Things got a little complicated this year with so many people playing, so for various reasons, we turned off the overall leaderboards. But many people have asked how their league winners compared to other league winners, so we have done some analysis. Before we get to the overall medalists, a few reminders about eligibility for the overall standings. First, you have to have at least 10 teams in your league. Leagues with fewer than 10 teams have an unfair advantage, so while some of those point totals are quite impressive, they are not factored in here. Second, you have to have a "real" league. More than one league had 10 "teams," but many of them were "dummy" teams that didn't draft in a logical fashion, so those leagues are out of consideration. Other leagues seemed to have set up their drafts based on country, which while an interesting experiment skews the results. So those leagues are out. Finally, we pulled out the classroom leagues because those often have unusual draft set-ups that could skew the results. (And please let us know if we have overlooked something in compiling these results).
With all those disclaimers out of the way...
Bronze: Olympic Dreams from Foundant 2 - 46 points
Silver: TeamPandora from Hot Curlers - 47 points
And taking home the gold... we have a TIE. A little parallelism to the real Olympics, we suppose. Both teams had the same point total and same tie-breaker country: Norway.
Gold: That's What Sochi Said from Livestock - 48 points and #WEWORK from What a **** Show - 48 points.
Congrats to all our overall medalists! Also, a special shoutout to H.A.E. from Ms. C's 8th Period who scored 49 points in a 10-team classroom league. And an extra tip of the cap to perhaps our most passionate Fantasy Olympian, Carrie, who managed That's What Sochi Said to overall victory. Carrie posted the highest point total of any team in 2012, but wasn't eligible for the overall title because she only had 9 teams in her league. She came back this year determined to win it all and she did! That's dedication.
So what was the best strategy for victory this year? Two common threads among the highest scorers: Everyone loaded up on the German lugers (the trio of Felix Loch, Natalie Geisenberger, and Tobais Wendl/Tobias Arlt yielded a remarkable 18 points) and many had Dutch speed skaters (who pulled in 23 medals in all).
As for the top of our draft board, it was hit and miss. Our top five athletes before the games were Tora Berger (NOR), Marit Bjoergen (NOR), Petter Northug (NOR), Martin Fourcade (FRA), and Tina Maze (SLV). Northug came up completely empty and Berger performed considerably below our lofty expectations. Bjoergen, Fourcade, and Maze all had strong performances, but only Bjoergen was in the top five after the Games. Other notable bad predictions were Aksel Lund Svindal, Shani Davis, and Tarjei Boe, all of whom were predicted to have 7 points and none of whom won a medal.
The top five performers were Ireen Wust (NED) (12 points, we predicted 9), Viktor Ahn (RUS) (10 points, we predicted 7), Darya Domracheva (BLR) (9 points, we predicted 7), Bjoergen (9 points, we predicted 13), and Sven Kramer (NED) (8 points, we predicted 9). Another notable surprise was Charlotte Kalla of Sweden, who scored 7 points despite not being on our original draft board.
All in all, another great Winter Olympics! Thanks to everyone for playing!