Tour of Guangxi

That is quite an achievement! In reality it probably means he held onto a car on a climb or something similar and the commissaires docked him KoM points (not that he would have any interest in that jersey!)

O well, thanks for trying Tony. It's annoying that the teams/ organisers can't announce their squads a bit earlier - given the long flight involved it's hard to believe they don't know who's going until the last few hours

Personally, I would like a a chance to overhaul my (not insurmountable) deficit to Waterloo in the purist comp, but you should probably take less notice of people like us who have a vested interest. It's probably best to be clear early in the season re which races are in or out. For what it's worth, as a non-European I like the idea of including all WT races, regardless of personal views about which races are the ones that really matter

I fully understand that as I feel a bit of a fraud sitting at the top of the purist league. As you say, probably best that we don't make these decisions. My main reason for not wanting to play it is a selfish one, in that I am currently travelling around US so will struggle to enter a team if the game doesn't open with a decent window before the race starts. I will support whatever decision is made though. 

The weird thing is, this is the third time I've come out of the vuelta in 2nd place. 4 years ago I managed to overhaul the deficit at Guangxi. Last year we knew the season ended with the vuelta and I was miles behind anyway. I agree that the game probably shouldn't open less than 24 hrs before the race - to allow for different time zones. Congrats on winning (both?) season competitions.

I'll take the standard win, I've played that pretty well and would have had to play spectacularly badly to lose that in Guangxi. I can't claim the purist as that was still very much up for grabs. The purist was also missing Dr Winston who normally performs well in this discipline and will hopefully reappear next season.

You can definitely claim the purist too. With a lead of 70ish it's unlikely you would have been caught at Guangxi - there wouldn't have been any 90 point breakaway stages in this race

But it's a tricky race to get the right number of GC riders in a purist team. I was planning 6 sprinters  and 2 GC. De Lie covers all the bases - will contest every sprint & young rider. Would likely have gone De Lie, Kooij, Milan , M. Van den Berg, Bennett, Jorgenson, Wellens plus another sprinter but it's easy picking without the pressure of the game! We will pick it up again next season! 

It is quite likely you would have lost your lead with that team !!

Very true, there is a lottery element to the purist! 

I once won the Purist league after the leader going into the last event missed the race  (I think Lombardia). It didn't feel like I won it.

Congratulations on both your season wins.

Thank you! I think a grim determination not to miss deadlines is a key asset. I'm pretty sure I only missed one, which was the TdF stage with the computer glitch. Previously I have always missed a few over a season for various reasons.