Velominati Super Prestige: Tour de France 2015

Sep Vanmarcke rides the cobbles Kelly-Style in the 2014 stage to Port du Hinault. Photo: Cycling Tips

Cobblestones make the race, I’m not ruining any fantasies telling you that. Wet cobblestones, well, those make a legend. Nibbles rose in my esteem considerably when he rode the wet cobbles as well as he rides any mountain descent or climb; that is a boy with some nerves and some mad bike handling skills.

Wet cobbles are scarier to ride that dry ones, but they aren’t really that much more difficult to ride; you’re still playing the lottery that your wheels keep pointing where your bike is trying to go. But wet stones are definitely more draining; the mud and silt you ride through make it like riding through molasses. Awesome molasses, but molasses nonetheless.

The cobbles are back this year, and hopefully so will the rain. Let us pray for rain, because last year’s stage made the race.

The Tour de France needs no introduction but the VSP prizes deserve a gentle reminder. This is a Grand Tour, people, lots of points at stake. And those points are going towards amazing prizes including a Jaegher frame and a Café Roubaix wheelset. There is plenty of time for you to Delgado this thing, too, if you wait around until the last minute. So my advice is that you avoid doing that.

Give yourself enough time to enter your picks so if something has gone amuck, you have time to hit “reload” or come back V minutes later to try again before the event closes. Remember, your procrastination in this matter will not result in our emergency to enter your picks for you. All that said, if you do encounter a problem, please be so kind as to take a screenshot and upload it because the descriptor “it didn’t work” or “hm, not working” doesn’t help us debug the problem. Also, Internet Explorer is not supported and apparently only shows one Pick Entry box, so use Chrome, Firefox, or Safari instead.

The scoring for the Grand Tours is a tad more involved than the one-day races and one-week Tours, so look the guidelines over before making your prognostications.

So get your picks in before the countdown clock goes to zero, hit the go button, and good luck.

[vsp_results id=”33262″/]

frank

The founder of Velominati and curator of The Rules, Frank was born in the Dutch colonies of Minnesota. His boundless physical talents are carefully canceled out by his equally boundless enthusiasm for drinking. Coffee, beer, wine, if it’s in a container, he will enjoy it, a lot of it. He currently lives in Seattle. He loves riding in the rain and scheduling visits with the Man with the Hammer just to be reminded of the privilege it is to feel completely depleted. He holds down a technology job the description of which no-one really understands and his interests outside of Cycling and drinking are Cycling and drinking. As devoted aesthete, the only thing more important to him than riding a bike well is looking good doing it. Frank is co-author along with the other Keepers of the Cog of the popular book, The Rules, The Way of the Cycling Disciple and also writes a monthly column for the magazine, Cyclist. He is also currently working on the first follow-up to The Rules, tentatively entitled The Hardmen. Email him directly at rouleur@velominati.com.

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View Comments

dpalazzo says:

Jul 2 2015 at 10:42 pm
VSP PICKS:
1. Contador
2. Quintana
3. Nibali
4. Valverde
5. Rodriguez
oneninefiveninesix says:

Jul 2 2015 at 10:59 pm
VSP PICKS:
1. Quintana
2. Froome
3. Nibali
4. Purito
5. Bardet
freddy says:

Jul 2 2015 at 11:01 pm
I'm pumped for the Tour this year. Can all 4 of the top contenders make it all the way to Paris? I'm going to take a chance and say, "No." Contador and Nibali are proven winners so they're up there. I'm also taking a big chance that TJ will podium this year. I'm inspired that so many people are picking Hesjedal so I put him on as well--instead of Rodriguez. Luckily my boss is getting into cycling so I'm hoping he won't fire me when he sees me on Steephill every morning. Good luck to everybody.

VSP PICKS:
1. Contador
2. Nibali
3. van Garderen
4. Pinot
5. Hesjedal
KogaLover says:

Jul 3 2015 at 12:22 am
And nrs 6-10:

Van Garderen, Rodriguez, Bardet, Valverde, Peraud.

First man to wear the Yellow Jersey: om Dumoulin.

Probably jinxed it already too much with all these predictions.

VSP PICKS:
1. Vroemvroem Froome
2. V-ana (V=latin for Quint/5)
3. Contador
4. Nibali
5. Pinot
osbk67 says:

Jul 3 2015 at 12:35 am
VSP PICKS:
1. Contador
2. Uran
3. Van Garderen
4. Froome
5. Hesjedal
LA Dave says:

Jul 3 2015 at 12:52 am
VSP PICKS:
1. Nairo Escarabajo
2. Froome
3. Nibali
4. Contador
5. Teejay
hhbiker says:

Jul 3 2015 at 1:09 am
Like one or two others it's hard not to believe one of the big four will crash or fail somewhere along the line, just a question of who? I picked Contador to crash out of the Giro - he did the shoulder thing but wouldn't stay down, fair do's to him. Froome would be unlucky/stupid to go out twice in a row. Nibali or Quintana? Coin flip, I like Quintana, but sorry.

VSP PICKS:
1. Froome
2. Contador
3. Nibali
4. Pinot
5. TJVG
Mikael Liddy says:

Jul 3 2015 at 1:13 am
@frank
@Chris
@frank

@PT

VSP PICKS:

Pinot

Yeats

Yeats

‘kenoath

Bardot

You’ll have to redo your picks; you can’t have the same rider in two positions. Piti Principle and all that.

I’ assuming he meant Adam and Simon of Orica. Unless you can score points for DSs in which case I might add Sean Yates to my picks.
How am I supposed to know which is in which position, pray tell.
He could just nominate which colour sunnies he wants to go with each rider

http://twitter.com/ORICA_GreenEDGE/status/616879338835845121
hhbiker says:

Jul 3 2015 at 1:16 am
@hhbiker
Like one or two others it’s hard not to believe one of the big four will crash or fail somewhere along the line, just a question of who? I picked Contador to crash out of the Giro – he did the shoulder thing but wouldn’t stay down, fair do’s to him. Froome would be unlucky/stupid to go out twice in a row. Nibali or Quintana? Coin flip, I like Quintana, but sorry.

VSP PICKS:
1. Froome
2. Contador
3. Nibali
4. Pinot
5. TJVG
But now the deeply suppressed superstitious side of me frets, as I observe my mobile device spellchecker tried to change "Nibali" to "Invalid".
rfreese888 says:

Jul 3 2015 at 1:29 am

@unversio

@razmaspaz

Contador — he is able to see the vision, and do the vision.

He's a Sagittarius