Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Friday, July 04, 2008

Tomorrow begins the 95th Tour de France and for about the fourth or fifth time I offer up my predictions as to who will win what. Before I go too far, there are a few things that should be noted.

First, I stink at predicting this sort of thing in general. Some of that is due to the unpredictable nature of bike racing and some is due to the fact that I never seem to have that important fact that'll change the race. Last year I had Levi on the podium but not Contador (of course, no one else did either).

Second, since bike racing in general and the Tour specifically is full of uncontrollable factors, chances are that some of my predictions will be wrong simply because someone gets taken out in a crash or a freak break succeeds and moves someone up in the standings. Add to that the freak things that happen like sprinters getting hit by big green hands and such and predicting can be pretty dodgy.

Finally, there's always a big contender who gets to the race and then disappoints due to bad form caused by overtraining or a bit of illness or something else. One year is was Christophe Moreau, another it was Casegrande. Will one of the big names have a bad race under the intense scrutiny of the media circus that is the Tour? Probably.

OK, enough hedging of the bets. Here's what I think:

Best Young Rider: This may be the most interesting competition of the entire race. None of these guys will win but they are the future of the race and I think the riders under 26 are particularly interesting. Tour winner Alberto Contador won this along with the Maillot Jaune last year. This year I like Giro de Italia runner-up Riccardo Ricco to win this competition though Trent Lowe with Garmin-Chipotle is who I'm rooting for.

Polka-Dot Jersey: The best climber competition is a bit of wild-card this year. The last several years this competition has been won by a rider who has specifically targeted it. Last year was a bit different as Mauricio Soler won it while riding for the GC on a wild breakaway. This year seems like it'll be more of the same. Most commentators are predicting the jersey will remain on Soler's back but I wonder if Bjarne Riis won't play the game of sending one of the triumverate of good riders, i.e.-one of the Schlek brothers, out on a flyer to shake up the GC and that rider gets an early advantage in the jersey. I really see this jersey going to a GC guy who gets lucky. Here again, Lowe may have a chance if he decides not to worry too much about the young rider competition. The guy who I think would be the best rider to work for this thing would be Moreau who is riding in what has to be one of his final Tours. He's never finished better than fourth and he's not going to do that well this year so I think retiring with having won a jersey would be a good way for him to go out. If I have to pick a person I'm going to with Andy Schlek due to a long breakaway in one of the early mountain stages.

Best Sprinter: for the green jersey, I see this being a race between three guys: Thor Husshovd, Robbie McEwen and Oscar Freire. Oscar's the best sprinter of the three but he has durability problems. I'd like to see him win the jersey to go with his multiple world championship jerseys but I don't see him making it to the end fo the race. That leaves a epic battle between Husshovd and McEwen. If Robbie can race clean and not get relegated for head-butting someone during a sprint, he's going to be a factor. Still, there are fewer true sprinter stages early in the race as the first two flat stages have ugly little climbs at the end that will be to Thor's advantage. I'm picking Husshovd to win the whole thing but it'll be dicey early on. I don't see Zabel doing much though he'll finish in the top five as will GC contender Alejandro Valverde.

For all the marbles the big contenders are Cadel Evans, Alejandro Valverde and Carlos Sastre with Damiano Cunego and Denis Menchov being the outside contenders. I see Evans being the favorite though he won't set the race on fire. He'll ride very conservatively, hang on in the mountains and take time out of the real climbers in the time trial. The other guy who can do that is Denis Menchov but Menchov climbs better though he's not as good a rider against the clock. The guy who seems to have the whole package is Valverde but I think he's peaked too early. Valverde is coming off a victory in the Dauphine and his national championship but that means he may have peaked too early. Maybe he can dial it back for the first week but after reading some comments, I think he has it in mind to win the first stage and to take the yellow jersey which is a bad call in my mind. He does have one of the strongest teams as does the always reliable Sastre. So what's the top five? I've got the following:

Evans
Menchov
Sastre
Cunego
Dessel

No Valverde? Nope. I think he's a huge deal in the first week and then the wheels come off the train and he fades to a finish somewhere between 8 and 10. I also like Cyril Dessel a lot. He rode a great race back in 2006 and I think he's back after a bad year. He'll be the best placed French rider and he'll have the morale of an entire nation pushing him forward. THe French haven't had much to cheer for in terms of GC since 1999 and I think this will be a good year for them.

Finally, who's going to win stage one? For the first time in a long, long time there's no prologue to start the Tour. I think it's a bad thing but it does make the early race more unpredictable. The stage is somewhat flat but there are some rolling hills and four catagorized climbs. The biggest factor is a steep climb right at the end. For the sprinters this favors Husshovd and Freire over McEwen and newcomer Mark Cavendish. However, I think that one of the GC guys is going to come away with this and a few seconds to boot. Valverde has made noise that he wants to win the first stage and he's not bad at a sprint. Neither is Riccardo Ricco who is at the Tour for the first time. Finally, Fabian Cancellara won two stages like this at the end of the Dauphine so he's been practicing. Here's how the stage plays out. You'll have a break made up of a couple of French riders from the Breton region who will be seeking a little local glory. I know that if the Tour went through my home region and I had even a chance of taking the jersey on a wild flyer I'd do it and the Breton guys all grew up wanting to the be just like Brenton's most famous rider, "The Badger", Bernard Hinualt (who incidentally is the person who presents the Yellow Jersey at the end of every stage). The sprinter's teams, especially Credit Agricole, won't want to let a stage victory get away so the Thor boys will bring it back together hoping their man can pull a rabbit out of the hat. Unfortunately, he won't have it at the very end and Valverde will pull it out to take the jersey.

One caveat. This is a more wide open Tour than we've seen in the last few years. I believe that it's entirely possible that we'll have a break in the first couple of days and everybody will be looking at everyone else to do the work and the break might get 10 or 15 minutes and then things will get really interesting as one of these Breton guys will be strong enough to hang on through the first several stages, the early, short time trial and the medium mountain stages of the Massif Central. Then we'll see if all of the sudden everyone gets really nervous. Don't be too surprised of either Jens Voigt or Stuart O'Grady isn't the early instigator of this break.

We find out the first part of the puzzle tomorrow.

Allez!

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