Men's Road Cycling UCI Tour de France 2017

[heywoodu 16,060]

27 minutes ago, bestmen said:

yes he is ,the official site

 

 

http://www.letour.fr/le-tour/2017/fr/equipes/ddd.html

 

 

The mistake LeTour made is that Reguigui is not in the team, but Jaco Venter is.

 

 

 

Which all is an utterly ridiculous selection for the team that presents itself as "Africa's Team" by the way, not even one single Eritrean when they've got Teklehaimanot, Berhane, Debesay and Kudus to choose from. But alright, that's another discussion. 

Edited June 29, 2017 by heywoodu

[bestmen 2,907]

because the africans haven't these bicycles with hidden motors

[Agger 1,708]

My favourites:

 

*****: Froome

****: Quintana, Porte

***: Aru, Contador, Bardet

**: Fuglsang, Meintjes, Valverde, Chaves

*: Martin, Thomas, Majka, Yates, Uran

 

Froome hasn't been the dominant rider that we've been used to seeing, but I still see him as the main favourite. Quintana will be interesting to see, it may be a bit too high.

It will be interesting to see how Fuglsang and Aru will be working together. If they're both decent in the GC when the race goes to the Alps (or maybe even earlier) they will be a dangerous duo, just like we saw at Dauphine. I hope that Fuglsang is in at least the same shape as then, while it seems like Aru has stepped a bit up, dominating the national road race.

 

For the green jersey, I don't see anybody competing with Sagan (unless he has a major crash). The main contender should be Kittel, as there's a good amount of flat stages this year, but Matthews will also be interesting, as he is also able to take some points on the slightly tougher stages.

The entirely flat stages should be between Kittel, Greipel and Demare, though I don't want to count Cav too much out of it. Groenewegen, Kristoff and Bouhanni will also be very interesting.

 

Meanwhile the polka dot jersey will be hard to guess. I would say that Pinot and Rolland seems to be the best guesses. Pinot won't get much help in the mountains, which is why I don't have him in my list of favourites for the GC. Also he didn't look too strong in the ITT Nationals. Rolland finally seems to be going all in for the polka dots. Meanwhile a rider like Majka could quickly end up going for the dots instead of the GC. Other interesting riders could be Atapuma, Gesink, Bennett and Barguil.

 

The white jersey seems to be between Meintjes and Yates with Buchmann as a strong outsider.

[hckošice 15,601]

Stage 1

Saturday - July 1st, 2017

h. 15:15 (GMT +2)

 

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  Dusseldorf - Dusseldorf 

14km - Individual Time Trial

 

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Starting Order and Times + Live Ticker

 

[Gianlu33 5,303]

And finally it's the day for the tour  

Btw, yesterday started the Giro Rosa whit almost all best riders in, luckly i will be aviable to watch the finish of an hard stage and a start of another stage! Maybe i'll post some photo  

[heywoodu 16,060]

23 hours ago, Agger said:

My favourites:

 

*****: Froome

****: Quintana, Porte

***: Aru, Contador, Bardet

**: Fuglsang, Meintjes, Valverde, Chaves

*: Martin, Thomas, Majka, Yates, Uran

 

Froome hasn't been the dominant rider that we've been used to seeing, but I still see him as the main favourite. Quintana will be interesting to see, it may be a bit too high.

It will be interesting to see how Fuglsang and Aru will be working together. If they're both decent in the GC when the race goes to the Alps (or maybe even earlier) they will be a dangerous duo, just like we saw at Dauphine. I hope that Fuglsang is in at least the same shape as then, while it seems like Aru has stepped a bit up, dominating the national road race.

 

For the green jersey, I don't see anybody competing with Sagan (unless he has a major crash). The main contender should be Kittel, as there's a good amount of flat stages this year, but Matthews will also be interesting, as he is also able to take some points on the slightly tougher stages.

The entirely flat stages should be between Kittel, Greipel and Demare, though I don't want to count Cav too much out of it. Groenewegen, Kristoff and Bouhanni will also be very interesting.

 

Meanwhile the polka dot jersey will be hard to guess. I would say that Pinot and Rolland seems to be the best guesses. Pinot won't get much help in the mountains, which is why I don't have him in my list of favourites for the GC. Also he didn't look too strong in the ITT Nationals. Rolland finally seems to be going all in for the polka dots. Meanwhile a rider like Majka could quickly end up going for the dots instead of the GC. Other interesting riders could be Atapuma, Gesink, Bennett and Barguil.

 

The white jersey seems to be between Meintjes and Yates with Buchmann as a strong outsider.

I agree with almost everything  

 

I'd put Quintana a little lower, but then again, he spent some magic time in Colombia after the Giro so you never know how he's coming back. I don't think Fuglsang will get close to a top-10, for Majka it all depends on having a bad day or not. If he doesn't, he could get top-5, if he has one bad day, he might just lose more time to have the freedom to attack as per usual.

 

Same thing about the green jersey: Sagan as huge favourite and Kittel as the big favourite in case Sagan DNF's. For Matthews and Colbrelli I think there's just not enough 'hard' stages and all other sprinters (from Demare to Cimolai and Cavendish to EBH and Groenewegen to Kristoff) seem way too....meh, not regularly fast enough.

 

Like every year I think there's at least 30 riders who could realistically win the polka dot jersey, it just depends entirely on who wants to go for it, who has a bad GC and wants to compensate for that etc, more than anything this is about who wants to go for it rather than who can do it   Pinot because he's definitely not going for a GC after the Giro and Rolland because he's a superb attacker, so I agree. Same with Majka if his GC falls apart and hopefully Gesink sticks to the plan and let's go of his GC ambitions.

 

100% agreed about the white jersey  

[heywoodu 16,060]

As for today, Stefan Küng will take the win, just so you all know that already. 

[dcro 10,210]

44 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

As for today, Stefan Küng will take the win, just so you all know that already. 

 

So you put some money on him, naturally.

Edited July 1, 2017 by dcro

[heywoodu 16,060]

5 minutes ago, dcro said:

 

So you put some money on him, naturally.

Nope  

[heywoodu 16,060]

I'm just looking at the odds for today's stage now and Küng has odds of 7-9 

 

 

 

 

Tony Martin as the big favourite seems odd, he hasn't really done anything that interesting this year. Roglic makes sense considering his fantastic year, Van Emden has said around 264 times in the past week that he is very tired because he started training way too fast after the Giro..

 

Ok, money going on Küng with these odds  

 

And maybe a tiny bit on Porte.