Over the past month, Cycling Manager Italy has been running the World Championship in PCM09. In the main event, the Road Race, Tremades from Poland managed to take the victory ahead of Frensh_Revolution and CampioneRegionale. Generally speaking, not many of the active PCM.daily members took part in the Road Race event.

There were plenty of PCM.daily action in the track part of the World Championship, though. Both SportingNonsense and I reached the keirin final which ended with an Italian gold medal to ITA_alste, silver to me and bronze to Gheto_1. SportingNonsense took 6th.
SportingNonsense also made his way to the final in the elimination along with other PCM.daily regulars such as Untal, OzzyPL and Jonathan. In an extreme close final elimination, Armstrong_POR took the gold medal ahead of Ghosty_92 and Stinoo. SportingNonsense finished 11th.
In the Points Race, Pole Adams55 became the World Champion, while Ghosty_92 took the Scratch World Championship title. Lastly, gheto_1 won the 200 m time trial title.

In the end, Italy won the Track Medals Ranking, having won 1 gold and 2 silver medals, while Belgium won the most medals (5), 1 gold, 1 silver and 3 bronze. Germany came in third thanks to Ghosty_92's gold medal in scratch and silver medal in elimination.

Amazon.fr have just sent a bunch of "Pre-Order now!" e-mails to customers for Pro Cycling Manager 2010, the date they mention is June 17th 2010 - Based on previous years, this is about right.

Play.com in the UK list the 25th June for their CD version - Whereas those who want the CD version, should probably order from amazon.co.uk where the CD version is £17.99 - cheaper than the download version (Thanks to Crommy for the amazon tip)

Game.es list the 24th June

A fair few dates being put around by retailers, all of them seem about right, however for the final date we'll wait for Focus to tell all.

Seen different release dates, or good prices in your area? - Please put in the comments section so we can point it out!

Update, 12:12: If you prefer looking at new, shiny PCM10-screenshots, we added a couple of new ones today. We also added the Scandinavian cover a while back. /CT

Over the past few days, a number of photos have been added to our Cycling Photos album, which are well worth a look!

Jape and Jonathan have both contributed photos from the Prologue to this year's Giro d'Italia in Amsterdam - including photos of stage winner Bradley Wiggins, plus the likes of Daniano Cunego, Marco Pinotti, Cameron Meyer, Cadel Evans, Richie Porte and many more. Jape has also uploaded some photos from Stage 1 to Utrecht, with photos from throughout the stage - from the feedzone to the finish, where Tyler Farrar took the stage. And if you have not seen them already, we have some photos from JMURB, taken at the Vuelta al Pais Vasco - including the top riders battling on one of the races many climbs, and photos of Samuel Sanchez celebrating his stage win in the race.

If you have any photos taken from spectating at bike races, then please do upload them to our folder - they are always great to look at.

If there's one thing that is consistent with the monthly Fantasy Cycling score updates, it is that each month, I tell you that it has been the most important month so far in the game - and April was no exception. The Ardennes and Cobbled Monuments were important, but so were Pais Vasco and Romandie - plus the various other races in the month, all counting towards the game.

Accumulating a massive 1147 points, Alejandro Valverde was the top rider in the month. Great news for the 2 teams who have him, not so great for the other 96. Next we had Phillipe Gilbert with 911 points, with Cancellara (830), Rodriguez (625) and Vinokourov (581) completing the Top 5, and Evans, Horner, Kolobnev, Boonen and Hesjedal all in the Top 10. The order of Valverde, Gilbert, Cancellara also transfers over to the overall rider standings. Greipel at last has lost his early lead, falling to 5th - now behind Boonen aswell. Rodriguez, Freire, Contador, LL Sanchez and Evans filling the rest of the overall Top 10.

April's most efficient rider though, highlights the fact that the big races are not everything. Besides 1 HC classic, Angel Vicioso raced solely in .1 races, and the 425 points he achieved came at a cheap price of 190,000 for the few teams owning him. Chris Horner comes in a close 2nd, but theres a notable gap to the rest. 3 Spaniards complete the Top 5: Valverde, Intxausti and Marcos Garcia. Overall though, Keukeleire and Modolo remain the Top 2, but Romandie pushes Sagan up to 3rd. The rest of the Top 10 are Horner, Eisel, Vanmarcke, Dumoulin, Vicioso, Valverde and Boeckmans.

Now, onto the bit that really matters - your teams. And we have one stand out team who scored a lot more than anyone else, and remarkably, they are a team who has not made any transfers. Gilbert, Cancellara, Hesjedal and Hammond led the scoring for the Sparta team, who scored 3950 points in April! A distant 2nd best are Fabulously Subconscious, with 3216, while Ukrainian Beauties also broke the 3000 barrier with 3083, with a gap of nearly 300 to EDTeam (2789) and then Team Georgetown p/b John B (2713), Sand Castles Cycling (2664) and the leaders going into the month LDF - Velingnews.com (2553). April is therefore the 2nd month where Fabulously Subconscious were the 2nd best team, but the positive is that they now take the overall lead - with a 500 point advantage. Sparta have lept up 26 placed to 2nd, while LDF - Velingnews.com slip to 3rd. Ukrainian Beauties clibm 11 spots to 4th, while it is very interesting to see that the 2 best managers from last year's Fantasy TDF game are next - Eoin's EDTeam is up 5 to 5th, while jack888's Huffy Test Team fall 2 places to 6th. Team Georgetown p/b John B have already been mentioned as one of the month's top scorers, and this has also made them the month's top climbers - a 41 place jump from 71st to 30th.

The new overall Top 10 are:

To see the full standings for teams, riders and efficency, go to the April scores thread. The full overall team rankings are also in the extended version of this news article.

The PCM Daily track league has come to its conclusion today with until finally taking the victory after SportingNonsense (SN) lead for the majority of the league.

It was up in the air as we entered the final round, for the full results list, and information about stat increases please read more.