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  • I find it fascinating how received wisdom changes based on a rider's last performance of note. Before the Giro, Froome was considered to have one major weakness, backed up with some solid evidence, which suggested that he weakened in the final week and could lose time. His 2013 and 2015 Tour wins and last year's Vuelta win backed this theory up. After the Giro, where he made his race winning move on the final Friday of the race, he's now perceived as being an expert in winning GTs in the final week and this is why he remains the favourite.

    It'll be interesting to see how this plays out over the final week, Thomas has what would normally be considered a race winning lead, especially as he's shown he's the equal of his rivals in the mountains and is a strong time triallist so probably has enough of a buffer to hold off Froome, Dumoulin and Roglic. He has, however, never finished a GT without having a bad day, which is why Sky continue to hedge their bets on him and keep Froome in a leadership role.

    Both Dumoulin and Froome have a tough Giro in their legs, so you'd expect the combined fatigue from that plus this Tour to be felt most over the final few stages. Roglic has been consistently excellent this year, but is unproven over three weeks, whilst Bardet and the rest have lost too much time to realistically challenge.

    The winner, therefore, is likely to be one of the current top four but you can make a case for each of them as to why they'll win, but also why they won't. Hopefully it'll be exciting watching this unfold.

  • Exciting last week ahead, and it wasn't boring to start with! I'm especially curious as to Sky's further tactics because if they really want Froome to win (as Thomas himself said in the interview at Alpe D', and the prime bike position on the team car seems to indicate) there's not nearly enough time between him and Dumoulin at the moment. He'll have to attack.

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