Winners of the Tour de France Stage 17 Tourmalet Challenge!

Spoiler Alert! If you don’t want to find out the results for Stage 17 of the Tour de France, stop reading now and come back later!

First off, thanks to everyone who took the time to participate in this challenge — we hope you had fun!

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of our entries included both Schleck and Contador. They showed the world, and the peloton, that they are in a league of their own when the road tilts skyward.

The third choice proved to be more difficult. Interestingly, no one picked Ryder Hesjedal who ended 4th on the stage. His stock as a contender in the mountains is rising as fast as he climbs.

Finally, no one was able to nail the trifecta. 3 people came very close, and each had the same answer, so we used timestamps to separate first, second and third places.

Strava’s 3 winners:

All chose Schleck, Contador and Sanchez, or the 1st, 2nd and 5th place finishers on the day.

First Place Winner — Steve Shores

Prize — 1 Year of Strava + Garmin 500 Bundle

Second Place Winner — Dan Vigil

Prize — 1 Year of Strava + Garmin Edge 305 Bundle

Third Place Winner — Brett Lobree

Prize: 1 Year of Strava + Strava Arm Warmers (from the Strava Cycling Kit)

Congratulations to each of you! We’ll be contacting you shortly via Twitter about sending you your prizes.

Thanks again to everyone who took part. Stay tuned for more fun challenges…

Tour de France Stage 17 Tourmalet Challenge Question Posted!

Update:  The contest is now closed.  The riders have reached the start of the Tourmalet, so we won’t be taking any new tweeted entries.  We will post the contest results here on the blog later today.

Ready? Here’s the Stage 17 question…

Challenge Question: Pick the top 3 finishers for Stage 17.

Scoring: Answers will be scored based on the Tour de France green jersey competition point system (for a “high mountain” stage):

• 1st Place = 20 points
• 2nd Place = 17 points
• 3rd place = 15 points
• 4th place = 13 points
• 5th place = 12 points
• 6th place = 10 points
• with 1 point decrements all way down to 15th place being awarded 1 point.

The first place prize goes to the person with the highest total score. In the case of a tie, the person who submitted their answer first is the winner. If that doesn’t break the tie, we’ll resort to a random drawing. Second and third place prizes will be awarded to the next two highest scores, with any ties broken as described above.

Here is what you need to do to participate:

1. Send your answer to the challenge question to us via Twitter with the following conditions:

• Follow us on Twitter so that we can follow you back and receive your direct message (if you don’t, you won’t be able to DM us your answer) — http://twitter.com/stravahq
• Send your answer to us via DM (direct message) “d stravahq” and tag it “#tdfquiz”
• Make sure you send it via DM so that others can’t see your answer!

3. The Challenge will be closed to submissions at 33k from the finish on Thursday, July 22. We will announce closing of the Challenge on Twitter and our blog.

4. We’ll announce the Challenge winners on this blog.

Note: we’ll be using the timestamp, or order in which tweets are sent to us, as displayed by Twitter. In the past, there have been some perceived discrepancies in how Twitter timestamps tweets. If there is any discrepancy, we’ll just have to consider it bad luck — kind of like dropping a chain on a climb.

Tour de France Stage 17 Tourmalet Challenge Question

Thursday is Stage 17 of the Tour de France and concludes on the summit of the famous Col du Tourmalet. In honor of the Tourmalet, the challenge question is going to be harder to guess, but the prizes will be much more rewarding!

We’re going to be holding Thursday’s Challenge on our blog and/or via Twitter, so if you want to participate, you’ll need to subscribe to our blog RSS feed and follow us on Twitter. The Challenge question will be sent out tomorrow, Wednesday the 21st of July, at 1pm PDT.

The prizes for the Stage 17 Challenge are:

1st Place

1 year of Strava + Garmin Edge 500 Bundle

2nd Place

1 year of Strava + Garmin Edge 305 Bundle

3rd Place

1 year of Strava + Strava Arm Warmers (from the Strava Cycling Kit)

To reiterate, here is what you need to do to participate:

1. Watch this blog or follow us on Twitter for the announcement of the Challenge question and rules. We’ll be sending these out at 1pm PDT on Wednesday, July 21.

2. Once you have the question (and have come up with your answer), post your answer to us via Twitter.

3. The Challenge will be closed to submissions at 33k from the finish on Thursday, July 22. We will announce closing of the Challenge on Twitter and our blog.

4. We’ll announce the Challenge winners on this blog.

Keep an eye on our blog and follow us on Twitter for any updates.

Good luck and have fun!

Tour de France Stage 16 Challenge Question

Congratulations @LeGimp for being the first correct answer out of many responses.
Answer: “In 1926 Lucien Buysse won from Nicolas Frantz by 1h 22′ 25″. The tour was 3570 miles in total that year.”

Should Contador have waited for Schleck to put his chain back on?

This is a question that could divide the avid cycling world right down the middle. And this isn’t just any divide, this is one that cuts to the heart of the sport. One side will view this event with the perspecitive that racing is racing and luck often dictates certain outcomes. Schleck dropped his chain at an unfortunate moment, but the race goes on.

The other side will exclaim that there is a deeply rooted code in the top level of bicycle racing — you never attack the yellow jersey when he has a mechanical problem or mishap that prevents him from racing.

Some will side with Contador in his declaration that he didn’t see that Scheck had any sort of problem, while others will proclaim that Contador knew exactly what was going on, since it was happening right in front of him and his earpiece was certainly abuzz with the same info.

It’s incidents and decisions like this that makes this sport what it is. A rolling game of chess where an instant decision with obvious benefits may have unforseen consequences down the line.

We’d be curious to know your thoughts on this incident and make sure you vote in our poll!