Ladies and Gentlemen Welcome to the Prizegiving ceremony.

First Up, We have the Sprinters Jersey - The Green Jersey - this is based on the highest average speed over the entire Vuelta duration. Riders who fail to complete the course, either by declared illness, injury or by simply not logging their final bunch of rides are not eligeable for consideration to this category.

This Jersey was won with an average of 30.01kph - the only person to break the 30kph barrier this challenge, a very close thing between her and her riding partner at an average of 29.4kph... Our Jersey winner this year is... @MrsCentralCaliCycling



Congratulations Rosie - fantastic riding, especially considering the weather conditions and smoke you've been encountering in your area..



Second Jersey is the Blue and White Polka Dot Jersey - the "climbers jersey" - based on the GPS logged ascent as per Strava links. This years winner clocked up an amazing 18,248metres of ascent - despite saying in the third week that he was "finally getting his climbing legs back again" after a crash earlier in the year which resulted in a broken Clavicle and a missed TdF.



Well done Allan @veloman21.

and so, to the big prize...

This years winner clocked up 1,673.2km, a clear 257.4km in front of his nearest rival.

Ladies and Gentlemen - Our Red Jersey Winner this year is....



Congratulations Daniel, a damned good effort, late in the season.


Honourable mentions on the GC have to go to our second place rider, Allan, especially in light of this being a comeback after his broken clavicle (he only got the all-clear to ride a couple of days before the start of this challenge...) and a brilliant effort from our new rider @m1xm0d3 coming in a close third.


Also - In-keeping with the vuelta's own jersey competition, I've been running a "Combined Jersey" competition based on points for the three main jerseys - everyone gets points from 36 down to 1 point based on their position in the three jersey competitions. Riders that are excluded from the sprinters competition as detailed above get =36th place in that competition. The "all rounder" is the person with the highest overall points combined... It's a bit complicated, but if you check the logging spreadsheet, it makes a little more sense.

Anyhow...



Our All-Rounders competition winner is rider #311 - @Dahamac



- Unsurprising really, with a win on GC, and second in the KoM he was always likely to be well placed. Again, a honourable mention needs to be made of our new rider @m1xm0d3 - only his apparent lack of hills in his locale seems to have let him down.

And Finally - the Team Competition...

This was a close battle between three of the teams - Team Pastana, Twinkie Scoff and Team Pie. Sadly, it seems that this challenge Team Lotta Jumbo's didn't really get into the swing of things - however, despite having 2 team members away for over half the challenge each they still came very, very close to hitting the overall distance total.

However, and despite my "enforced absence" for the majority of the challenge, along with other team members suffering crashes and trips to the Hospital ER, it gives me some measure of pleasure to announce that the winning team for this years Vuelta Challenge is




So...

That's it folks for the riding sections of this year's Grand Tour Challenges... All that remains is to thank everyone for their participation, and to hope that 2016's challenges are a far more uneventful and injury free endeavour than this year has been.



As to the "Graham Watson" prize for the Vuelta... I'm currently trying to find a victim willing volunteer to provide an independent judge for the images amongst my fellow moderators on a photography website. Hopefully I'll twist someones arm enough soon, and I'll add results ASAP.