Yes, it is that time of year again. The winter is behind us. Time to get on the road again for season 4 (!!!!) of the Talossan Cycling Association Tour. As usual we have 3 legs ahead of us. All Talossans are invited to submit their teams to participate in 9871 kilometers of cycling across 6 countries (including a stage that starts less than 5000 meters away from the Talossan border) over the course of 9 weeks.
We start with the first leg, which will take us from Albania to Italy.
Team registrations are now open. Here team leaders can find instructions on how to register their team.
Deadline
The deadline for entries to be submitted is 13:15 CEST (Cézembre Summer Time) / 06:15 (AM) TDT (Talossan Daylight Time) on Friday May 9th, 2025. (So best get your team in next thursday at the latest)
How to register
Step 1: Create a Velogames account
If you already have a Velogames account you can proceed with step 2.
You can create a Velogames account by going to velogames.com -> log in -> click here to register
Step 2: Register your team
While logged in to Velogames, go to the following page: https://www.velogames.com/italy/2025/entryform.php
Here you can submit your team. After submitting your team you can still make changes to your team up until the deadline! On your team page, which you can find by clicking visit team, you can also change your team name and jersey.
Step 3: Join the Talossan Cycling Association Tour
After you set up your team you can go to your team page (visit team) and under team management there should be a button called join league. There you can join the Talossan Cycling Association Tour by entering the following league code: 639289433
(You can access league scores and/or view who's signed up here: https://www.velogames.com/italy/2025/leaguescores.php?league=639289433)
Team information
Each team needs to consist of 9 riders, with a combined total cost of up to 100 credits. These need to include 2 all rounders, 2 climbers, 1 sprinter, 3 unclassified riders, and 1 wildcard (which can be any category).
Generally, the credits assigned to the riders are pretty close to the consensus expection of how these riders will perform. This means it is possible to do well without much research, though of course if you do want to research your team there are many resources online, such as ProCyclingStats, various preview sites, bookmakers, and the youtube channel Ow Do Cycling. It is possible to use less than 100 credits, but this is usually not advisable.
A full list of participating riders, categories and credits can be found here (https://www.velogames.com/italy/2025/riders.php). These should be reasonably final, but should any of your picks drop out before the deadline without you noticing, Velogames will autoreplace them.
The rules for the competition can be found here (https://www.velogames.com/italy/2025/rules.php). Note that we are only focused on the classic competition: 1 team that stays the same throughout the race.
The scoring system can be found here (https://www.velogames.com/italy/2025/scores.php). Points are assigned daily for stage results, intermediate sprints, categorised summits, participating in breakaways, daily classification standings, and team assist points; and furthermore, a sizable chunk of points will be assigned based on the final classifications.
Registering your team only costs maybe 10 minutes.
Of course if you want to do research it might take a bit longer, but past results have shown that while some pro-cycling knowledge may give you some advantage you can still absolutely get lucky by selecting a 100c team at random, because the credits tend to be very well calibrated, so no reason to not just have a go even if you dont follow cycling at allOf course
@Sir Lüc Lüc and I will be here to do commentary on the race and discuss the results
Also hopefully centraseira episode we recorded yesterday will soon be released, where we discuss some of the potential picks and tried to guess how many credits they would be worth.
Some more information about the first leg:
https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/giro-d-italia/2025
https://www.giroditalia.it/en/the-route/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Giro_d%27Italia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD8xMjNbwio
I somehow missed the announcement but Team Dead Last is in!
LET'S GOOOO !!!!
(https://media1.giphy.com/media/VI2namgmZjalWLGe1T/giphy.gif)
My team is set! Let's get cycling! Els Talossaes Rexhitais are ready as they'll ever be!
-Txec R
Kinetic is returning to TCAT!
Team Cjovani is back!
The Velociposse has returned.
Oh yeah! Let the good times roll!
Esqipă Velocostă makes their debut!
Welcome all returning and new directeurs sportifs! Pretty exciting to see us hit double digits again.
Free tip/reminder: don't pick an unclassed as your wildcard (= don't go with 4 unclassed riders) because they score far less per each credit you spend.
12 teams already with 24 hours left! We're so close to getting 14, which would the biggest tcat turnout so far. Perhaps if Els Gagnheirs, Els Averatxheirs or the Manilows returned to action we could actually get there, hint hint ;)
@Baron Alexandreu Davinescu @Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP @Munditenens Tresplet