Today is a rest day in the Tour. This gives us the opportunity for some reflections on the progression of the game this far.
The most remarkable stage in the game was the sixth stage. In that stage Sander Kaspers of The Netherlands became the first player in the five-year history of the game to score 100 points. The top six of his team plus three more team riders finished in the top ten of this sixth stage. The score of 100 points was a new all-time stage record. The previous all-time record was set by Dutchman Erix Schokker in 1996 in another stage with a sprint finish.
In the sixth stage the record score of Kaspers was not the only notable feat. No less than than seventeen players managed to obtain 80 points or more. According to the all-time high-score list at that time only twenty players had previously managed to do that. This list of the twenty highest stage scores in the game since 1994 currently contains thirteen scores of the sixth stage of the Tour of 1998.
Stages that finish with a peloton sprint are excellent opportunities for sprinter teams to obtain high game scores. In the all-time high score list we see only one score that has not been obtained in sprint finish stage: the 87 points of Jos Soest of The Netherlands collected in the first time trial of the Tour of 1996. It is unlikely that we will see a repetition of the sixth-stage records later in this Tour because some major sprinters (Cipollini, Moncassin and Magnien) have already dropped out.
In the Tour of 1997 twenty three riders had dropped out after the eleventh stage. This year no less than forty one cyclists have already dropped out. Among those some very strong ones. Richard Virenque, Alex Zülle and Laurent Dufaux were expelled from the Tour after their manager had confessed that his team members have used illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Abraham Olano and Francesco Casagrande crashed together and had to abandon the race. Frédréric Moncassin also suffered from the result of a crash. Mario Cipollini has never completed a Tour and he left after having won two stages.
The large number of high-profile dropouts has wrecked the teams of many participants. Last year our robot participant Jan Modaal managed to get nine of his team members to Paris. This year his team has already been reduced to eight riders and we are not even half-way through the Tour. When the Tour started 780 of the 814 participants had a complete team and the average team size was 14.9. Now there isn't a single complete team left in the game and the average team size has dropped to 9.2.
The most fortunate participant with regard to rider losses is Stuart Lunn from the UK. He has lost his number-four cyclist Dufaux but he is the only participant left in the game that has a fourteen-member team. There are four participants left with thirteen team members: Asra Hewitt (New Zealand), John Plaschke (USA), Mike Page-Hanify (Australia) and Paolo Quaglia (Italy).
The most unfortunate participants in the game at this moment are Elmo Schattefor and S. Stoffels, both from The Netherlands. They have started with complete teams of fifteen riders but at this moment they only have six left. The smallest team in the game is the one of Ronald Nijman of The Netherlands who only has three of his original seven riders left. Another participant with problems is Tad Zgoda of the USA. He has lost seven of his team members but among these seven are his top five. His possibilities of obtaining a high stage score seem to be minimal now.
After stage eleven the top ten in the overall rankings contains the following names (between brackets the number of team members left in the race):
1. 376 (9) Tako Molanus (The Netherlands)
2. 366 (11) Lee Rusk (USA)
366 (10) Sander Kaspers (The Netherlands)
4. 365 (10) Erwin Tijms (The Netherlands)
5. 364 (9) Jose Nicolas Glez. Perez (Spain)
6. 355 (9) Edwin van den Berg (The Netherlands)
7. 354 (10) Berthold B. Journaille (The Netherlands)
7. 354 (9) Rene van Buitenen (The Netherlands)
9. 353 (9) Stuart Dwight (UK)
10. 352 (10) Akke Vel (Belgium)
In three of the previous four editions of the game, the leader at the half-way stage has won the game. So Tako Molanus of The Netherlands seems to have a good chance of winning this edition of the game. He has participated in all five editions of the game and his best final ranking thus far has been the 28th place. His fellow countryman Erwin Tijms will hope that the events of the game edition of 1995 will repeat themselves. In that year Frank Koper won the game after having been on fourth place after stage eleven.
In the top ten list you can find the number of riders of each team that are left in the race. The strength of a team is determined by this number and the position of the remaining cyclists in the team. At this moment seven of the teams in the top ten are equally strong. The exceptions are the teams of Sander Kaspers and Erwin Tijms, which are slightly weaker, and the team of Lee Rusk which is slightly stronger.
Many participants are interested how they can improve their teams in future editions of the game. As an aid to them we can look at the theoretically best team based on the stage results up until now. Here is one of the possible teams that would have obtained 432 points up until this stage of the game:
1. T. Steels | 4x: 5 7 6 7 2. N. Minali | 3x: 8 2* 2* 3. J. Svorada | 4x: 1 3* 3* 10 4. F. Moncassin | 3x: 4* 9 4* 5. E. Zabel | 5x: 6 2 5* 8 5* 6. R. McEwen | 3x: 2 6* 6* 7. G. Hincapie | 3x: 3 7* 10 8. J. Ullrich | 3x: 1 8* 8* 9. J. Blijlevens | 3x: 9* 1 8 10. M. Cipollini | 3x: 3 1 1 11. B. Julich | 3x: 3 4 3 12. M. Pantani | 2x: 2 1 13. M. Boogerd | 2x: 3 4 14. P. Gaumont | 2x: 5 7 15. F. Escartin | 2x: 7 6
This list shows the position of the rider in the team, his name, the number of times he has finished in the top ten of a stage and his places in those stages. If the cyclist has finished at the same place as his place in the team, a star is appended to the place (this earns bonus points). There are two less obvious riders in this list: George Hincapie who was chosen by only 39 participants and Phillipe Gaumont, chosen by only six participants in their game teams.
The score of the optimal team after stage (432 points) is much lower than the score of last year's optimal team after stage eleven (532 points). This indicates that the top-ten places have been more evenly distributed over the different riders. So this Tour de France is less predictable than the one of last year. Hopefully we have many exciting stages ahead of us!