The Giro d'Italia starts tomorrow and thanks to roturn, a number of bets are now available to bid on, from who will win the GC to who will best placed ignoring the standout favourites Quintana and Rodriguez. Bets are available for the Points and KoM jerseys too, as well as 6 head to head GC choices and of course, one for the opening Team Time Trial. Orica-Greenedge are the clear favourites, but take a gamble elsewhere and there could be plenty to gain!

Stay tuned for more bets to follow throughout the race.

As some of you will have noticed yesterday, the first official gameplay screenshot for Pro Cycling Manager 2014 has been released. The cyclists look much the same as ever, but continuing their theme are emphasising the British aspect of this year's Tour de France, Cyanide have chosen a view of London - featuring Tower Bridge, the London Eye and Big Ben as new isolated buildings.

And today the latest devblog has been released, focusing on the console Tour de France 2014 game. The blog talks about the 'teamcom interface', which will give players more control over what the rest of the team is doing. Some work in progress screenshots can be seen in our screenshots section.

Changes to tempo management and the feeding system have also been announced.

Well it has certainly been a busy week on PCM.daily, with the news that CrueTrue is stepping down and the release of a stats updated for the PCM.daily 2014 DB. And that is not all that has been going on!

Administrator Applications Wanted!

With the Administrative changes that are currently happening, we are now looking to hire some new admins for the site.

We are looking for people who can bring new ideas and energy to the site. Whether you want to be involved writing the Weekly News, the Fantasy Betting any other existing activities, or to be involved with new initiatives, then this could be the ideal time to apply.

If interested, send an application with some info about yourself, experience in other communities, what you see yourself doing at PCM.daily etc. in a PM to me, SportingNonsense.

It's not about post count or who had been here the longest, but the quality of the application and what you can contribute to the site that counts!

PCM 2014: Cover, Release Date and Description

A look on Amazon shows that the game cover for Pro Cycling Manager 2014 has been revealed, you can see it here. It features the Champs Elysees, through the eyes of a cyclist, but perhaps most notable is the presence of Euskaltel and Vacansoleil riders!

According to Amazon.co.uk the game will be released on June 20th, although it seems France will get it on June 19th. These dates are still liable to change though, and have not been officially confirmed. The Amazon pages also provide a description of the game, which don't really provide any new information from that which was given in oru earlier interview. I am sure we are all look forward to playing 'in "GMT"' though!

Tour de France 2014: PS4 and Career Mode

The Amazon listings also seem to confirm speculation that there will be a Playstation 4 version of the console game, alongside PS3 and Xbox 360 editions.

There also seems to be the addition of a career mode to the game, which I don't think has been included before. This is an Andy Schleck sort of career where you only ride the Tour de France, again and again, but the ability to sign new riders for your team will be a nice addition!

Stats Update Update

There have been 635 downloads of the stats update for our 2014 DB so far, but I am afraid you are going to have to download it again! Some equipment information was missing from the cdb, but this has now been fixed.

Stories. Stories everywhere!

There has been plenty of activity recently in the Stories and Story Games forums, and this is discussed in the latest edition of the Writer's Block magazine, along with an interview with Ian Butler, who started the magazine last December.

There is also still time to vote for the April Story of the Month with a record 10 stories being nominated for the main award, as well as 3 for the new story award.

Velogames Fantasy Giro

The Giro d'Italia starts next weekend and as usual, a PCM.daily league can be found on the Velogames website. To join in the fantasy cycling game, pick your team and use the '01001509' code to join our league. See the thread for more information.

Strava

And finally, the eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed the addition of a link to Strava below the banner. If you have Strava or another GPS ride recording app/device, you can upload your rides to Strava and join the PCM.daily team there to compare / show off your rides with other members of the website! You'll need to ride in excess of 400km if you want to reach the top of our weekly distance leaderboard though! You can also discuss your cycling adventures in the Your cycling thread.

With the classics season over it is time to finally release the Official PCM.daily DB stats update. I and Jesleyh have been hard at work updating stats for the riders across all divisions. No surprise, the biggest changes will be seen on the cobbled and puncheur riders whose main part of season is now over. From Tour Down Under through Paris-Nice and Tirreno and the biggest classics of Paris Roubaix and Liege Bastogne Liege the stats have been revised accordingly.

A few promising talents have been added or upgraded so check out the free agent market and you could scoop yourself a potential future Phillipe Gilbert in Tiesj Benoot or the next French hope in Thomas Boudat!

If you disagree with some stats or just want to discuss them, you can do so in the PCM.daily DB Stats discussion, which can be found here.

And most importantly, you can download the update from here.

Update: Those who downloaded before, are advised to re-download the cdb. from the new link since the first uploaded file was slightly outdated.

Everything has to come to an end eventually. The same goes for my tenure here at PCM.daily. And in my case, ‘eventually’ is just around the corner.

I’d like to take this opportunity to announce that I will be stepping down as an admin per 1st of June. This also means that a new owner will be taking over the leadership of the site from this date.

His name is Dale – registered as DW48 here – he’s from USA, works as a computer programmer, is a softball enthusiast and already runs several other communities – as of today, this includes PCM.daily.

In order to support Dale as well as possible, SportingNonsense will be taking over the role as the day to day leader of PCM.daily.

I’d also like to say that it’s been an absolute pleasure to be among you guys, making this great community together. I can honestly say that what we’ve done stands among my proudest moments in life.

I pressed the launch button from a hotel room in New York back in 2006, skipping a trip to the Empire State Building. Back then you could barely find any information about Pro Cycling Manager in English – we’ve come an extremely long way since…

News is just a minor part in all this, though. I’m way more proud of the community we’ve established together. So many nationalities, so many different age groups, yet still somehow keeping a high level of debate while also allowing the banter and fun that’s essential to any community. This is what I rate highest personally, and I’d like to thank every one of you for making this possible.

Needless to say, I love this community, I love this site. It’s been my baby for so many years, and letting it go is an extremely difficult decision. However, it is also the right decision.

I’ve come to a point where PCM.daily feels like more than a hobby. I don’t always visit PCM.daily, because I want to, but because I have to. And the days where I don’t log-on, the guilt feeling comes creeping. That’s a pretty unfortunate way to feel about something that’s supposed to be a hobby.

This has a lot to do with the fact that I now work more than full time – and always during the big cycling events. Ultimately, though, time is a matter of priorities. And it's evident I haven't prioritized PCM.daily as high as I have previously.

With Dale and SportingNonsense in charge, I’m confident that the site will be in better hands and continue to progress as the world’s leading Pro Cycling Manager resource. And I certainly hope that all of you will continue to contribute and be as supportive as you’ve been in all my years at this site.

Lastly, I’d like to add that we will be considering new additions to the crew. More info about this is to be announced later this week.

Very lastly, thank you for everything. Please don’t say ‘goodbye’, as I will stay here as a regular member as long as Thomas Dekker hasn’t won the Tour de France in the ManGame.