2013 Tour de France: Six stages to Cav and a cracking first week

And we’re racing here in Corsica as stage one of the 2013 Tour de France rolls off from beautiful Porto-Vecchio.

No prologue this year folks as the race organisers have grown tired of watching Fabian Cancellara parade around in yellow for the first week of every edition.

Old Spartacus took the news well too – so well in fact that he is racing the Tour of Poland instead!

So it’ll be up to the sprinters to provide us with a leader after stage one, and here they come now. Their lead out trains have split the peloton as they shoot arrow-like into Bastia, having tracked up the entire eastern coast of the island.

400 metres to go now and Orica-GreenEDGE have positioned Matthew Goss perfectly. Andre Greipel still has a Lotto-Belisol teammate with him, but appears too far back to challenge. Cavendish is on Greipel’s wheel, almost invisible as he slipstreams behind the bulk of the big German.

200 to go and Daryl Impey pulls aside launching Goss towards Orica-GreenEDGE’s maiden Tour de France stage win, but here comes Cavendish.

Cavendish and Greipel are side by side, the Manxman low slung and streamlined, the German all over his bike, pumping furiously.

They swerve around Goss and it’s Cavendish by half a wheel from Greipel, followed by an inconsolable Goss. Cavendish takes the first maillot jaune.

So concludes this mini phantom call of the opening day of le Tour.

It’s a no brainer that Cavendish (Omega Pharma-Quickstep) will go into Saturday’s stage one as the hot favourite. He will be desperate to experience the maillot jaune for himself after spending most of last year’s race helping former team leader Bradley Wiggins protect it.

But perhaps even more significant is the fact that, with a team dedicated to his services, the Manx Missile could quite conceivably win up to six stages of the famed race, equalling his remarkable haul from the 2009 Tour.

Currently with 23 stage wins to his credit, a further six wins would take him past both Andre Leducq (25 wins) and Bernard Hinault (28) on the all time stage winners list, and land him just five short of Eddy Merckx’s record of 34 wins.

It is a record Cavendish would cherish and after the (relatively) slim pickings of last year (he was first past the post on ‘just’ three occasions), he would appear as primed and as hungry as ever.

It won’t be easy though. The depth of talent among the ranks of the sprinters is growing all the time, and while Cavendish is still king, there is an increasing number of contenders looking to steal his crown.

For the moment though, he still seems to have their measure.

His greatest rival, and biggest threat when going head to head, is Greipel. The Gorilla is big and strong, but still can’t beat Cavendish regularly when the Manxman is on song.

Peter Sagan (Cannondale) is an extreme talent but will feature more when the finishes are a little more difficult, while Goss seems to struggle with his timing, a fatal flaw when up against the world’s best. Both will need to be at their very best and take advantage of every opportunity if they are to beat Cav in a pure sprint.

The Argos-Shimano pair of John Degenkolb and Marcel Kittel, if they don’t get in each other’s way, could also push Cavendish to the limit.

Kittel is probably the faster of the two but he needs to start producing regularly in the big races to further his reputation. Degenkolb dominated the sprints at last year’s Vuelta a Espana, claiming five victories, but the field was weak and he’ll find the going tougher here.

Former French road champion Nacer Bouhanni (FDJ) is another fast man beginning to forge a reputation and he’ll be eager to perform in front of adoring home crowds, but he is not yet in Cavendish’s league.

The wily Cavendish however, will have already pencilled in stages one, six, ten, 12 and 13 as ones to target. Their flat nature will have him salivating and beware anyone who gets in the way. For an encore he will also win the final stage on the Champs-Elysees – again.

But if you think this year’s Tour de France may become a bit one dimensional, think again. Even if Cavendish dominates the sprints, the opening stages of this year’s Tour should set the scene for an enthralling three weeks.

The famed maillot jaune will jump from back to back as the race attempts to establish some sort of order throughout its first week.

The flat first stage, followed by a medium mountain stage containing four classified climbs of category three or above, followed by a lumpy rolling stage and then a fast looking team time trial could see the leader’s jersey grace three or four backs in as many days.

Doing away with the prologue and throwing in a variety of stages over the first few days adds spice and intrigue to a race that has in the past become somewhat formulaic.

Last year was the prime example. Cancellara (who else) won the opening prologue and held the yellow jersey for the entire first week until he was relieved of its burden by Sky’s Bradley Wiggins.

It was the fifth time Cancellara had won the Tour’s opening day and his collection of 28 yellow jerseys is the direct result of his opening day successes. He sits at number 11 on the all time list for spending the most days in yellow, and is one of only three in the top 20 who haven’t gone on to win the event overall.

But good luck to him. He is a popular rider and there is no finer sight than watching him churn out the type of power most of us can only dream about.

But this year it will be different.

If Cavendish or any of the other sprinters happen to claim stage one as expected, their stint in yellow won’t stretch to a second day. According to Tour de France technical director Jean-Francois Pescheux, stage two will be a roller coaster of a day that will cause real damage, leaving the sprinters to bail out one after the other.

A quick look at the route’s profile shows why. While it is a short stage, cutting diagonally across the island from one coast to the other in just 156 kilometres, a barrier of mountains sits ominously in its middle section, threatening to trip up not only the sprinters, but any of the general classification riders that might be having a bad day.

A long, mostly downhill run to the finish may see the field bunch up again, but it will be hard work for the likes of Cavendish or Greipel to assert any podium influence. Peter Sagan on the other hand….

Stage three brings along something different again. Although it has no mountains to speak of, it is one of those stages that only the masochists among the riders enjoy. It is another short stage, this time travelling 146 kilometres up the west coast, but, to quote Pescheux again, it rocks and rolls along without a “single metre of flat”.

Breakaways and splits in the peloton will be the main dangers for the yellow jersey incumbent and if the sacred cloth doesn’t change hands again, it almost certainly will the next day when a fast and furious team time trial will establish the first real time gaps of the race.

The first four days will no doubt throw up some surprises and the variety of terrain and format will whet our appetites for more. It is the perfect set up to what promises to be a fantastic race.

Initial disappointment at the absence of Wiggins and Vincenzo Nibali has now been thrown aside as Chris Froome (Sky), Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha), Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) and Alberto Contador (Saxo-Tinkoff) resume hostilities for the general classification. The talented quartet fought a brutal battle at last year’s Vuelta a Espana and there is no reason why their exploits will be any less entertaining here in France.

Half wheeling them will be the French duo of Pierre Rolland (Europcar) and Thibaut Pinot (FDJ), Ryder Hesjedal and Andrew Talansky (Garmin Sharp), that other famous French duo Thomas Voeckler and his Tongue (Europcar), Jurgen Van den Broeck (Lotto-Belisol), Jakob Fuglsang (Astana), Robert Gesink and Bauke Mollema (Blanco) and Damiano Cunego (Lampre-Merida).

Throw in Froome’s Tasmanian teammate Richie Porte, and the intriguing battle for leadership at BMC between Australia’s Tour de France hero Cadel Evans and the up and coming American Tejay van Garderen, and we have a general classification that will be as hotly contested as any.

It will be anything but dull.

The Roar’s expert Glenn Mitchell offers his thoughts on the 2013 Tour de France: