Tour de France 2015

I hope Cav blitzes the sprints, sets up a proper fight with Kittel next year. By proper fight I mean proper fight. Kittel is a big man but I reckon too many weights, not enough speed work. Plus Cav will fight dirty, kick some sand in his eyes or tell him his hair is a poor man's Boris Becker, then while he asks for a mirror give him the people's elbow.

Is it still gonna be Phil and Paul on ITV? Any chance they can be put out to pasture and Millar brought in?

Was it last year's tour when Phil called Paul Phil?

I'd like to see more of Imlach and Boardman corpsing on live TV though.

Something to do with Bauke Mollema's name, no doubt involving the word bollock?

I'm going to have to change my team as so many people have got Frooome and Quintana in.

Predictions:

Bardet to have a mare at the ITT and TTT and go bollocks out for polka dots
Valverde wins up Muur de Huy and Muur de Bretagne - in yellow for a few days
Tyler Farrar has a tantrum, Bouhanni is involved
Dan Martin stays upright
Sagan in green
Bardet polka dots (does he qualify for white jersey too?)
Quintana yellow

No rationale for any of this.

Bardet is 24

Hmmm, that name sounds vaguely familiar.... and I think I've heard of that guy as well. And him? Yeah, why not. Oh, and that's the guy with the beard I think. Etc.

Kwiat to do a decent TT, grab a stage win and the yellow jumper for a couple of days in the first week.
Sky's restaurant truck to give the whole team food poisoning.
Hesjedal to be invisible until the 3rd week, when he's 8mins down on GC.

Kwiatkowski is a good shout. I suspect most teams do this but I read that OPQS are big on relaying time splits and power numbers between their guys on a time trial. Maybe this one's a bit short though? Get your head down and go full gas.

I'm starting to wonder if weather might be a factor and benefit someone from a warmer climate? Malori?

Mollema filmed his road to the presentation podium yesterday evening. big turnout!

and @pootsmanuva speak to Bram Tankink, he has one ;)

I think Malori is a good bet irrespective of the weather. He's shown in the past year or so that he's up in the top tier of TT riders.

The course is quite technical apparently so might suit the more explosive, superior bike handling type rider.

I've a sneaking suspicion that Kwiatkowski will do well.

Degenkolb for the Green I think. No GC ambition in the team, and he'll get points on the lumpy stages whilst edging Kristoff on the flat ones. Sagan will be thereabouts but I think he'll be pulling for TS too much to contend.

And now I fully expect Degs to fall off on day two.

Any stages suitable for Tony Martin to do a 175k solo breakaway to win?

All of them.

I think Warren Barguil would dispute this.

Apart from the 8 stages shorter than 175 kms.

Having just read the excellent @mrconde preview over on http://www.c-cycling.com, it seems the course isn't as technical as thought and he thinks Tony Martin is the man to beat (with Dumoulin and Cancellara as the other two favourites).

I'll bet on Canc, this is likely to be his last Tour, he'll want that yellow jersey for a bit before fucking off once it gets lumpy

Velogames...
Is there any hot property at unclassed riders for 4 points? Svein Tuft?

Hang on, 4 points are for riders with a downward sloping trend isn't it?

The panzerwagen will just do another lap.

He has as much chance of doing anything as any other Canadian-Norskie.

I think OGE will do well. SO it Depends on the scoring system (which I cant be bothered to read).

As an incentive, I will be delivering muffins to the office of the winner of the mini-league the next Monday morning.*

*Applies to winning London entrant. Apologies, I'm not regionalist just lazy.

any other Canadian-Norskie

Yeah, I wanted Hesjedal in there as well, but somehow couldn't make it add up in a sensible way.

Lazy tit.

Get up here With my muffin!

Hesjedal was suddenly very Norwegian when he won the Giro. Made me LOL a bit.

Kristoff is awesome though. I know guys that have trained With him when he was starting out. Proper work horse of an athlete.

I have a horrible feeling hes going to be thumping his bars in disapointment a lot this TdF.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/tour-de-france-im-not-a-serious-favourite-but-im-fighting-for-victory-says-rodrguez

Interesting read. Haven't much from Purito recently but he'll be a danger man and looks like he's got his eye on GC rather than stage wins or maybe the polka dots. VERY interesting he talks about Valverde being more of a danger than Quintana, maybe he knows something we don't.