Le Tour de France is almost upon us and this year’s version promises to be the most open in years, with Sky looking vulnerable and Alberto Contador in fine form.
Over the next couple of days I will take you over every element of this year’s Tour de France and what to expect during the race.
Today is the men who can be expected to take out the general classification and those most likely to feature in breakaways.
For the GC, Chris Froome (Team Sky) is once again the favourite, with a strong team around him. However, Bradley Wiggins was left off the team; whether this was the right move or not will be an interesting one.
Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) looks to be in really good form following a strong Criterium Du Dauphine. Two more Spaniards in Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) and Joaquim Rodríguez (Katusha) are back to have another crack and should definitely be somewhere in the top 10 come the end of the tour.
Another man who could really cause some problems in the race for the yellow jersey will be Andrew Talansky (Garmin-Sharp). Fresh off winning the Dauphine, he is in fine form and gaining experience all the time, so it will be interesting to see if he can pull a rabbit out of the hat.
After that group of top GC contenders you have another batch of riders who will certainly challenge for the top 10, but probably not the podium.
These riders include Bauke Mollema (Belkin), Tejay Van Garderen (BMC), Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Lotto Bellisol), the Schleck brothers (Trek Factory Racing), and of course the usual French suspects Pierre Roland and Thomas Voeckler (Europcar).
The best out of that group must be Bauke Mollema. Over the last couple of seasons he has shown promising results and looks to be the most threatening.
Jurgen Van Den Broeck and Teejay Van Garderen have both looked solid at the Tour in the past, but have yet to crack a really good performance. It doesn’t look like the year for either of them, as they don’t look to be in the greatest form and Jurgen’s team is predominantly built around Andre Greipel winning sprints.
The Schleck brothers were from superstars a couple of years ago but have fallen dramatically, with Frank getting caught for drugs and Andy’s form falling off a ladder. However both have stood on the podium at the Tour – Andy even won it, albeit after Contador was found to have doped – so it will be interesting to see what they can produce.
Last but not least are the boys from Europcar, Thomas Voeckler and Pierre Roland. They are the biggest animators of the race, always looking to attack and never sitting still. Could this be the year for one of them?
Moving on from the GC riders, let’s have a look at the Australians in this year’s field.
For the first time in recent memory Australia don’t have someone to cheer on in the quest for the yellow jersey, with no Cadel Evans, however two Aussies who will certainly help decide this Tour are Richie Porte and Michael Rogers, the head workhorses for leaders Chris Froome and Alberto Contador respectively.
They have massive workloads ahead of them and will be on the TV cameras driving the peloton up mountains for their leaders. If their leaders succumb to crashes or illness, they will be left to try gain something from the Tour for their teams.
Heinrich Haussler and Mark Renshaw will have their say on the flat stages, Renshaw as a lead-out man for Mark Cavendish on Omega Pharma-Quick Step, and Haussler as the sprinter at IAM Cycling.
The other non Orica-GreenEDGE Australian is Adam Hansen, who has ridden Grand Tours repetitively for a couple of years straight and is the never-say-die man in the peloton.
Then we have the Orica-GreenEDGE contingent. Obviously the best of them is Simon Gerrans, who will be targeting various stages throughout the race. Then there is sprinter Michael Matthews, who held the pink jersey for six days at the Giro and beat Cadel Evans in an uphill sprint.
Tomorrow I’ll be previewing the sprint contenders and the guys who will be able to win when it is hilly but not mountainous.
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