Page One
The Draft Is Set
No hand-picking. A seeded random number generator set the draft order and an auto-drafter built every squad by specialty — a GC leader, a sprinter and a climber first, then best available.
How it worked. From the roughly 184 starters, a curated pool of eighty draftable riders — the ones with a realistic shot at points — was ranked and split into four scoring tiers. A fixed seed of 777 set a random draft order, then a ten-round snake ran (the order reverses each round). The first three rounds are specialty rounds: every squad drafts a GC leader, then a sprinter, then a climber, so everyone lands a marquee name in each discipline. The remaining seven rounds are best-available. Same seed, same draft, every time.
Draft order: Mark → Chris → Stephen → Matthew → Kirk.
Scoring rewards the brave: stage points and jersey-days are flat, but the big end-of-Tour bonuses are multiplied by rider tier (T1 ×1.0 up to T4 ×2.0). A domestique who steals a stage or sneaks into the top ten pays out double. Depth and daring both count.
Squad Leaders · GC · Sprint · Climber
MarkGC Tadej Pogacar · Spr Jonathan Milan · Clm Felix Gall
KirkGC Joao Almeida · Spr Mads Pedersen · Clm Lenny Martinez
ChrisGC Jonas Vingegaard · Spr Wout van Aert · Clm Santiago Buitrago
MatthewGC Primoz Roglic · Spr Tim Merlier · Clm Michael Woods
StephenGC Remco Evenepoel · Spr Jasper Philipsen · Clm Neilson Powless
The Full Lottery
Mark
Tadej Pogacar T1Jonathan Milan T2Carlos Rodriguez T2Juan Ayuso T2Felix Gall T3Richard Carapaz T3Ben O'Connor T3Michael Storer T3Bryan Coquard T3Tim Wellens T4
Kirk
Mads Pedersen T1Mathieu van der Poel T1Joao Almeida T2Ben Healy T2Tom Pidcock T2Lenny Martinez T3Simon Yates T3Julian Alaphilippe T3Guillaume Martin T3Valentin Paret-Peintre T3
Chris
Jonas Vingegaard T1Wout van Aert T1Paul Seixas T2Matteo Jorgenson T2Mattias Skjelmose T2Santiago Buitrago T3David Gaudu T3Jhonatan Narvaez T3Arnaud De Lie T3Sepp Kuss T4
Matthew
Tim Merlier T1Primoz Roglic T2Isaac del Toro T2Dylan Groenewegen T2Kevin Vauquelin T2Michael Woods T3Enric Mas T3Marc Hirschi T3Phil Bauhaus T3Michael Matthews T3
Stephen
Remco Evenepoel T1Jasper Philipsen T1Florian Lipowitz T2Biniam Girmay T2Oscar Onley T2Neilson Powless T3Romain Gregoire T3Quinn Simmons T3Fabio Jakobsen T3Alexander Kristoff T3