Saw the saxo team list, looking handy esp if Bertie has peaked.

@cyclingweekly: Saxo-Tinkoff for Tour de France: A Contador, M Rogers, N Roche, M Tosatto, D Bennati, S Paulinho, J Hernandez, B Noval and R Kreuziger

Place your bets

2+ riders will be caught doping and expelled, with little to no subsequent action.

Beyond that, not sure. Team Sky/ Froome, no?

I’m hoping for a battle royale in the mountains and some hot sprints with cav and saggy-he-ain’t.

My top tips
Froome to finally look up from his power meter and find to his surprise that he’s arrived in Paris
Geraint Thomas to fall off at least once
Andy Schleck to abandon
Tommy V to win brown jersey for leading gurner
Contador to be the butt of numerous steak related jokes

on current form froome will walk it, contador is a shadow of what he was without his personal “butcher” making his steaks.
probably a sky 1-2 on the cards with porte on the second step.

I want Froome to win and really want Cantador to fail in the most publically humiliating fashion possible. I’d settle for the first.

I’d settle for the second, to be honest.

£10 on Peter Sagan @400/1. Just in case.

Should be interesting…

Sky are going to try and do what they did last year – stay out of trouble until the hills, then stick everyone on the front and keep the pace so high that most people can’t get away and even attacks by Contador/J-Rod/Valv get reeled in.

But… I can’t help but think that it won’t be as easy as last year. Froome seems to have the Sky leadership sorted (and the respect of his team-mates) but I don’t think he’s got the stature of Wiggins to act as a Patron, and calm things down if chaos starts to happen.

Tirreno-Adriatico showed that Sky don’t do chaos very well, and the Giro showed that they get a bit lost when the Plan comes unstuck.

Which should all add up to some interesting attacking racing (and Evans will probably be lurking around the top 5 somewhere as well).

Meanwhile the Cav/Sagan battle for green will be immense. Cav will have to thrash all the other top sprinters several times, and Sagan will be rampaging away with the hillier stages.

Voeckler is up to something too – publicly announcing that Rolland is the leader so he can drop a load of time and go for the KOM jersey? Or looking to sneak off the front and grab a few days in yellow?

Actually, it’ll probably be really dull, with Sky squashing the mountain stages.

Unless Andy Schleck has been faking it for the past few months and goes on a series of huge one-man breaks… nah.

Saxo/Tinkoff and Contador will fail for sure.
Think Froome will bring it home.
Hopeing that Sagan can take som wins from Cavendish, but doubt it.

Got 5000:1 on cavemdish winning, put a quid on, you never know!

Got 5000:1 on cavemdish winning, put a quid on, you never know!

Working on the basis that all the other riders will get eaten by bears in the mountains but by the time Cav gets to the top they will be full but he will be the only rider left so wins by default?

well i’m already down as had brad at 20/1 to win
went for roland each way as well so reckon that worthless now as well

I really wish they wouldn’t all put their cards on the table and announce their plans. It just makes it rather cringeworthy when the plans don’t work.

I really really hope Cav gets the yellow jersey on Day 1, the problem being that he’s already told everyone he wants it and there will be 190 other riders trying to stop him.

Overall – I really hope that Contador fails miserably. Show the world that without his specially cooked steaks, he’s a bit meh.
Froome, Porte, Evans for the podium. I hope. Also want Geraint Thomas to do well. He was wearing the white jersey in the year that Brad crashed but all that waiting for Brad dropped him right down the rankings. Shame, he’d have been well up there come Paris.

Cav/Sagan/Hushovd battle for green will be incredible.

KOM – Voeckler again? Hope so, I love Tommy Voeckler. Proper do or die spirit, wild random attacks that somehow manage to stick and an amazing talent.

I really really hope Cav gets the yellow jersey on Day 1, the problem being that he’s already told everyone he wants it and there will be 190 other riders trying to stop him.

It doesn’t matter if he announces his intentions or not, everyone knows he is the man to beat in a sprint finish.

if anyone is interested theres a 2 hr 100 yrs of the tdf on radio 5live now,good stories so far.

timb34
Should be interesting…
But… I can’t help but think that it won’t be as easy as last year.

(Selective editing of course 😉 , but …)
‘Chaos’ is how I see it going. With no real Patron, it looks like it could open up on a day-to-day basis, especially if some of the GC contenders start looking less certain, I can see teams throwing attacks in to see what they can come out with, and that could produce some interesting (perhaps unsettling) days.

Committing to one, and going against recent form / common-sense maybe, but … Contador. I think he’s far from done – so writing him off now seems premature (and ill-advised for any one racing against him). Finger in the wind really tho’.

Evans.

Halfords

I’ve gone with Jurgen Van Den Broeck for a podium in Paris.

I can’t see past Sagan for green but it should be interesting.

with Greipel and others at the heels of Cav and more bumps along the road, it will be tough for Cav to keep green away from Sagan. I guess it depends how much Hushovd and EBH are reined in by their teams to support. Maybe that’s why Cav wants the yellow from Stage 1…
Looks like a battle between Froome and Contador is the obvious choice – I think Froome is the perfect lead man for the current Sky team and the way they ride (especially when there are less TTs).
I’d like to see Valverde do well this year but I’m not sure of his form.

ps I like the way that Henao and Uran Uran have been saved for the Vuelta – should make that a killer race with the Spaniards and Nibali.

Froome to finally look up from his power meter and find to his surprise that he’s arrived in Paris
Geraint Thomas to fall off at least once
Andy Schleck to abandon
Tommy V to win brown jersey for leading gurner
Contador to be the butt of numerous steak related jokes

We use the same fortune teller. Froome to win, more meat on a rope in evidence.

no mention of nibali yet?. Think he’l podium anyway. Dont think contador will make top 5 but really hoping on schleck soing something. ryder hesjadal may suprise a few as well. Froome should win it ok

Nibili isn’t playing as far as I know.

2+ riders will be caught doping and expelled, with little to no subsequent action.

+1
Also heaps of rumours about x y & z being on stuff
Complaints that there is no attacking
Suspicion of anyone making 2 mad attacks in 1 week
Froom to have is name changed to “Former Kenyan now British Froome”
Cav for green

Nibbles will ride the veulta I think.

I went for each way on porte at 33/1 which I reckon is a good deal

And nibali to win at 18/1 which seemed like a good deal at the time before he announced he was not doing it 🙁

The odds on froome were silly

Just put one on Jensie to win a stage at 4/1

Another vote here for the likelihood of it all falling apart for Sky

We saw what happened in the olympic road race when the whole ‘stay in the peloton and reel them in’ tactics fell apart, and its the only tactic that they’ve got, because their bald headed team manager keeps overruling the DS!

I think the other teams are wise to it, they won’t work with them, and will activley disrupt it – and the comment that Froome is not enough of a Patron is valid, you can’t win the tour without the respect of the peloton (and after everything that has happened with Wiggins, possibly your own team too)

We saw what happened in the olympic road race when the whole ‘stay in the peloton and reel them in’ tactics fell apart, and its the only tactic that they’ve got, because their bald headed team manager keeps overruling the DS!

Yes this is true to some extent however (1) it’s not a jaunt out to the Surrey hills (2) Froome can attack, or go with attacks better than Wiggo (and certainly cav if you are comparing it to the olympics) so it brings more options.

I suspect/hope that instead of trying to disrupt the Sky train, we’ll actually see other teams try and copy the tactic and Sky be the ones who attack as per Uran in the Giro – albeit a bit closer to the finish.

Hoping it’s not all a bit of an anti-climax after an excellent classics season and an eventful Giro.

Nibbles doing the vuelta to target the Worlds I believe.

Froome to win nothing, hopefully…