Let’s Begin the 2024 FSA Directeur Sportif Competitors!

Yearly it looks like climbing Mount Everest… I’ll by no means make it this time… January simply evaporated and February 1 is nearly right here, and the rattling clock simply gained’t decelerate. This time we’ll miss our begin date, and the time will develop too tight, and it’ll be COMPLETE CHAOS. However like yearly, it’s the start of February, and sure, it’s time to open the sport!

Welcome to the 2024 FSA Directeur Sportif Competitors!

Our recreation is the FSA Directeur Sportif, or FSA DS, our year-long recreation the place you set your roster in February and observe your group all through the 2024 Biking season. It’s really two video games, one for Males’s skilled biking and one other for Ladies’s — and should you play each, you can be entered into our mixed competitors/rankings as properly. For now some 14 years, we’re kicking off the yr in February in time for the UAE Tour in our calendar (we used to attend till the Omloop, and on the ladies’s facet we nonetheless do… however occasions change). From then on, rosters are set, and also you simply have to hope for one of the best outcomes your riders can handle. It’s all utterly freed from cost, there are prizes for the winners, and quite a few methods in which you’ll wield your group’s prowess at your family and friends, all the way in which till October!

Meet Our Sponsors!

However earlier than we get began, let’s say howdy once more to our sponsor, Full Velocity Forward, a/okay/a FSA, makers of world class parts for street, mountain and observe biking on the highest ranges of worldwide competitors. Based mostly in Taiwan, Italy, and Washington State, they’ve supported the Directeur Sportif for over a decade, and of their spare time they wish to, you understand, win just a few bike races?

Picture by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Pictures

By way of their Imaginative and prescient model, FSA sponsors a formidable lineup of World Tour groups — Visma-Lease-a-Bike, Bahrain Victorious, EF Training-EasyPost (males’s and ladies’s groups), Soudal Fast Step, Astana Qazaqstan, and Arkéa-B&B Inns all journey Imaginative and prescient cockpits and/or wheels. Add in Professional-Continental groups like Israel-Premier Tech, Lotto Dstny, UNO-X Mobility, Caja Rural-Seguros RGA and Burgos-BH to the lineup of groups on Imaginative and prescient, and FSA’s Powerbox cranks. You will notice these guys all around the Professional Peloton in 2024.

Picture by Tim de Waele/Getty Pictures

These are the Imaginative and prescient Metron 45 SL Carbon wheels, and I can inform you… they’re sturdy and quick. Their brag sheet is getting fairly lengthy today, with quite a few wins in all of the Grand Excursions, Monuments, and World Championships. Similar goes for his or her MTB and observe honors, in addition to cyclocross and the rising gravel scene, the place their FSA Ok-Wing bars are the tops in efficiency and luxury. FSA and Imaginative and prescient have had lots of good days within the sport. That is in all probability my favourite.

Picture by Vincent Kalut – Pool/Getty Pictures

Let’s Get Began!

Earlier than we start, there are two easy necessities:

1. You have to be a registered person proper right here on the Podium Cafe and — essential!! — have a public e mail displaying (see beneath); and
2. As soon as that’s accomplished, head on over to the FSA Directeur Sportif recreation web site and get began!

If you’re a returning person, you’ll be able to simply go to the sport web site, signal again in, identify your group, and begin hiring riders! Extra signup particulars beneath, together with some essential FAQs, however for 95% of you it’s a snap.

Picture by Tim de Waele/Getty Pictures

What Are the Guidelines?

Here’s what you might want to 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.

• Primary construction for the Males’s recreation: you will have as much as 150 factors to spend and you could compile a roster of 25 riders. You possibly can 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 group meets all of those necessities, any try and submit will probably be rejected.
• Primary construction for the Ladies’s recreation, which is fairly totally different than the lads’s recreation: 150 level price range to spend on 15 riders, and you may spend as much as 100 factors on riders valued at 20 factors or larger.
• Our complete listing of accessible riders in each the lads’s and ladies’s video games are the entire riders we expect 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 group and a ladies’s group can even make you eligible for the Mixed Rankings, one other attainable feather in your cap! Winner of the mixed rating is eligible for prizes!
• Staff-building: you will have practically 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 will have accomplished so as a result of a immediate will ask you should you’re positive — then your group continues to be open to altering. Some individuals go together with their intestine and submit at present (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 group that loses to mine. However sooner or later it’s important to hit submit. Bear in mind… if the group suits, you could hit submit.
• Or simply make a random group! 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 Staff 2024” on the prime of the web page, you will notice a line underneath “Roster” which has a hyperlink to create a random group. You possibly can mess around with that each one you need, and it gained’t really develop into your group until and till you submit it. However attempt that earlier than you begin rigorously constructing your group, should 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 a lot of the season. There aren’t any harm lists and no trades; you simply ask the fittest individual in your roster to attempt to win.
• The DEADLINE is Sunday, February 18 at 11:59pm, Central European Time (CET). That’s 11pm Sunday the UK. Within the US, that’s often known as Sunday 6pm Japanese time, and 3pm Pacific. Groups submitted after that time is not going to be accepted. [We switched to 11:59pm from the usual midnight and its inherent date confusion.]

If in case you have some form of downside, please attempt the feedback for a fast response or e 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 just a few years in the past which can be of some use. The sport web site works fairly in order that the answer in all probability lies therein. Now we have the aptitude to “unsubmit” groups however take into account {that a} late, if not final, resort. It is a very busy time of yr. However relaxation assured, we need to assist everybody play if attainable.

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 just 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 attainable concern, 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 further enjoyable! Upon getting submitted, you’ll be able to create your personal small group the place your group web page will observe a listing of different submitted groups you need 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 individuals within the firm taking part in the sport are doing. As you’ll be able to think about, that makes for some very enjoyable chatter. Be it household, firm, pals or no matter, make your group! It might even be individuals who don’t know you or conform to 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 possibly can 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 energy to speak about it anymore. However there are many others doing a draft league and I do know they’re having a blast. Mainly, a draft league tosses out the rider point-costs and group budgets, and allows you to choose riders to your group, like numerous sports activities drafts, whereby that rider is simply in your group and unavailable to your competitors. The Recreation Website does NOT have this functionality per se. You should use our rider listing and our factors scoring system in your recreation, however it’s important to work out a technique to really arrange the groups — Google Spreadsheets has some performance there. Others of you might have concepts. And in case you are anxious to do that however are caught on how, contact us and we might help. However right here too you aren’t underneath any deadline strain until you identify one.

ATTENTION NEW USERS!! As famous above, you can’t play with out first registering on the Podium Cafe! That’s our one requirement. This helps guarantee that there’s one group 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 just’re a part of the group for whom we do all these items, freed from cost. Are you lurking right here? That’s cool, however you might want to click on on the Signal Up button within the higher proper nook of this web page, and create an precise Cafe login, first. Upon getting arrange your login, which is a two-step course of however utterly free, you’ll be able to then begin on the Recreation Website.

Having issues getting registered? Two attainable points are:

– You need to first verify your SBNation/Podium Cafe login. Upon getting signed up right here, verify your e mail for directions to substantiate your signup. Please do that earlier than making an attempt to enroll on the recreation web site! It will get sticky in any other case.

-Your Podium Cafe e mail should present as a public e 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 underneath your profile image, and fill out your “Public Electronic mail”. Hit us up in feedback or through e mail you probably have any hassle with this.

OK, that’s sufficient for now. Please go forward and get began. Be happy to place any questions you will have within the feedback, the place our veteran customers can typically reply your questions earlier than I can get to them. And most significantly… Good luck!