Fantasy Cycling for TDU – Know your jerseys

As fantasy managers we know that often our riders will not take much notice of us shouting instructions at them from the couch, keyboard or roadside.  We will feel even more inadequate if we cannot identify our own riders on the road, or we are directing our instructions at the wrong rider.

As well as watching our own riders, we need to find riders with good form to trade in.  So we also need to be able to pick out targets in the bunch.

To identify the riders we have to recognise the team jerseys.  I have compiled the best info I can on all the jerseys we will see on the road in TDU for 2014.

Team Jerseys

These are all 2014 except Cannondale.  Assume all jerseys are 2014 unless I note otherwise.  The new Cannondale jersey was launched last night – I’ve seen video from the launch and the jersey is basically the same.  Edit: I’ve now added a pic of new Cannondale kit to the end of article.

Orica Green-Edge (Australian team) – just launched this new 2014 kit earlier this week.

Europcar – jersey will be basically the same in 2014.

Argos / Giant / Shimano – Edit: The design of the last jersey is now known and shown to the right.  Argos has pulled out.  The team thought they had a replacement sponsor but they pulled out as well.  Replacement sponsor no.2 is confirmed as Giant.  They have released their new jersey and it includes more black, even vertical black stipes.  Most Australians will look at it and think “Collingwood”.

 

 

Saxo-Tinkoff – Edit:  Saxo Surprised a few people when they announced a new jersey for 2014 this week.  It is more yellow with less navy blue so they will stand out a bit more this year.  See image to right.  They also changed their name to Tinkoff-SaxoBank.

Trek Factory Racing – Trek have taken over the old Radioshack team (the old 2013 Radioshack jersey is shown above).  Edit: The new Trek team kit was launched 10th January – see image to left.

 

 

 

 

Drapac Professional Cycling (Australian team) – Jersey for 2014 is similar to the 2013 design.  Edit: The Drapac 2014 jersey is shown to the right.  The only significant change is a change in sponsorship logos.

Uni of South Australia (Australian team) – Their riders seemed to wear this jersey in 2013 (see below left).  However, it is a bit confusing because this is close to the Australian national champion jersey.  Edit: Uni of SA have now named their team – and they are calling it an Australian national team, although supported by Uni of SA.  Their jersey is similar to last year, i.e. below, left.

 

 

While the images above are helpful, when the riders are on their bikes we tend not to see much of the front of their jerseys.

• Look at the shoulders – this is what you will see when the rider is coming towards you, particularly if they are behind someone else (i.e. Lampre riders will look more pink than navy blue).
• Look at the side panels – this is what you will see from the camera motos that travel along with the riders.  Often this is a contrasting colour with the team name written down the side.
• What about the back – the back is what is seen from helicopter cameras.  This tends to be similar to the front but less busy and with fewer text logos.

That’s it for team jerseys (all 20 teams).  Each team will have seven riders starting, so 140 riders all up for TDU.

Leader’s Jerseys

Then there are the leader’s jerseys.  If a rider is leading any of the competitions they get to wear a specific leader’s jersey for the next stage.  The competions were discussed in a previous article, but I will repeat it here – this time with pics of the actual jersey and updated information.

General Classification (GC) –  This is the headline race.  The GC winner completes the whole 6 day tour course in shortest total time (including time bonuses/penalties).  The current leader in the GC wears a special leader’s jersey to mark him out – for TDU the leader’s jersey is an ochre colour (as in picture to right).  The podium attendants presenting the jersey usually wear the same colour dresses as the jersey – so you can tell which prize is being presented from the pictures.

 

Stage Winner – The rider who completes that day’s ride in shortest amount of time.  They don’t get any specific jersey unless they are also leading a competition.

 

Points (Sprint) competition – For rider with most sprint points at the end of competition.  They get points for being in leading positions at various specific points during each stage.  The current points leader in TDU wears a blue jersey (presented by attendants in blue dresses).  The Sprinters jersey has a new sponsor for 2014, so I think it will be a bit darker blue this year – similar to image on the right.

 

 

 

 

King of Mountains (KOM) competition –  Riders get KOM points for being in leading positions over the race’s highest locations in the whole event.  The current KOM leader in TDU wears a white jersey with large green polka dots.  See image on the right.

 

 

 

Young Rider – Best placed rider in GC aged 25 or under.  The leading young rider wears a white jersey with fluoro wheels on it – see image to right.  This is a change for 2014 (last year this jersey had a black background).

 

Competitive Rider – This is a subjective award to rider who the organisers believe attacked the most during the stage.  Attacking is basically charging off by yourself ahead of all the other riders to form breakaways.  Organisers want to encourage this because it makes the race more interesting.  The rider doesn’t get a jersey to wear in the race – instead they wear a red number tag the next day.  All riders wear numbers – black on white background, but the competitive rider wears a black number on a red background.  The rider judged most competitive over the whole TDU is presented with a green jersey after the end of all the stages.  Since this green jersey is not worn in the actual race, I won’t post an image of it.

Winning Team – Team with best aggregate time for its 4 highest ranked GC riders over all 6 stages.  The leading team is not marked during the stages.  We will have to look it up on the internet if we want to know how the team competition is going.  The winning team is presented with a red jersey after all the stages are complete – but again I won’t post an image as this jersey is not worn in the race.

Other Jersey Factors

There are two other factors that complicate how the jerseys look:

Firstly – The riders wearing the leader’s jerseys get to put their own sponsors logos all over the jersey when they are riding in it.  So often the jersey looks like a combination of their team jersey and the leader’s jersey.  This means the leaders’ jerseys change appearance as they pass from one rider to another.

Secondly – If a rider is a current national cycling champion for his country he can wear his national colours on the jersey (often just sleeve bands but sometimes more significant changes).  Similarly if a rider is current world cycling champion he can wear white background with rainbow stripes on his jersey.  Edit: See example of this in Cannondale 2014 team kit below. Peter Sagan (back row, 4th from right) is current Slovian national champion, so his jersey includes Slovakia national design on the front.

Edit: Last year the black jerseys of Team Sky stood out because they were only really dark team.  However, this year the peleton will have a much darker look overall because of several jersey changes.

• Trek (charcoal) taking over Radioshak (mainly white)
• Belkin (green + black) taking over Blanco (all white)
• Omega Pharma Quickstep changing to mainly black jersey for 2014, replacing previous white and blue.
• Orica Green Edge jersey for 2014 has more navy blue.
• The all white of Giant Shimano is likely to be changed for 2014 also.

What’s next?

So now you are a jersey expert!  You will be able to pick out riders of interest in the RoadNats – Australian National Road titles around Ballarat, Victoria.  The Elite Mens Road Race will be live on SBS TV on Sunday 12th.  Riders to watch:

• Evans (BMC),
• Porte & Sutton (Sky),
• Gerrans, Durbridge, Goss, Clarke, Hayman, Matthews (OGE) [ i.e. all their TDU starters except South African Impey],
• Dennis, von Hoff and Morton (Garmin),
• Ewan (in U23 events) – (Uni of SA wildcard), and
• Drapac squad [The 2nd Aussie TDU team trained around Bright this week instead of competing in BayCrits].

With 36+ Australian starters in TDU, I expect a few more will be in the RoadNats start lists.

Links of Interest 

1.  I think this will be the link for the Game when it opens (approx Monday 13 January, UK time), but we will have to wait and see.  http://fantasy.road.cc/

2.  Great work by CyclingTheAlps.com to produce route maps, profiles and satellite photos of the TDU stages –

http://www.cyclingthealps.com/#tour-down-under-2014-stage-1

They have a flyover for the various stages on youtube.  I love the way the flyover speed slows down at feed stations and when it gets to hills.  They have even added a game for your amusement.  Beware about opening this link at work – it may be very distracting!

3. Twitter list with stream of tweets from all the TDU riders and the teams.

https://twitter.com/belinda8888/lists/tdu2014

I love this.  Constant stream in different languages, about all manner of things from travel cockups to Jens Voigt showing his 6 kids how to throw ninja star knives in the back yard (until “wifey” came out!).

4. To easily find all my articles on Fantasy Cycling for TDU (e.g. if you want to review something in another article), use this link.

http://dreamteamtalk.com/category/2013/resources-2013/leagues/cycling/

 

That’s all for this article.  I expect to post next article about cycling and fanstasy scoring towards end of this week.

Please let me know what you think by posting below, or twitting me up on @NixTrader.  Give me a follow as I will keep tweeting info that is Fantasy TDU relevant.