Category: ManGame (Tour de France 2007, ProTour)

Winning the Tour de France as a French rider with a French team? We're too young for such a thing to happen, ain't we? Well, sort of. But not all of us.. Almost eight years back from now, the ManGame held it's first ever Tour de France. Robbie McEwen would take out six stages (including the first four road stages). Alessandro Petacchi went to win two - with the prestigious victory on Champs-Élysées. Thomas Dekker dominated the first week with three victories to finish 9th in the final GC.. so far, so good.

Christophe Moreau (Bouygues Telecom)? Would take the maillot jaune in the final timetrial on the penultimate day! While Alexandre Vinokourov (T-Mobile) looked set to take the overall victory, the Kazakh struggled in the final mountain stage to lose a minute on Moreau and some other favorites. Entering the final timetrial with a 17 seconds advantage on Moreau, our well beloved Vino would then indeed gave away yellow:

Check 1: Moreau has 9 seconds on Vinokourov. Vino still has Yellow by 8 seconds.
Check 2: Moreau has 18 seconds on Vinokourov. Moreau now has yellow by 1 second.
Finish: Moreau has 23 seconds on Vinokourov. Moreau will be in yellow on the Champs Elysses - by 6 seconds.

A thrilling first Tour in the ManGame. Levi Leipheimer (Team Milram) completed the podium and all fans of French cycling would probably do bad things to make such a thing happening in real life, won't you?

Don't you guys have nothing better to do than talking about this? - dienblad (Sky Doping/Hate Thread)

fjhoekie wins first free PCM15 copy

The first of three PCM15 Contests run by PCMDaily goes to fjhoekie, who took out the Tour's Round #1 "One of Four Betting" contest. As six members went for a tie in the original score, the winner was then found through a bonus round - which fjhoekie narrowly took ahead of Strydz. You still have the chance to join the second round.

In the third contest to win a free copy, we see 'DiLego Superstars' leading ahead of cio93's 'Team Puma - SAP'. Lord di Lego's team is Froome, Valverde, Rodriguez, Meintjes, Sagan, Gallopin, Elmiger, Haas, Degenkolb. Rorosaur's Riders (about 400pts off DiLego, currently sitting on 6th place) is the only other team in the Top-10, that has Froome in it.

Forum Post Ratings system added

The biggest news this week was certainly the addition of a rating system for individual posts in the forum. In case anyone has missed it, check the news section for the article. Please note, that "these ratings will be trialled on the site, to see how they go - but there's plenty of potential for the system to be expanded in future."

ZABELD! SO MUCH YES! - SSJ2Luigi

One big dislike to this system. - Avin Wargunnson

Additions to the download section

One of the site's biggest downloads has seen an update this week: Jacky Durands PCM Sponsorkits 2015 Version 2.0 is now available, fixing some known bugs from his previous version, as well as updating the Tour de France sponsorkit and other races' mountain/sprint signs.

The RSM forum (biggest German PCM community) came up with RSM-news DB 2015 Version 0.4, where you can choose from 103 teams (12 from the USA) and 308 races.

Games, games, games!

Non-cycling (forum) games used to go strong from time to time and so did this one in the past few years: the Fantasy NFL: Season 2015 has been launched by jseadog1 (who hasn't been posting in his Running journal this week though)! If you're interested in American Football and enjoy those Fantasy games, go check the thread and find all informations you need to join the PCMDaily community there. Previous winners of this game, that has been run since 2010: valverde321, DJP19, jseadog1, baseballover312 and defending champion madzdaman.

Still some spots open (15, to be precisive).

New PCM.daily Initiave underway

Do you remember... when Geraint Thomas became a world class climber?

With the last week's biggest news (site updates, Le Tour) becoming usual business for most of us, it's about time to announce a new initiative, that will be kicked off at some point this week: the news section will see a new addition, in which we will look back at some of our community's greatest, smallest, best, funniest (and so on) moments!

This Remember when... section will feature short articles on things such as PCM Stories, ManGame highlights, "forgotten" members, famous stagemakers and stuff like that. We won't not just present former PCMDaily Award winners (like me), but also less known things, that some of you might still remember.

Weekly Tour

Porte-Thomas-Froome and a certain thread comes alive. 2agan. Greipel makes it three. Nibali won't win. Schweinsteiger joins ManUtd.

The thing about Sky that gets me is mostly Brailsford - Movistar

That's Sir Brailsford to you! - Eden95

According to spectators it was Heineken and not urine - deek12345

Same difference - SlickMongoose

Thread of the Week

Easy choice: Sky Doping/Hate Thread. As soon as those Sky guys crushed the competition on the first summit finish, we would see this annual discussion heating up once again. An enjoyable place to visit.

The site has been undergoing a number of upgrades recently and on top of that, we are also now adding a completely new feature to the site - and it is one that has been much requested over the years. We have now installed the Ajax Forum Post Ratings system, which allows users to rate individual posts. There are 5 rating options, and these are clickable on the bottom right of each post.

Like
Dislike
Thanks
Nice idea
Zabel'd

Posts that receive a rating then show this in the bottom left of the post - and it does say who the rating came from!

For now these ratings will be trialled on the site, to see how they go - but there's plenty of potential for the system to be expanded in future.

Also, a general complaint to the Belgians here: GODDAMNIT FIX YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE - Jesleyh (Café Pedro)

PCM15 Contests Update

Our contests to win three free copies of PCM15 are well underway and it's time for an update: the first (of two) One of Four games sees four leaders right now - Eposk, fjhoekie, lakebeach and sosososik had four bets spot on and may all free up some space on their hard drive already.

The Velogames contest is currently led by Rjc_43 (Good Energy), who's collected 3177 points with a team of Valverde, Kwiatkowski, Rodriguez, Dan Martin, Cavendish, Gallopin, Thomas, Dumoulin and Sagan. One may question if he will hold on to his (narrow) lead with that team.

Site (still) undergoing updates

As most of you should have noticed, AaB-ern is currently upgrading the system (PHP-Fusion) behind PCMDaily. Step by step, our master brain will update stuff, that hasn't been updated for years. So you will still notice some changes here and there, as well as some missing features (speaking of PCM$). Huge credit to AaB-ern for taking the time to work his way through this stuff though.

CrueTrue himself got it spot on: "Years of neglect by me now being fixed by AaB-ern".

EPIC Sagan

Peter Sagan is not only enjoying quite a strong (real) TdF, he's also pretty epic in EPIC. After winning Paris - Roubaix, he added another strong result by finishing 4th in the Amstel Gold Race this week. Michał Kwiatkowski is only enjoying an epic EPIC though, as he (opposing to his real TdF) delivered big time and took out the AGR with a strong solo ride over the final 10-15km, beating Gilbert and Uran by half a minute eventually.

Weekly Tour

Tony Martin going from hell to heaven - and back to hell - in three days.. Froome leading, Nibali struggling. Pretty epic racing in the first few days.

Rest days are awful. I don't know what to do with myself. (cactus-jack)

ManGame Madness

A rather quiet week for the 2015 season's standards, but Sam Bewley (Becherovka) and Dan Holloway (Red Bull) wouldn't agree with that. Bewley took out the cobbled East Midlands Cicle Classic ahead of Fabian Cancellara, while Holloway sprinted to an impressive victory in the challenging flat Lisbon Classic. Bewley's early season in numbers: leading the ProTour with 1143 points - with Boasson Hagen (588) as second in the rankings!

In the Continental Tour, Luis Leon Sanchez (Evonik) rode to an overall victory in the Tour of Ukraine, while Karcher took out the Differdange Duo. Two cobbled classics on the menu - two surprising winners: Maxime Daniel winning Gent - Wevelgem, Stijn Joseph beating the division's best cobbler Summerhill in Dwaars Door Vlaanderen.

Thread of the Week

The Tour de France stage's threads would deserve it, but I don't care. While not being the most active thread in the past few weeks/months - not even days - I think our Café Pedro 10: Mostly Harmless is a place to visit right now. Go and see who's going to holidays now, who's coming back and who's thinking back at (and reading) old stories from our story sections.

They have almost lost me as customer, to gain me back with me hoping for a change and then this? - Avin Wargunnson (on the newest patch for PCM15)

Patch time

Speaking of patches, we saw three major downloads floating in this week: let's begin with Cyanide's latest update on PCM15. Patch 1.2.0.0 is the first major patch for the game and brought significant changes in several areas of PCM15. We got used to the fact, that there's some controversial content in there, didn't we?

Of course we do have to remember, that our PCMDaily DB-team came up with the first Expansion Pack 2015 v0.8! It's compatible with Cyanide's latest patch (needs to be installed before) and will definitely make for more fun in this early state of the game.

Jacky Durand once again released his Sponsorkit, that will upgrade the realism of PCM for at least another year. Go check the content and support his work.

Contest to win a free copy of PCM15

PCMDaily is giving away three free copies of PCM15 and you guys will have to chance to grab your very own copy through a nice little contest. Win PCM15 during the Tour de France and take part at either the Velogames TDF or try your luck with our "One of Four" Betting Game. The contest should add some thrill to the upcoming weeks.

Places to go..

We had a busy week with new PCM15 threads in several categories, with also older engines still producing interesting stuff to read:

Wilco Kelderman-The Next Climbing Star (by Taaramae1) is a new story (made for Jesleyh) worth to follow. Same goes for Daniel Martin's Tour Diary by Dippofix or Be A Pro.. in the 1980's by Zuff.

2015 Real jerseys should be the place to watch for new kits and we did see a few more stagemakers opening their 2015 threads.. The Two of Us | Chapter 2 is one of a few quality pieces to keep the PCM14 story section alive.

ManGame Madness

The ProTour's February concluded with the first monument of the year: after Simone Ponzi (Good Energy) rode to an impressive victory in the hilly Classique du Grand-Duché in Luxembourg, Sam Bewley (Becherovka) sprinted to a stunning win at Milan - San Remo. A nice report from roturn, with short videos as an addition to the usual business.. the ITT-event Chrono des Herbiers kicked off March with a bang, as Marlen Zmorka (Metinvest) came home with a surprising victory with the two biggest guns (Coppel and Phinney) totally failing.

Another great report for Strade Bianche from Oleg Tinkov saw another dream from Jesleyh coming true, as Wilco Kelderman (Puma) took line honours. Maxime Monfort (Gisborne GP), Trent Lowe (Tour of the Middle East), Sebastian Langeveld (Geraardsbergen - Bosberg) and Jukka Vastaranta (GP Sallanches) were the other winners this week.

Weekly Tour

"As I've said many times, it's not fair that he [Alberto Contador] has to compete against fresh riders who are only doing the Tour de France" - Oleg Tinkoff

"To illustrate [Rohan] Dennis's sick ITT. 55.446 is the fastest average ever in a TdF TT. He beat Boardman's average of 55.27 in 1994, and that was only 7.2 km." - Wilier

Thread of the Week

Would probably be too easy to pick the Tour de France related stuff here, so I went for a significally "smaller", but (maybe) not less interesting thread: Road to the Top [Training Journal] by jseadog1 is a blog that should make him staying motivated to go running. Go and support one of our members to stay fit!