We’re just days away from the Grand Depart in Utrecht, and it is shaping up to be one of the most unpredictable Tours de France in many years.
We’ll be profiling the top contenders later this week, but a quartet of challengers – defending champion Vincenzo Nibali, Giro d’Italia winner and twice Tour champion Alberto Contador and 2013 top two Chris Froome and Nairo Quintana – look set to contest the podium positions.
There’s also plenty of Irish interest, with cousins Nicolas Roche and Dan Martin joined by sprinter Sam Bennett, who makes his first start in the race.
Cycling journalist Daniel Friebe was kind enough to speak to SportsJOE about the state of the sport’s battle against doping and we couldn’t let him off the phone without getting his view on this year’s Tour.
Ireland’s Sam Bennett is getting quite a bit of buzz ahead of his Grand Tour debut – what sort of impact can you see the young sprinter having?
I think it would be unrealistic to think he will win a stage. He might, but if he manages sneak a couple of top-fives, that will be not a bad return for him. He’s not favoured by the route either, it’s so difficult for sprinters, there might only be four or five days when there are proper bunch sprints.
Somewhere like Le Havre (Stage 6), a difficult finish where there are hills near the end, some of the sprinters will get spat out that day and he could find himself sprinting against the likes of Peter Sagan and Jon Degenkolb and who knows he might have a chance that day.
Nicolas Roche will spend his time helping Froome, but what about Dan Martin – with Garmin team-mate Andrew Talansky more likely to target the GC, he should be free to hunt for stage wins or even go for the king of the mountains jersey.
He’s come into some really good form and his contract’s up at the end of the year, which is a massive incentive for him to have a good Tour de France. The route this year is fantastic for him. The Mur de Huy (Stage 3) is such a particular climb and he is one of two or three guys in the field who have proven they know exactly how to time their efforts. He could definitely win that stage.
The Mur de Bretagne (Stage 8) is another stage he could potentially win and then there are so many mountain stages that guys who are down on overall classification are going to have opportunities to get in a break that stays away.
The polka dot jersey is very difficult to predict, it sort of depends on being in a team without a GC leader, so that might hinge on Andrew Talansky not doing that well overall, and just being in the right break on the right day. Dan could certainly do that, but it will be very difficult to aim for multiple stage wins and the polka dot jersey.
One of the biggest changes we’ve noticed in recent years is the increased drama during the first week of the Tour. Team leaders used to just be content to bide their time until the mountains but Nibali effectively won last year’s race on the early cobbles.
Yes, that’s something the Grand Tour organisers have tried to do. They talk about the importance of the first week in terms of the spectacle. Part of it is that they are adding different ingredients into the first week, a bit of pavé, uphill finishes, etc., but certainly some of the excitement has come from crashes and how nervous everyone is. That creates its own drama, which can be regrettable, but it does make for interesting viewing.
Nibali, Contador, Froome and Quintana have been dubbed the Fantastic Four ahead of this year’s Tour…
You’ve got four very different characters there. Quintana and Nibali take everything that’s thrown at them and seem to sail through difficulties. They race in a very relaxed way and I think that will be a massive advantage in the first ten days because there are a lot of imponderables in terms of the course, crashes, wind, etc., and I think those two are particularly good at just letting that stuff bounce off them.
Contador, partly down to his experience but also his racecraft, he will cope well too. Froome has less experience in these situations. He seems to have been around for for a long time but has actually very limited experience of leading a team at the Tour and is more of an unknown quantity.
They are all coming into the race having had very different build-ups. Will they all be happy how they are riding at the moment?
Nibali hasn’t ridden particularly well but he was in a similar situation last year and dominated the race. Quintana seems to be serene, he’s had no health problems, no worries over form, so he’ll be very confident.
Contador has two major concerns, one will be whether he has recovered from his exertions in winning the Giro, the other will his team, which has been indifferent to say the least, not only in the Giro but throughout this year.
Froome will be very much reassured by his win in the Dauphine but I can see him being a little bit edgy on some of those early stages, particularly the cobbles [where he crashed out last year].
Contador is going for the rare Giro-Tour double, were he to win is there a chance he could go for an unprecedented hat-trick of Grand Tours at the Vuelta a Espana?
He hasn’t suggested it publicly but people who know him and those around the sport think that he might. Oleg Tinkoff, his team owner, would be keen for him to do so. He wouldn’t have a lot to lose but when you consider how much riders have struggled doing the Giro and the Tour back-to-back over the last few years it seems implausible, and you could imagine the speculation his performances would generate if he did do that.
The courses are all very difficult this year too, the Vuelta is always a hellish route now. It would be fantastic if he attempted it and extraordinary if he pulled it off, but I think it would be fuel on an already inflamed bonfire of doping speculation.
So who do you think will be standing tall on the Champs-Elysees?
Contador is the one I see as most vulnerable, despite all his experience. Whenever he’s ridden a Giro he has not been at the top of his game at the Tour, so I could see him finishing outside the top three. I think Quintana will win ahead of Froome and Nibali.
Follow Daniel on Twitter @friebos
