CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR FSA DIRECTEUR SPORTIF WINNERS!!

Nicely it wasn’t what we imagined, however the 2024 season will go down as historic and memorable on the Males’s aspect, and fewer historic however ultra-competitive on the Ladies’s aspect. And whereas the small print might be coated in our different conventional year-end posts, for the FSA Directeur Sportif it appears to be like an terrible lot just like the 12 months we simply watched. You’ll by no means guess which Males’s rider was on all the high 10 groups…

[And you’ll never guess who banked hard on vdP/Remco overcoming… and who finished 519th. It seemed like a good idea at the time.]

[Narrator voice: Actually it didn’t.]

Anyway, let’s not quibble over who made what silly selections final winter, and deal with the individuals who pushed all the proper buttons!

Meet Our Winners!

Congrats to our Males’s podium! DiCenta’s Azzurra took a slim 250-point win from Team Andmujika with Simpslb’s Grupetto main residence the chase group only a bit off the tempo.

And chapeau to our Ladies’s Comp leaders! The Peluchen Impact, DS dreamer_mg, scored a 1,000-point victory over seriouscharly’s Lotte Finistère, in a 14-point picture end with Luctor Emergo’s Pleasure and Prejudice.

Lastly, our mixed rating competitors was gained by Moncassin31, whose twin Pédale! groups eeked out a really tight victory.

As at all times, we invite our winners to return by and inform their story. Each wnning crew has a narrative! However I’ll begin off with a little bit of background.

DiCenta is a primary time participant! Clearly no novice to the idea although. Against this, Andomujika has been taking part in for the reason that competitors went digital in 2010. SimpSLB has been concerned since 2016.

All of our ladies’s winners have been round for some time. Luctor Emergo was thirteenth final 12 months, in addition to sixth two years in the past. Moncassin31 is one other long-time participant and was 4th within the mixed final 12 months.

Picture by Kristy Sparow/Getty Pictures

And Now a Win From Our Sponsor…

FSA and Imaginative and prescient have an extended record of World Tour athletes and outcomes to brag about, and whereas Visma got here again to Earth this 12 months, there have been nonetheless wins all around the panorama from EF Schooling, Israel-PremierTech, Astana, UNO-X, Lotto DSTNY, and Arkea. And it didn’t get any larger than Kristen Faulkner’s Olympic Highway Race gold medal. [They were actually all over Paris this summer.] We don’t speak about their many disciplines however it’s all the above, together with this week’s IRONMAN insanity in Hawaii. Search for a resumption of highway racing excellence subsequent 12 months.

Picture by Joan Cros – Corbis/Getty Pictures

Rider Traits and Tidbits

On the lads’s aspect, clearly Tadej Pogačar dominated with an historic 6,580-point explosion, lapping the sphere and the document books. I imagine Peter Sagan’s 2016 season held the earlier non-Pogačar document, 4,334 factors, a quantity the newly minted World Champ had topped 3 times, together with a 4,803 mark in 2021. So yeah.

However latching onto that taking pictures star was solely a part of the profitable method, one which 216 groups sniffed out. [And a special congrats to herby westside, whose team No reason to kill my vibe finished 16th overall, making them king of the dipshits who were too stubborn, foolish, or otherwise impaired to pick Pogs.] To essentially win this season, you wanted to take it to the Maxim! As in Van Gils, the younger Lotto star who 180 groups foresaw making the leap from final 12 months’s 720-point mark to extra rarified air, cracking the two,000-point barrier, eighth general. His 6-point pricetag was the bottom of the large level producers, however 8-point studs Ben O’Connor and Biniam Girmay stepped as much as fulfill their previous promise.

Picture by Luc Claessen/Getty Pictures

On the. Ladies’s aspect, Demi Vollering and Lotte Kopecky. traded locations atop the leaderboard, a consequential growth contemplating the 8-point price distinction, whereas Lorena Wiebes’ manufacturing dipped. The important thing to victory didn’t contain Vollering or Wiebes in any respect, and Kopecky wasn’t on lots of the high items both. As a substitute it was a resurgent Elisa Longo Borghini who crushed expectations with a 4,613 tally, proper alongside Vollering, at half the associated fee.

One other dependable veteran (and biking Godess) Marianne Vos, put collectively her personal rebound with 2,726 factors at age 37, her greatest rating since 2021. That made her one of many large bargains at 20 factors, although 2-pointers Puck Pieterse and Thalita de Jongh being up round 1500 positively moved the needle for 100 and 5 groups, respectively. Congrats to CK Dallas and Crooked Rain for being the one two patrons of each discount bin specials.

Everybody ought to be at liberty to chime in along with your hits and misses, your personal league grudges… all the above. Oh, and alongside these strains, a particular congrats to my large bro, Mr Van P, for his Editors’ League championship! His victory raises the collective household victory historical past to… one. Not for lack of attempting, I’ll have you understand.

OK, due to everybody for enjoying, due to Superted, aka tedvdw, the creator and maintainer of the fantastic web site model with out which this competitors couldn’t exist. Due to UMWolverine, Jens, Ursula, Henry (Chabinho), and the many individuals who chimed in with feedback on pricing, outcomes corrections, and all the small print that maintain this working. I’m sorry that my well being didn’t enable me to be very lively, however I used to be gratified to see the group firing on all cylinders regardless. See you for the FSA DS ‘25!