Tour de France 2020 – GC Favorites Preview

At this time of the year all eyes are once again pointed towards the Tour de France. The big one within the entire cycling community and a special one given the season so far. This week we will release a number of key articles on this years Tour de France, ranging from parcours previews to team previews and jersey contestors.

This week we will cover the favorites for each jersey during the Tour, so let’s start of with the Maillot Jaune!

Yellow Jersey (GC)

Lets start today with the most important one of all four jerseys, the yellow jersey. This jersey, that is award to the rider with the fastest completion time of the entire route, is historically oftenly won by some of the big names in the peloton. The list below shows the last 10 winners of the Yellow Jersey.

2010 – Andy Schleck
2011 – Cadel Evans
2012 – Bradley Wiggins
2013 – Chris Froome
2014 – Vincenzo Nibali
2015 – Chris Froome
2016 – Chris Froome
2017 – Chris Froome
2018 – Geraint Thomas
2019 – Egan Bernal

Will Egan Bernal be able to defend his title? Let’s take a look at each team’s favorites!

AG2R La Mondiale:

Romain Bardet (**)
The frenchman is looking far off from his finest form which made him secure podium spots back in 2016 and 2017. With Bardet leaving AG2R for Sunweb he will be looking to impress his new teammates! The route suits him but we don’t think he has the form to challenge for the win.

Astana:

Miguel Angel Lopez (***)
The main GC rider for Astana

Often named as (one of) the best climber(s) of the peloton, this years Tour de France route must look appealing to him. He has an armada of climbing domestiques to support him and to facilitate some famous Astana-like long-range attacks.

He hasn’t been too impressive in the Dauphiné, but his form should only improve from here. Expect him to secure a solid GC spot, but will it be enough for a podium, or even the win?

Bahrein-Merida:

Mikel Landa (***)
The main GC rider for Bahrein.

Finally able to act as a sole leader. Got a whole team at his disposal and probably one of the stronger mountain trains. Being supported by tried and tested climbers like Bilbao and Caruso. Will love the route and the offensive opportunities that are provided in this years first week. Will we finally see #freelanda?

Wout Poels (*)
Back-up GC option. Brilliant on his best days, too inconsistent to challenge for GC

BORA Hansgrohe:

Emanuel Buchmann (****)
Very consistent in his GC results and a rider on which his team can always rely! Almost always able to hang on with the best, but he just seems to lack that extra class to battle for overall victories. His current condition is unknown, but given that he starts injury free he will challenge for the podium.

Lennard Kamna (*)
Probably working for Buchmann. We hope that he will be allowed the freedom to go for stage victory or a KOM as he should be exploring his limits given the great form that he is displaying at the moment!

CCC:

Ilnul Zakarin (*)
Expecting top 10-20 for the Russian GC rider.

Cofidis:

Guillaume Martin (**)
Has been steadily improving over the years, and we think this will be his chance to finally showcase his talents! He has some strong climbers to support him on his way to stage success, KOM or a solid top 10-15 GC spot!

Deceuninck-QuickStep:

Julian Alaphilippe (***)
Given last years form we can’t exclude Alaphilippe. He has shown form in the one-day races, but we are uncertain if he will be able to repeat last-years performance as teams will actually consider him a GC treat this year. Nevertheless we are curious about his performance!

Bob Jungels (*)
Deserves a mention, but should in our opinion be targetting the classics-like stages for stage success. Could suprise in the first week.

EF Education First – Drapac:

Rigoberto Uran (**)
Disappointed in the Dauphiné . While he might be peaking towards the third week, we do not expect him to improve to an extent where he will be able to challenge for the podium.

Daniel Martinez (**)
The pan-american and national ITT champion arrives with a Dauphiné victory under his belt, where he beat some of the worlds strongest climbers by going under the radar just until the final stage. However, the Dauphiné is only a one-week race, and Martinez has yet to post his first decent performance at a three-week-race. This will be a perfect opportunity to show his team that he is capable of riding consistent for three weeks.

Sergio Higuita (**)
Another insane Colombian talent! Dropped out of the Dauphiné, but up to that point seemed to be in form. With his climbing talent and his punch to the line we are almost sure that he will be able to capture a stage-win somewhere along the line! Will he be a serious GC contender? We highly doubt it.

Groupama – FDJ:

Thibot Pinot (****):
If there will ever be a year where Pinot wins the Tour de France, it will be this year. He is in some of his finest form and the Tour de France 2020 route is almost tailor-made for him. The form of some of his mountain domestiques is questionable, but he will have his most loyal domestique Reichenbach on his side when the going gets tough. FDJ are not bringing Demare to this years Tour de France so the sole purpose of the team is to bring home the maillot jaune. We expect Pinot to contest for the overall win, but the competition is strong and Pinot always seems to have some form of misfortune during each of his Grand Tours. Coincidence?

Ineos:

Egan Bernal: (*****):
The defending champion. Dropped out of the Dauphiné with back issues but according to his teammate Dylan van Baarle he is more than okay for the Tour. With Froome and Thomas dropped from the team roster it should be clear that the whole team is focussed on enabling Bernal to defend his title. He has shown before that he is capable of sustaining his tremendous climbing form for three weeks, but the field of competitors has never been stronger than this year, and their famous mountain train was blown away by Jumbo-Visma’s in the Dauphiné .

Pivel Sivakov: (****):
According to us the strongest rider in the Dauphiné who has lately showed amazing form and, according to insiders, easily outclimbed the rest of Ineos -including Bernal- during their Tour de France preparation in the mountains. If there is one rider who might suprise this year, it’s the Russian climber. Question remains whether he will have to sacrifice himself for Bernal, or if this years Ineos tactic will be different and Sivakov will be allowed some more freedom on the road.

Richard Carapaz: (***):
Reigning Giro winner who took an impressive stage win in the Tour of Poland recently. He wasn’t supposed to be riding the Tour de France so his preparations haven’t been perfect. Also, apart from his Pologne stage-win, he hasn’t been impressing us recently. We expect him to act as a third-in-line super domestique behind Bernal/Sivakov. Still, a former GC winner is never to be underestimated so if everything falls in to places in Carapaz’ favour we might be in for a suprise.

Jumbo – Visma:

Primoz Roglic (*****):
The bookies favorite at less than 3/1! He was amazingly strong in every race in which he participated. Dropped out of the Dauphiné with issues, but we expect him to be fresh for the start of the Tour! Given his punching skills, the stages in the first week will suit him perfectly. Also, considering the armada that Jumbo Visma brings along to support him, we think he might just make it to the finish line in pole position!

Tom Dumoulin (****):
Has been quietly building form over the past months. We think Dumoulin will be the other big suprise of this years Tour. Unless the race forces Jumbo-Visma to sacrifice Dumoulin we think he will seriously challenge for a podium spot or even the overall victory!

Lotto Soudal:

Stage hunters

Mitchelton-Scott:

Esteban Chaves (*) and Adam Yates (**)
Scott announced that they will be hunting stages, but will they still hold onto this if one of both is solidly placed within the top-10 after the first two weeks?

Movistar:

Alejandro Valverde (**), Enric Mas (**) and Marc Soler (*)
A new tridente! Who should and probably will be hunting stages. We expect an aggressive Valverde who will be looking for stage wins, but he seems to have lost the endurance and toughness to battle it out for three weeks with the other GC riders.

Sunweb:

Tiesj Benoot (*)
In fine form, but lacks the pure climbing talent to challenge in this years route of the Tour.

Trek-Segafredo:

Richie Porte (**) and Bauke Mollema (**):
Will both place top-15 (if Porte finishes the race), but lack that final piece that allows them to challenge for the podium.

UAE Team Emirates:

Tadej Pogacar (****)
Such an impressive rider! Probably one of the guys who will be challenging Bernal for the next decade if his progression continues! Will love all the climbing work and arrives in form! We expect him to place solid top-5!

The Wildcard Teams:

Arkea Samsic: Nairo Quintana (****)
At the beginning of this year Nairo looked like a whole new rider at Arkea, showing some impressive results in some of the races early in the season. His Dauphiné tactic seemed to be ‘glue myself to Bernal’s wheel and see what happens’, which he was executing perfectly until he dropped out as his recent knee injury started nagging him again. He has some strong support (especially for a wildcard team), and we think that a injury-free Quintana will be battling for the podium given this years route.

Tactics

There are two main teams that have the firepower to control the race: Jumbo Visma and Ineos. Bahrein and EF also bring a strong squad, but we do not see them controlling the race for three weeks. This will lead to an interesting scenario:

As Jumbo Visma and Ineos will only ride to preserve the GC positions of Roglic/Dumoulin and Bernal/Sivakov the battle for the other top-10 spots should be wide open if large gaps are made in the first half of the Tour. We expect a hugely entertaining race with 2nd-tier GC riders being sent into breakaways. This implicates that team depths will be more important than ever, which could give teams like Jumbo/Ineos/Bahrein/EF a huge competitive edge! The alternative scenario is that we will see a challenge of the two mountain trains (Jumbo/Ineos) in every serious mountain stage, with riders dropping out of the back of the bunch until Roglic and Bernal challenge each other in an uphill sprint-a-deux in the final kilometer of these type of stages. We are, obviously, routing for the first scenario to happen!

Conclusion:

Combining all the riders that we discussed above, we come to the following categorisation:

Five stars: Roglic, Bernal
Four stars: Dumoulin, Pinot, Sivakov, Quintana, Pogacar, Buchmann
Three stars: Lopez, Landa, Alaphilippe, Carapaz
Two stars: Yates, Valverde, Higuita, Uran, Martinez, Mas, Porte, Mollema
One star: Chaves, Soler, Benoot, Kamna, Poels, Jungels .. Bennett, Kuss, etc.

As stated before, we think it will turn out into a Jumbo Visma vs INEOS, with Buchmann the strong latin-american climbers Lopez, Quintana, Landa as outside cards. Given the nature of our two favorites (Roglic & Bernal), it will basically be Roglic’ Tour to lose. He has a stronger ITT and has the team strength to force the other riders to ride along at his pace during some of the key climbs.

Bernal on the other hand should be able to push Roglic to his limits on the longer climbs and the stages with an insane amount of altitude meters. Also, with Luke Rowe on their squad and several stages where cross-winds are likely, he might just make the difference on a type of stage where one does not expect it.

Roglic, who is a one-week stagerace king, will be tested to his absolute limits during the fierce third week. Whereas other climbers such as Pogacar and Dumoulin might just be rolling into top-form by then.

Which brings us to our final winner.

The Winner…..

No-one will be able to crack Primoz Roglic, due to the sheer strength of his team, his TT’ing edge and his own tremendous form. Behind him we will see Pogacar place second with Pinot and Dumoulin battling it out for third. We expect Sivakov to be the best performing INEOS rider and Buchmann to do magnificently well. Further back along the GC ranks we hope to see one of the youngsters like Kamna and/or Martinez suprise us with a top-10 finish!