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The Roar

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Tour de Romandie, a window to the Tour de France?

Chris Froome could take yellow on Stage 5 of the Tour de France. (Image: Sky).
Expert
29th April, 2014
4

With a tantalising Giro about to start, it seems almost criminal to be saying this, but recent history tells us that the winner of the Tour de Romandie – which began last night – goes on to win the Tour de France.

All attention should rightly be on the Giro, but the chance to watch a race that for the past three years has seen its winner also claim top step on le Tour is proving an irresistible lure.

It’s only a six-day race, including last night’s five kilometres prologue, but Cadel Evans, Brad Wiggins and Chris Froome have all used Romandie as a base for ultimate glory in July.

Froome deserves to start favourite for his Tour de France defence, but how can his form be good enough to win Romandie when he’s only raced two stage races this year and has battled injury and illness along the way?

His Prologue didn’t go too well last night, finishing 13th, 10 seconds down on stage winner Michal Kwiatkowski.

It continues a rocky period for cycling’s skinniest Grand Tour winner, who didn’t start Liege Bastogne Liege under medical orders after being diagnosed with a slight chest infection.

Prior to that he managed sixth at the Volta Catalunya at the end of March, more than a month after winning the Tour of Oman.

I’m not sure if that amount of competition is enough to keep this three-year trend going, even if Froome believes his ‘numbers’ are better than at this time last year when he’d already raced Oman, Tirreno Adriatico, Criterium International and Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

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Vincenzo Nibali is a confirmed starter in what is a strong Astana line-up. Solid performances in the three Ardennes classics plus Milan San Remo, Paris Nice, Oman, Dubai and Tour du San Luis means Nibali has already clocked up 30 race days this season.

Along with Tejay van Garderen, he deserves favouritism for this race but can either go on to win the Tour in July?

Cadel Evans’ replacement as BMC’s number one rider hasn’t raced as much as Nibali this season, only finishing three races, but he’s twice ended up on the podium – third in Catalunya and second in Oman.

Tejay was also sixth in the Tour of the Basque Country.

He was fifth in le Tour in 2012, but only 45th last year. Crucially BMC knows what it takes to go all the way, and while Cadel did that in 2011, he’d also twice finished second, and perhaps crucially that’s the experience the young American lacks.

The team is packed with Grand Tour experience: Janez Brajkovic, Jakob Fuglsang, Andriy Grivko, Maxim Iglinskiy, Tanel Kangert, Frederik Kessiakoff and Lieuwe Westra.

You’d expect to see most of them back in July.

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Nibali may be aware of Romandie’s recent connection with the Tour de France, but I’m not sure he cares. That said, if he really thinks he can win in July, this is the perfect chance to lay down a psychological marker in front of Chris Froome.

And while I’ve banged on about what this race means in terms of recent Tour de France history, there’re a number of riders who’ll use Romandie as a final tune up for the Giro.

Rigoberto Uran, Michał Kwiatkowski, Ivan Basso are all racing, but Cadel is seemingly content with his overall win at the Giro del Trentino and will rest and train ahead of what could be his final Grand Tour race.

On the ‘home’ front, can Orica Green Edge’s Cameron Meyer use Romandie to start putting some performances together?

He’s slated to ride his first Giro, and it would be nice if he could go into it showing the kind of form we saw last year at the Tours of Turkey (5th), California (5th) and Suisse (10th).

Garmin’s emerging South Australian rider Rohan Dennis’s will be encouraged by his second place (at four seconds) in the Prologue and like Meyer (16th at 11) this is a big race for him.

If only we could watch it on TV.

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