PG - Tour de France 2023 Stage 10

A Massif day with 3100m of climbing starting straight out of the gate.

The Favourites

Stage 9 went through Volvic and today it’s Perrier but neither were watered down stages. It could be said (harshly) that Matteo bottled it. He was definitely swimming in treacle at the end. Still, it was a sparkling ride.

I don’t want to big this stage up too much because it’s only likely to fizz if I do but there could be anarchy. If someone in the top 10 GC battle decides to do a Jai, we could be in for a very long battle for the break and as we know, at some point the elastic snaps and at that moment, I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a rider or three there that will worry teams already thinking about protecting their GC positions. That would be helpful for Jumbo because it won’t be easy to control. Also there’s nothing better than a bit of polemic and with Wout a likely attacker, watching him ride with say Simon Yates would give us something to argue about.

So it’s a day for the break. You’ll need to be able to climb but require a punch to win. Unless you go solo of course on the descent. Moho being the man for that. It has a bit of a mini LBL feel to it so that should inform you of what to look for. Outside of Wout, there’s a plethora of names that can get into the break and win. If everyone remembers to pick, I imagine we’ll get 30 plus names in the selections but with all this water talk, van Gils stands out for me.

Good luck with your picks.

For now, here's the startlist as it stands.

The Rules

In this game, only the race results matter. You're not committed to keeping the same riders throughout the series, you make fresh picks before every race. Our overall competition is just the sum of individual race scores. You're eligible for the overall even if you miss some races.

Pick 4 riders for the upcoming race. The order of your picks doesn't matter. All of your riders can score.

Riders score points down to 10th place. Less popular riders score more points than heavily-picked favourites. See below for scoring details.

The strict entry deadline is the official start time of the race, the neutralized roll-out or Départ Fictif. Be warned - if your post is timestamped one minute late your entry won't count! So do remember that there's no disadvantage to getting an entry in early, even the day before, because you may always change your picks up until the deadline. Feel free to rethink your picks when it emerges which riders are more or less popular with other players. If you make changes, post your revised 4 picks in a reply to your original post.

The Scoring

Head over to msbee's spreadsheet to check how you fared. Any issues, please email us on... MonaLott@usifudare.com