Let’s Begin the 2024 FSA Directeur Sportif Competitors!

Yearly it looks as if 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 received’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 sport is the FSA Directeur Sportif, or FSA DS, our year-long sport the place you set your roster in February and comply with 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 in case you play each, you’ll be entered into our mixed competitors/rankings as nicely. 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 aspect we nonetheless do… however instances change). From then on, rosters are set, and also you simply must hope for the most effective 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 be able to 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 hi there once more to our sponsor, Full Pace Forward, a/ok/a FSA, makers of world class elements for highway, 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 recognize, win just a few bike races?

Photograph by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Photographs

By means of their Imaginative and prescient model, FSA sponsors a powerful lineup of World Tour groups — Visma-Lease-a-Bike, Bahrain Victorious, EF Training-EasyPost (males’s and girls’s groups), Soudal Fast Step, Astana Qazaqstan, and Arkéa-B&B Inns all trip 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.

Photograph by Tim de Waele/Getty Photographs

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 nowadays, 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 loads of good days within the sport. That is in all probability my favourite.

Photograph by Vincent Kalut – Pool/Getty Photographs

Let’s Get Began!

Earlier than we start, there are two easy necessities:

1. You have to be a registered consumer proper right here on the Podium Cafe and — crucial!! — have a public e-mail exhibiting (see under); and
2. As soon as that’s performed, head on over to the FSA Directeur Sportif sport web site and get began!

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

Photograph by Tim de Waele/Getty Photographs

What Are the Guidelines?

Here’s what you want to know, in case you didn’t learn the final ten variations of this submit. The total algorithm are right here, however I’ll spotlight the biggies.

• Primary construction for the Males’s sport: you will have as much as 150 factors to spend and you should 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 it is going to be rejected.
• Primary construction for the Ladies’s sport, which is fairly totally different than the lads’s sport: 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 record of obtainable riders in each the lads’s and girls’s video games are all the riders we predict might 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 girls’s group will even make you eligible for the Mixed Rankings, one other doable feather in your cap! Winner of the mixed rating is eligible for prizes!
• Group-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 performed so as a result of a immediate will ask you in case you’re positive — then your group continues to be open to altering. Some folks go along with their intestine and submit as we speak (like, earlier than I may even end this submit). Others tinker proper as much as the deadline. Each are legitimate methods to make a group that loses to mine. However sooner or later you need to hit submit. Keep in mind… if the group matches, you should hit submit.
• Or simply make a random group! That was a factor we created a pair years again. OK, Superted, our Sport 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 Group 2024” on the high of the web page, you will notice a line below “Roster” which has a hyperlink to create a random group. You possibly can mess around with that every one you need, and it received’t really develop into your group until and till you submit it. However strive that earlier than you begin rigorously constructing your group, in case you don’t need your half-baked roster to vanish.
• As soon as the UAE Tour begins, there are not any in-season changes, no game-day choices. Simply submit your roster and comply with them. That is just about how biking works: everyone seems to be driving a race someplace for many of the season. There are not 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 also called Sunday 6pm Japanese time, and 3pm Pacific. Groups submitted after that time won’t be accepted. [We switched to 11:59pm from the usual midnight and its inherent date confusion.]

When you’ve got some type of downside, please strive 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 just so the answer in all probability lies therein. Now we have the aptitude to “unsubmit” groups however think about {that a} late, if not final, resort. This can be a very busy time of yr. However relaxation assured, we need to assist everybody play if doable.

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 simply 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 doable situation, however that’s fairly uncommon. On the spirit aspect, 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, benefit from the options that make it further enjoyable! Upon getting submitted, you may create your personal small group the place your group web page will observe an inventory of different submitted groups you need to pit your self once more. I do know on the FSA workplaces up in Mukilteo, they use this characteristic to trace how all of the folks within the firm taking part in the sport are doing. As you may think about, that makes for some very enjoyable chatter. Be it household, firm, pals or no matter, make your group! It may well even be individuals who don’t know you or comply with it — solely you may 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 characteristic all season lengthy.

Additionally, there are Draft Groups. For greater than a decade the Editors have been working 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. Principally, 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 just in your group and unavailable to your competitors. The Sport Website does NOT have this functionality per se. You should utilize our rider record and our factors scoring system in your sport, however you need to work out a solution to really arrange the groups — Google Spreadsheets has some performance there. Others of you’ll have concepts. And if you’re anxious to do that however are caught on how, contact us and we may help. However right here too you aren’t below 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 girls’s competitions— no one can have a number of groups in a single competitors. This additionally helps to guarantee that you simply’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 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 may then begin on the Sport Website.

Having issues getting registered? Two doable points are:

– It’s essential to first affirm your SBNation/Podium Cafe login. Upon getting signed up right here, test your e-mail for directions to verify your signup. Please do that earlier than attempting to enroll on the sport 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 below your profile image, and fill out your “Public Electronic mail”. Hit us up in feedback or through e-mail when you’ve got 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 usually reply your questions earlier than I can get to them. And most significantly… Good luck!