Hello and welcome to our Tour de France blog.
The Tour is well underway and has already been an interesting Tour full of surprises and drama. The UK gave the Tour a great welcome on British soil, Belgium gave us a dramatic stage 2 finish in Gent and the Tour is still wide open. The big question this year is: who will win in Paris. So as I watch the Peloton pootle along at 30kph today and as our first group of clients arrives in Paris for the start of our Burgundy to Alps trip I thought this would be a good day to kick off our TdF blogs with my pick for who will win in Paris in a little under 3 weeks.
My pick for the top spot on the podium is going to have to be Alexandre Vinokourov.
I would actually rather see someone else win, but I think Viny is the most likely winner. As for the rest of the podium I really don’t feel you can make an educated pick. It’s a pure gamble between Levi Leipheimer, Cadel Evans, Valverde, Vladimir Karpets, Frank Schleck possibly even Haimar Zubeldia.
If Levi is ever to win a Tour this is the year, but that said he always has ONE very bad day, if he can limit his losses on that day things could still go in his favor with a good couple time trials. Cadel Evans is the surest man for a podium in my mind (behind Viny Vinokourov). He’s a good climber and is good at time trials. He can take advantage of a situation and take the race by the horns when he needs to, as opposed to Levi who tends to wait for the race to unfold infront of him. While we are on the subject of Aussies frankly I don’t think Michael Rodgers has what it takes. He had a couple of good years, but… Valverde was full of surprises last year but hasn’t been quite the same this year… so, fully aware that my pick for the top 5 or 10 of this year’s Tour is highly likely to be way off, here goes nothing:
Alexandre Vinokourov- Cadel Evans
- Levi Leipheimer
- Zubeldia
- Karpets
- Carlos Sastre
- Valverde
- Christophe Moreau
- Sandy Casar
- Rasmussen
Thanks for reading,
Sim
You should have re-considered Rasmussen…he is looking good…..
Be safe out there!
I cannot believe you did not include Andreas Kloden a former podium finisher, and an outstanding time trialist. Of course “Vino” is now far back, but Le Tour has a long way to go
Hi Sim,
A retrospective - your predictions were uncannily close in spite of Vino making a bloody fool of not only himself it would seem, Contador coming from the clouds and Chicken flying the coop!
It is not often you can pick 2 of 3 on the podium and in the right order and then almost 4, 5 and 6 - granted there were some unexpected developments!
Bit harsh on Mick Rogers (who was virtual leader when he crashed).
Spot on on Valverde - not the same rider who chased and passed Lance on Courchevel in 05 but then not the only inconsistent one ……