Might I Please Introduce You To… the 2023 FSA Directeur Sportif Competitors?

January is a month of extremes… excessive post-holiday hangovers, excessive chilly and darkness (north of the Equator), excessive cognitive dissonance towards images from south of the Equator, and excessive… nothingness. So far as professional street biking is anxious.

Properly, January is over, and you already know what February 1 means to the biking world? It’s time to play the FSA DIRECTEUR SPORTIF COMPETITION!! Sure, for the, oh, thirteenth consecutive yr or thereabouts, we’re enjoying our season-long fantasy biking competitors the place you construct a roster, submit it by the deadline (Saturday, February 18) and spend the remainder of the season watching your workforce rating factors… or not. It’s large enjoyable, it consists of each males’s and ladies’s competitions, and it received’t value you one skinny dime to play. It’s quite simple and without end freed from cost. Simply two predominant necessities:

1. You have to be a registered person proper right here on the Podium Cafe and — essential!! — have a public electronic mail displaying (see under); and
2. As soon as that’s finished, head on over to the FSA Directeur Sportif sport website and get began!

Extra signup particulars under, together with some vital FAQs, however for 95% of you it’s a snap!

Photograph by Dario Belingheri – Pool/Getty Photographs,

Meet Our Sponsors: FSA and VISION

This marks season quantity 12!! the place I’m proud to open this competitors along side our most wonderful sponsor, FSA. Recognized formally as Full Pace Forward, and in tandem with its companion model VISION, FSA is likely one of the few actual leaders in biking componentry. To wit:

• FSA is the principle line of world class Highway and MTB elements. Try the Powerbox crankset, or the Ok-Pressure cockpits for which they’ve been well-known within the peloton for a very long time (and the Ok-Wing model that may be a hit with the cobbles squads). Their digital groupset, Ok-Pressure WE, is successful main races now.

• Imaginative and prescient focuses primarily on street and triathlon with elements engineered for aerodynamics and pace. Each my street and cross bikes are powered by Imaginative and prescient, significantly the Metron wheels which have made quite a lot of Tour de France appearances and have been used within the skilled ranks since 2013. Belief me, they’re very quick, even after I’m the individual they’re conveying. Check out the Metron 45s and Metron 60s for tremendous gentle and quick rides in various rim sizes.

Between the 2 firms, they provide EF Schooling-EasyPost, Bahrain Victorious, Jumbo Visma, Arkea-Samsic, Human Powered Well being, and Burgos BH Biking. For these groups FSA and Imaginative and prescient provide cockpits, wheels, Aerobars, customized extensions, and for Burgos the WE groupset. And so they … received a number of issues final yr. Yep, they certain did.

Photograph by MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP through Getty Photographs

About this yr… that is my second go-round because the Nü-Ursula, setting the costs in a means that doesn’t, say, power you to draft Tadej Pogačar. Final yr was an outstanding competitors, however that entire factor, however this yr we intention to make the alternatives a bit broader. Additionally don’t blame me for making the ladies’s sport too arduous, that’s 100% on Jens!

The Guidelines!

OK, sufficient preamble. Here’s what it’s essential know, in case you didn’t learn the final ten variations of this put up. The complete algorithm are right here, however I’ll spotlight the biggies.

• You can’t play with out first registering on the Podium Cafe! That’s our one requirement. This helps guarantee that there’s one workforce per individual in every of the lads’s and ladies’s competitions— no one can have a number of groups in a single competitors. This additionally helps to guarantee that you simply’re a part of the group for whom we do all these things, freed from cost. Are you lurking right here? That’s cool, however it’s essential click on on the Signal Up button within the higher proper nook of this web page, and create an precise Cafe login, first. After you have arrange your login, which could be very quick and in addition utterly free, you’ll be able to then begin on the Recreation Website.

Having issues getting registered? Two doable points are: Your Podium Cafe electronic mail should present as a public electronic mail! Go to your SB Nation profile web page at https://www.sbnation.com/customers/YOUR_USERNAME, Select “Edit > Profile” from the drop-down field below your profile image, and fill out your “Public E mail”. Additionally, you have to confirm your new account with SBNation. Go to the e-mail you used to create the account, hopefully you will notice an electronic mail there to instruct you on verifying your account.

• All set now? OK, the sport website (www.pdcvds.com) is a separate entity. Go there to make your workforce, come again right here to talk about it.
• Fundamental construction for the Males’s sport: you could have as much as 150 factors to spend and you have to compile a roster of 25 riders. You’ll be able to solely have one rider who prices 24 factors or extra, and solely a complete of three at or over 18 factors (together with the man who prices 24+). Till your workforce meets all of those necessities, any try to submit it will likely be rejected.
• Fundamental construction for the Girls’s sport, which is fairly totally different than the lads’s sport: 150 level price range to spend on 15 riders, and you’ll spend as much as 100 factors on riders valued at 20 factors or increased.
• Our complete record of accessible riders in each the lads’s and ladies’s video games are all the riders we predict shall be of curiosity. However which means we subtract some riders who haven’t scored shortly. And whereas we do our greatest so as to add up-and-comers, there are too many for us to nail 100%. So in order for you somebody who you don’t see listed, contact us ASAP and we’ll add them as one-point choices. [Please limit this to riders who you are at least possibly interested in picking. No obligation to buy! But we aren’t striving to list everyone with a license.]
• Having each a males’s workforce and a girls’s workforce may also make you eligible for the Mixed Rankings, one other doable feather in your cap! Winner of the mixed rating is eligible for prizes!
• Crew-building: you could have almost three weeks to fiddle, swap riders out and in of your lineup, and so forth. Till you hit “submit” — and you’ll know when you could have finished so as a result of a immediate will ask you in case you’re certain — then your workforce continues to be open to altering. Some folks go along with their intestine and submit right this moment (like, earlier than I may even end this put up). Others tinker proper as much as the deadline. Each are legitimate methods to make a workforce that loses to mine. However in some unspecified time in the future you need to hit submit. Bear in mind… if the workforce suits, you have to hit submit.
• Or simply make a random workforce! That was a factor we created a pair years again. OK, Superted, our Recreation Designer and Chief Executioner, got here up with it. While you go to the web page the place you can begin hiring riders, with “My Crew 2023” on the high of the web page, you will notice a line below “Roster” which has a hyperlink to create a random workforce. You’ll be able to mess around with that every one you need, and it received’t really change into your workforce until and till you submit it. However strive that earlier than you begin fastidiously constructing your workforce, in case you don’t need your half-baked roster to vanish.
• As soon as the UAE Tour begins, there aren’t any in-season changes, no game-day selections. Simply submit your roster and observe them. That is just about how biking works: everyone seems to be using a race someplace for many of the season. There aren’t any damage lists and no trades; you simply ask the fittest individual in your roster to attempt to win.
• The DEADLINE is Saturday, February 18 at 11:59pm, Central European Time (CET). That’s 11pm Saturday the UK. Within the US, that’s often known as 6pm Japanese time, and 3pm Pacific. Groups submitted after that time won’t be accepted. [We switched to 11:59pm from the usual midnight and its inherent date confusion.]

If in case you have some type of downside, please strive the feedback for a fast response or electronic mail me (fsadirecteursportif[at]gmail[dot]com) and I’ll allow you to out as quickly as I can. We additionally posted a Troubleshooters’ Information a number of years in the past which can be of some use. The sport website works fairly just so the answer most likely lies therein. Now we have the aptitude to “unsubmit” groups however contemplate {that a} late, if not final, resort. It is a very busy time of yr. However relaxation assured, we wish to assist everybody play if doable.

And by everybody, I imply as soon as. The one-per-customer is the important thing to the sport’s integrity. We ask that you simply all respect the letter and the spirit of this rule. Now we have some policing functionality, and could also be emailing you if there’s a doable subject, however that’s fairly uncommon. On the spirit facet, I get that households play — my children have had groups of their very own. Simply as I don’t do their homework, I don’t fill out their rosters. In that spirit, we’re completely satisfied to have your entire household play!

And most of all, make the most of the options that make it additional enjoyable! After you have submitted, you’ll be able to create your individual small group the place your workforce web page will monitor a listing of different submitted groups you wish to pit your self once more. I do know on the FSA places of work up in Mukilteo, they use this function to trace how all of the folks within the firm enjoying the sport are doing. As you’ll be able to think about, that makes for some very enjoyable chatter. Be it household, firm, associates or no matter, make your group! It will possibly even be individuals who don’t know you or comply with it — solely you’ll be able to see your group. However ideally it’s one thing the place you and others are all grouping collectively and every making that group. You’ll be able to mess around with this function all season lengthy.

Additionally, there are Draft Groups. For greater than a decade the Editors have been operating an Editors’ League, though at this level I don’t have the power to speak about it anymore. However there are many others doing a draft league and I do know they’re having a blast. Principally, a draft league tosses out the rider point-costs and workforce budgets, and allows you to choose riders in your workforce, like numerous sports activities drafts, whereby that rider is just in your workforce and unavailable to your competitors. The Recreation Website does NOT have this functionality per se. You need to use our rider record and our factors scoring system in your sport, however you need to work out a solution to really arrange the groups — Google Spreadsheets has some performance there. Others of you’ll have concepts. And if you’re anxious to do that however are caught on how, contact us and we might help. However right here too you aren’t below any deadline strain until you identify one.

Whew… that’s all I’ve. Let’s get began! Put questions in feedback. Oh, and be affected person in regards to the calendar, I must be finished including lower-level occasions by tomorrow. Avanti!