On July 7th, almost one year after Floyd Landis succeeded Lance Armstrong atop the podium on the Champs-Élysées, the cycling world will turn once again towards the most exciting race of them all – Tour de France. This will be the 94th edition of this Grand Tour that was started back in 1903. Now let’s take a look of how it may play out.
This year, the Tour departs from London and then gets onto the old continent to follow a clock-wise circle around the France. The French will be cheering the most on July 14th, which is Bastille Day, and brings the first mountain stage of the Tour, in the Alps.
With the Pyrenees appearing to be the tougher mountains this year, and coming in the 3rd week, they should be the decisive factor for the GC riders. Also, the time trials will make an impact, especially coming so late in the race – stage 13 and stage 19. Sprinters will also have their say because the course seems to give them lots of opportunities, but at the Tour you never know, there might be attacks on the flattest roads of them all.
As far as this year’s favorites go, the biggest favorite, at least according to the media, is Kazakh Alexandre Vinokourov. And he does have good chances of winning especially considering his Astana team’s super-domestiques Paolo Savoldelli and Andreas Kloden.
Other riders with a good chance to win the Grand Boucle include still young but already accomplished Alejandro Valverde of Caisse de’Epargne, America’s current best stage racer Levi Leipheimer of Discovery Channel and climbing specialist Carlos Sastre for Team CSC.
If you want to prove your TdF GC prediction skills and show your friends that you know cycling you should bet on your favorites. Two of the major sportsbooks – Bodog and Sportbet – are offering quite reasonable odds. For sure, the odds on Vino are pretty low but hey, he is a big favorite.
Then there are the riders that will go for the stages. The top sprinters to watch will be mostly Robbie McEven, Stefan Schummacher and Erik Zabel. The best climbing specialists shooting for the stage wins will include Iban Mayo, Alberto Contador and Michael Rasmussen.
The underdogs of the GC competition can bring lots of surprises whether in the overall or stage wins since they are all very good all rounders – Frank Schleck, Markus Fothen, Yaroslav Popovych or Micheal Rogers.
The doping accusations will still be a big issue and a topic of lots of discussion but the Tour roads will be crowded with spectators nevertheless. Simply, Le Tour is too great to be overlooked.
