Season Fantasy Challenge #6 | How it ended

Recently, I embarked on a personal challenge called the "Season Fantasy Challenge," where I'm competing in two year-long fantasy cycling competitions on Zweeler and FirstCycling. My ultimate ambition is to achieve the best possible finish. As we progress deeper into spring, the rankings have become more consolidated, offering interesting insights into the predictions.

This year I've taken on a little interesting challenge to test myself in two fantasy games throughout the season. With Zweeler and FirstCycling I experimented to see how I'd do against other cycling fans in a test of knowledge, and this is how it ended.

If you want to learn about both competitions I've entered, you can do so by reading the opening column. 

Zweeler - https://en.zweeler.com/results/14951

FirstCycling - https://firstcycling.com/fantasy.php?k=sta

Goal: Top50
Final Ranking: 780th

Quite a fun game, but one where I made evident mistakes. First and foremost, I did not appropriately see the races which the competition included. Hence, I selected several riders in my '25' that focused on minor races. Some of them did well, such as Arnaud De Lie, Axel Zingle, Gerben Thijssen and Tobias Johannessen, but many of their results were not taken into account. I've picked out a few riders that now I look back and were bad choices such as Sam Bennett, Fabio Jakobsen, Hugo Hofstetter and Patrick Bevin. Very badly used points.

Picking out Tadej Pogacar, Mads Pedersen, Filippo Ganna, Valentin Madouas, Alex Aranburu and Axel Zingle were good value per points. However I didn't have any of the main value riders such as Mark Cavendish, Ben Healy or Derek Gee as examples. I still believe I had a good choice of leaders with Tadej Pogacar and Wout van Aert, but perhaps I had too much of a mid-range field where several didn't score the points I hoped. David Gaudu and Michael Matthews as examples, but both Enric Mas and Juan Ayuso also had injuries affect them quite a bit and shrink the amount of points.

Still a game in good fun. I finished 780th, so I did climb back up the ranks quite a few hundred spots towards the final months but still far from what looked to be an achievable Top50 at the first part of the year. I payed €10, in the end the best 401 players got that amount back. I think I've learnt a bit and taking into consideration that I only have to pick my riders once and then follow the league throughout the whole season, then I'm quite looking forward to be part of it once again.

Goal: 1st place
Final Ranking: 55th

Ultimately a 55th spot. The season started off decently well and I was in the mix, but as the season moved I became aware of how much 'endurance' you need to have to stay high in the ranks. Safe to say I wasn't ready. Having missed a few competitions it deal small blows to my rankings - which are earned by consistency - and funnily, I missed a few races because I accidentally logged in a different account! Not that it would've made much difference in the end, likely I would've just been able to crack a Top50 at best, but far from my initial goal.

Interestingly, I finished 55th as well in the women's category. The amount of junior and under-23 events was a bit of a surprise for me, and in some a weak spot was shown when it came to my knowledge. Early in the year my ranking in the stage-races was among the best, but that faded in the second part of the season. Congratulations still to Beeno Gang for winning the men's competition, and Erythropoietin for winning the women's. 

Will I come back? Likely not. It is a fun game, and actually one that really puts your cycling knowledge to the line quite well, and where consistency is much more important than lucky shots, which I love. But unless you're fully in the zone it becomes hard to select lineups to all races in time, and I personally take a bit of a hit when it comes to motivation when I accidentally skipped a few. Fully recommend it however.