Ladies and Gentlemen Welcome to the Prizegiving ceremony.

First Up, We have the Sprinters Jersey - The Traditional Green Jersey- this is based on the highest average speed over the entire Giro duration.

This Jersey was quite a close-run contest this year, with two riders in particular in the offing... These two were the only riders to maintain an average speed of over 30kph for the duration of the challenge, but the winner, with an average of 32.0kph - a mere 0.31kph faster than his nearest rival... Our Jersey winner this year is...



@m1xm0d3 - Joshua. Congratulations on a sterling effort.


Second Prize category is not really a "Jersey" as such, and one that I've not actually mentioned beforehand, because I didn't actually want anyone to be competing for it...

There's a tradition of awarding the last person on GC in the Tour de France a "Lanterne Rouge"... from the rear light that is fitted to the final carriage in a freight train.

Now, to be fair, this isn't about "picking on" someone who either had problems with completing the course, or was ill / injured and unable to finish. So, there are a couple of criteria that have to be met for eligability for this prize. One - a minimum of 6 rides booked, and Two - rides in all three "sections" of the Tour - the sections being separated by the 2 rest days. So - with the bottom 3 riders on the distance column of the leaderboard being DNF for one reason or another, this year's Lanterne Rouge is... @canbbot




Back to the Jersey's - and this time it's the Climbers Jersey - based on the GPS logged ascent as per Strava links. This years winner clocked up an amazing 21,682 metres of ascent - that's higher than 5 of my rides this year were long...



Well done Jason - @Jakess1971.

As a slight aside, it's interesting to compare the results of the plain "ascent" column of the leaderboard with the VAM tag's results... Think of it this way, the leaderboard is predicated on "how much" where the VAM column is based on "how fast"...

So, to take Jason as an example - he was 1st on amount of ascent, but only 7th when you figure in the time taken for the climbing... this reflects that most of Jason's climbing was done on long weekend touring trips, rather than (say) at a hilly Sportive or organised group Century... It also reflects MY climbing performance far more accurately - as I came in as a slightly surprising 6th on the climbers chart, yet I climb with all the speed and agility of a fitted wardrobe. Referring to the VAM chart, I come in at a more reasonable 14th - purely due to the rolling nature of the roads around here, it's difficult to find a 50km loop that doesn't have 400m of ascent on it, and it adds up. Other people aren't blessed/cursed (delete as appropriate) with that kind of terrain, and will never feature, and some people just appear to live in the valley between a bunch of mountains, and every ride seems to require climbing over some pass or other (@lbchilds2001 springs to mind here...)

So, I'm thinking that for 2017's challenges, the KoM is going to be decided on VAM rather than pure ascent figures, but for the rest of 2016's challenge, we'll stick with the metres...

Back to the Jersey Presentations...

Once Again, I've been running an "all rounder" 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. 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. It also allows me to bring back (a version of) my all-time favourite Jersey in any Race - the Combined Jersey...

Anyhow...



Our All-Rounders competition winner is rider #303 - @cloggsy71 - a very consistent performance, 4th in the climbing, sixth on GC, and an extremely close 2nd in the sprints - very impressive to hit that kind of speed whilst still clocking up silly distances up and down lots of hills, whilst riding every stage of the tour... Pretty amazing for someone who's just on the comeback from a rather nasty broken collarbone - looks like the metal plates and screws haven't slowed him down too much - still averaged faster than he did in 2015 as well...



And so to the Big One. GC - the Yellow Jersey.

Well - it'll come as no surprise to anyone that the winner of our challenge this year is... @Jakess1971



A total of 1792.8km - a clear 519.7km ahead of his nearest rival... on 12 days riding out of the 21... it's a good job he decided to take the week off, and only ride on the weekends really, or it'd have been even more of a foregone conclusion.

And still had time to keep prodding the hamster back onto it's wheel and keeping the CycLeagues app running...

Chapeau Jason



A final "well done" has to go to all the riders that managed to complete all 21 stages of the Tour and book at least one ride per day... This year I think we had an unprecedented number of "compleaters" - 7 riders... 7 riders finished the whole loop. That's as good a performance as Cofidis, Dimension Data, Movistar and Cannondale managed, and better than FDJ could do.

But, I suppose we have to pick one outstanding ride from the 7 finishers, it has to be Clive - @cloggsy71 - finishing top of the points table, second fastest, 4th on KoM... and all with a shoulder full of shrapnel... dare I say it, that winter on Zwift must have had a bit of an effect...




And Finally - the Team Competition...

Well - to be honest, this was always only ever going to go one way, considering Jason's ride...

Team Winners for this year are Pastana



So...

That's it folks for the TdF. All that remains is to thank everyone for their participation, and to remind you to keep your eyes peeled for the next installment of the Grand Tour Challenge - LaVuelta - commencing in Balneario Laias on the 20th of August, and running until the 11th September...