Analytics Blog | Fantasy UK Cycling

Another analytics blog... But this time, I'm looking at the Fantasy UK Cycling competition. This competition is for UK Domestic Races and is run by Loughborough Performance.

To be honest, I did my team by vibes and didn't think too much analytically. However, I did look at basic strategies. You have 18 stars to spend on three men and three women, with the highest performers from 2023 costing five stars and the cheapest costing one star.

In the Men's, there were 23 riders, five-star riders, 32 four-stars, 59 three-stars, 70 two-stars and 90 one-star riders. Looking at Saint Piran, eight riders cost five stars, five riders four stars (excluding Huw Buck-Jones on the development team), with Bradley Symonds being the cheapest (3 stars).

The Women have ten riders, five-star riders, four on Das-Hutchinson-BrotherUK and three on ProNoctis. 21 riders are four stars, 60 three stars, 46 two stars and 93 one-star riders.

For me, I decided that the best strategy was to spend your big money on your men's team. The 11th best rider in the Women's costs four stars compared to the best 4-star rider in the Men's, in theory, being the 24th best rider.

I went with the strategy of spending a minimum of 14 stars in the Men's and four stars in the Women's. The question is, do you have three Saint Piran riders? I decided against that strategy, but I still selected two of them. Those two riders were Alex Richardson and Rowan Baker. The third rider in the Men's is Will Truelove (Thriva-SRCT). My other Saint Piran option was Sam Culverwell.

On the Women's side, the juniors have the best chance to overperform their value. Lucy Glover (Shibden Hope Tech Apex) won in Dudley last year, 5th at Otley, and is now full-time cycling (great article on BritishConti).

Esther Wong (Lucy's teammate) had a great CX season and is another junior. She won a junior race last year as a 1st-year junior, so she could make a step up this year. It is a gamble, but it is a high-ceiling one.

The final rider on my team is Lily Brindle (Brother UK OnForm) - another high-ceiling, low-floor pick. She did well in the Junior Tour of Assen last year, so hopefully some valuable crit points.

One rider I was looking for was Elena Day (Loughborough Lightning), but she wasn't available for selection (teams had to submit their riders for the season). She had an amazing CX season and probably will jump straight into contention on the road.

Other Teams and General Strategies...

Overall Pricing Strategies…

There are a lot of different pricing strategies. You can find a team where everyone costs three stars, have a team of three riders costing five stars and three riders costing one star or anywhere in between.

The most extreme strategies included myself, Swains Puncheur, npc centrale’, Locke 4 the win and Chafing the Dream, who all went for a 5-5-4 strategy, leaving only four stars for the other three riders. What is interesting about the other teams is that they have heavily focused on the women’s teams. My team (CyclingChaos did the complete opposite). 

Six teams didn’t spend their whole budget, which is bold. Those teams being: WoldTop (13), Misfits Finest (16), R Willy's Race Team (16), Lethal drizzle (17), Philling up the podium (17) and Velo739 (17).  

Gender Price Strategies…

With 18 stars to spend across two genders, it would be interesting to see how people split their pricing strategies… It turns out that I am the boldest, with a 14-4 split.

Most teams are within the base rates of going 50/50, ranging between -2 and +4 in favour of Men (36 of the 48 teams). The most popular choice is +2 in favour of the men.

While, there is a 5-13 split favouring the women’s (team name is HRT). Their team is Lucy Lee (Das-Hutchinson-BrotherUK), Cat Ferguson (Shibden Hope Tech Apex), Beth Morrow (Alba Development), along with Matthew Lord (Richardson-Trek-Das), Joshua Knowles (Taap-Kalas) and Adam Charleston (PB Performance).

The Most Selected and the Meta Team Selection…

Saint Piran dominate the Men’s… with their riders selected 32 times - the next highest being Richardson-Trek-Das with 11 selections. Five times did someone opt to select Saint Piran twice (Myself, Chronic Fatigue, Get ya Cipo out, Ray’s Swinners and Ontop). If you include their dev team, then there are another four teams (with Insert team name here…, Lethal drizzle, SN Vitae HUUB p/b Bim Bam Coaching and The Chosen Ones) taking a rider from the main and dev team.

Ontop took it to the next level with their men being only Saint Piran riders (Sam Culverwell for 5 stars, Rowan Baker for 5 stars and Dylan Westley in their dev team for 3 stars)!

The only other teams were two riders were taken from the same team were: PB Performance (Wirral racing), Taap-Kalas (H Green’s jongens), Thriva SRCT (Team Always Chasing) and Wold Top The Edge-Pactimo (WoldTop - I think there might be a tad bias towards the team).

In the Women’s teams, we have a more a more diverse selection with Das-Hutchinson-BrotherUK having 22 selections, Loughborough Lightning having 20, Shibden Hope Tech Apex with 20 and Alba Development with 16. Perhaps the bigger surprise is the lack of ProNoctis-200 Degrees-Hargreaves Contracting riders (only 13).

Three teams were selected twice in the league: Loughborough Lightning (AJ’s guys and gals, Ban Darnes & The Degreaser Enemas and UK Goats), Shibden Hope Tech Apex (myself, Ontop and The Chosen Ones), Das-Hutchinson-BrotherUK (Six shlongs), ProNoctis-200 Degrees-Hargreaves Contracting (The New Sherrifs), Tofauti Everyone Active (Misfits Finest).

Looking at the riders, we have our Meta Team… In other words, the team made out of riders who got selected most and within budget. It is actually a team that costs only 17 stars.*

Men’s Rider 1: James McKay (Saint Piran, 5 stars) selected 9 times

Men’s Rider 2: Matthew Lord (Richardson-Trek-Das, 3 stars) selected 8 times

Men’s Rider 3: Dom Jackson (ForanCC, 1 star) selected 5 times.

Women’s Rider 1: Beth Morrow (Alba Development, 3 stars) selected 14 times

Women’s Rider 2: Lucy Glover (Shibden Hope Tech Apex, 2 stars) selected 11 times

Women’s Rider 3: Lucy Harris (Loughborough Lightning, 3 stars) selected 6 times.

*Robyn Clay and Rowan Baker couldn’t be afforded due to budget.

The other most popular riders are:

Leverage Plays:

Getting leverage in fantasy games is key, but for the most part aligning with the consensus is the smart decision. The lowest leverage score someone could have gotten is 53 with the team above (the count of all rider selections), with Brexit Britain coming close with a score of 46. The team going full meta with their women’s selection and also selected Matthew Lord in the Men’s. Their choices of James Hartley (CyclingSheffield) and Dylan Westley (Saint Piran Dev) weren’t exactly non-meta either. Hartley was the 3rd most selected rider who was priced as a 4 star and Westley was tied second.

H Green’s Jongens has the most leverage (along with Hesket x), H Green’s Jorgens has 5 riders with complete leverage (Sebastian Garry of Huub BBC, Oliver Hucks (Taap-Kalas), Cameron McLaren (Taap-Kalas), Bee Townsend (Nouvelles Cycling x Prendas), Alice Butcher (Wolfox x Pedal Mafia CAMS) and Sammie Stuart (Das-Handsling). Hesket x has 4 riders with complete leverage (including Jordan Giles of Richardsons-Trek-Das who won over the weekend, along with Jessica Finney of Doltcini-O’Shea, Alice Lethbridge of Loughborough Lightning and Amy Drysdale of Team Boompods). Their riders of Ollie Boarer (Tofauti-Everyone Active) has a leverage score of 2 and Jamie Withcer (Bmth Cycleworks VitecFire Ford CE) has a leverage score of 3.

I’m comfortably in the higher echelon (ranked 14th with a score of 28) which is where I hoped to be. I knew Lucy Glover would likely be seen as undervalued and was a must have pick (as mentioned above, she is the #2 most popular pick with 11 teams out of 42). When looking at Saint Piran riders, I didn’t select the meta pick (in James McKay), but I did select their 2nd and 3rd most popular riders (Rowan Baker and Alexander Richardson). The other three, I was expecting to have high leverage. Will Truelove (Thriva SRCT) was selected three times, while Esther Wong (Shibden Hope Tech Apex) selected two times and I am the unique selector of Lily Brindle (BrotherUK OnForm). Esther Wong being selected by Ontop, who has gone for a very similar tactic to me. Luckily, Ontop went for Sam Culverwell instead of Alexander Richardson) and Evie Smith instead of Lucy Glover.

If anyone wants me to look at their team in more detail, let me know.