 313. 51% 265 Team Canada

This list contains the projected place of the team in the overall rankings, the percentage of participants it would have beaten, its score and its name. The country teams do not perform as well as expected. In the first overview in 2005, three of the teams managed to beat 97% of the field but now the best team, Team The Netherlands only performs better than 90% of the field. However, until now the top tens of the stages have mostly contained sprinters. The country teams are expected to perform better after the mountain stages.

The statistics of the country teams will be updated after each stage. Their recent score sheets can be accessed by search for "Team" followed by the name of the country in the participant search page.

Successful participants

The stage win of Olle Olausson (Sweden) in the seventh stage of the game was not his first stage win. Earlier he won the nineteenth stage in 2003. Both stages were individual time trials. Olle Olausson's stage win made him join a small group of participants that have been able to win stages in more than one edition of the game:

Plc Eds Stg Name (Years)
  1.  6   9  Erix Schokker (1995:2,1996:3,1998,1999,2001,2002)
  2.  3   9  Erik TKS (1994:5,1995:3,2000)
  3.  3   3  Wicher Otten (1999,2001,2002)
  4.  2   3  Rien Post (2001:2,2002)
  5.  2   2  Wim Penninx (1994,1995)
      2   2  Sander Kaspers (1998,2002)
      2   2  Olle Olausson (2003,2006)
      2   2  Dick Blom (1999,2001)
      2   2  Berthold B. Journaille (1998,1999)

Erix Schokker remains the most successful participant in the game when it comes to stage wins. He has won a total of nine stages in six different editions of the game. Erik TKS has won nine stages in three early editions of the game.

Participant teams

As usual the participants have constructed teams with different purposes. There are teams that are targeted to win sprint stages, for example that of Bevo Gallagher (USA) and teams which have as a goal to win the time trial stages, like the successful team of Olle Olausson (Sweden). Probably there are some teams as well that are constructed for winning mountain stages. We will see these appear in the top of the stage rankings when the Tour hits the mountains. Most other participants have attempted to construct a team that could win the game by selecting a mix of top sprinters and good climbers. However, in the participant list there are also teams that are composed to satisfy some aesthetic criterion. For example, the team of the aforementioned Severine Chaumette (France) consists completely of riders from France. Doug Hall (USA) expects the riders of Discovery Channel to perform well. The nine members of this squad appear in the top ten of his team. Morten Broegger (Denmark) trusts the cyclists of Team CSC. The eight CSC starters are the top eight of his team in exactly the same order as in the race. François Deldycke (France) and Jan Gofilex (The Netherlands) believe that the team captains will perform well. Thirteen of their 15 cyclists have a number wich ends in a one (usually reserved for the team captain).

The optimal team

Since the mountain stages are still ahead of us, it is too early to make a reasonable prediction about who will win the game. However it is interesting to see what team would have obtained the largest possible score at this stage of the race. Since there have been relatively many sprint finishes, the top sprinters dominate this optimal team:

 1. R. McEwen          |  5x:   1*  1*  5   1*  4
 2. T. Boonen          |  6x:   2*  4   4   2*  3   9
 3. O. Freire          |  5x:   4   7   3*  1   6
 4. B. Eisel           |  5x:   8   9  10   4*  7
 5. D. Bennati         |  5x:   5*  3   6   2   5*
 6. E. Zabel           |  5x:   9   5   9   7   6*
 7. T. Hushovd         |  3x:   3   7*  5
 8. L. Paolini         |  4x:   6   6   8*  8*
 9. D. Kopp            |  3x:   5   4  10
10. I. Isasi           |  2x:   3  10*
11. F. Ventoso         |  2x:   7   8
12. M. Rogers          |  2x:   2   4
13. P. Wrolich         |  1x:  10
14. S. Calzati         |  1x:   1
15. S. Honchar         |  1x:   1

The team list contains the positions of the cyclists in the team, their names, the number of times they have appeared in the top ten until now and the positions which they have obtained in these top ten positions. An asterix behind the position indicates that the cyclist has obtained bonus points for that result. This team would have obtained 539 points, 60 points more than the current leader Bevo Gallagher. Here is the score sheet of the team:

                            tot  2  3  4  5  6  7  8
 1. R. McEwen                84 18  . 18 15 18  . 15
 2. T. Boonen                90 17 14 14 17 14  . 14
 3. O. Freire                68 13 13 16 13 13  .  .
 4. B. Eisel                 62 12  . 12 12 14  . 12
 5. D. Bennati               59 13 11 11  . 11  . 13
 6. E. Zabel                 52 10 10  . 10 10  . 12
 7. T. Hushovd               29  9  .  . 11  9  .  .
 8. L. Paolini               36  8  8  .  . 10  . 10
 9. D. Kopp                  21  .  .  7  7  .  .  7
10. I. Isasi                 14  .  .  .  6  8  .  .
11. F. Ventoso               10  .  .  5  5  .  .  .
12. M. Rogers                 8  .  4  .  .  .  4  .
13. P. Wrolich                3  3  .  .  .  .  .  .
14. S. Calzati                2  .  .  .  .  .  .  2
15. S. Honchar                1  .  .  .  .  .  1  .
                    Points: 539103 60 83 96107  5 85
               Percentiles: 100 98 99100100100 17100

The precentile scores show what percentage of the participants in the game would have finished behind this team in the overall rankings or in the stages This super team would have won all stages in the game except for stages 2 and 7.

539 points is a spectacular number of points after the first week. Only once, in 1999, was the maximal number of attainable points higher: 598. The overall leader at that stage of the race, Martin Brilleman of The Netherlands, had collected 535 points. The all-time highest overall score was achieved by Kees Winder (The Netherlands): 749 points at the end of the game after a first-week score of 314 points.

Updated versions of the optimal team will be available after each stage (search for optimal in the participant search page).

Last update: July 11, 2006. erikt@xs4all.nl