For the first time since 1971 the Tour opened with a team time trial — nineteen kilometres carving through the heart of Barcelona — and Visma set the benchmark early and refused to give it back, stopping the clock in 21:47 to edge INEOS by a mere seven seconds. UAE were third at eleven, Pogacar unable to claw back the deficit. When the dust settled, Vingegaard stood first on the road and first in yellow.
It was a statement from Visma and a marker laid down for three weeks to come — and, for our purposes, a small avalanche of fantasy points for anyone shrewd (or lucky) enough to be holding their riders.
It was Chris who struck first, banking 26 points from Jonas Vingegaard, Wout van Aert, Matteo Jorgenson, Jhonatan Narvaez, Sepp Kuss. A perfect opening hand: the right riders on the right team on the right day. Early days, but somebody has to lead, and today it is Chris.
Spare a thought — no, spare nothing — for Stephen, propping up the table dead last on 0. Stage 1 rained points on every owner lucky enough to hold a Visma rider, and Stephen’s squad, dealt out by Kirk’s so-called “draft”, contains precisely zero of them. A perfect nil — not one point all day, the only owner shut out entirely. Kirk — who, let the record show, ran the entire draft — somehow emerged clutching 1 of those very Visma riders (Simon Yates) and duly cashed in. The lottery was seeded, public and provably fair, we are repeatedly assured. Stephen is, of course, welcome to a recount.
The full draw explanation — method, seeds and every squad — now lives under the “The Draft” tab, where the aggrieved may examine the evidence at leisure.
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.