|
 The Spaniard is looking to achieve the Giro d'Italia/Tour double for
the first time since the late Marco Pantani in 1998 but the
competition has never been fiercer for the seven-time grand tour
champion who will retire at the end of next year.
Chris Froome, the 2013 champion, and Nairo Quintana, who hopes to
become the first Colombian to win the Tour, look fresher while
defending champion Vincenzo Nibali will also be in the mix on a
treacherous course.
The first goal will be to make it to the first rest day after riding
on cobbles, through potentially bunch-splitting winds and mastering
dangerous courses as well as a tricky team time trial, a discipline
Team Sky have failed to master lately.
"Organizers want to create a show every day, but they put the riders
at risk," Eusebio Unzue, Quintana's Movistar team manager, told
Reuters.
Last year, Froome and Contador crashed out of the Tour and Nibali
powered to victory as Quintana had skipped the race.
This time, all four should be in decent shape when the three-week
race starts in Utrecht, Netherlands, on Saturday.
Should they fail, a swarm of second fiddles or young guns led by
France's Thibaut Pinot and Romain Bardet, will be ready to seize
their opportunity in a very mountainous Tour.
"If one of them (Pinot, Bardet or American Tejay van Garderen)
attacks and we start looking at each other, it could change the
Tour," said Quintana, whose ability to attack far from the finish
could disrupt Froome's well-oiled Team Sky machine.
AGGRESSIVE NIBALI
Nibali, whose Astana team came close to losing their license over
doping problems, have looked out of from lately but he retained his
Italian title last weekend in aggressive fashion, suggesting he has
the legs to unsettle his rivals in the first week on the cobbles,
just like he did last year.
Contador, similarly, will use every opportunity to aggress Froome,
and the Tinkoff-Saxo rider has probably marked the dangerous descent
from the col d'Allos (stage 17), the highest point of the Tour, as
an attacking chance.
[to top of second column] |
The last Tour featuring so many big guns was probably the vintage
1986 edition won by American Greg LeMond.;
This year's race also features a handful of outsiders, such as
Pinot, Bardet, Van Garderen and also France's Warren Barguil and
Britain's Simon Yates, plus Spanish veterans Alejandro Valverde and
Joaquim Rodriguez.
Even if first-week stages usually reserved for them will finish
uphill (Mur de Huy, Mur de Bretagne in stages 3 and 8), the
sprinters will get their chance to shine.
All signs point to a duel between the resurgent Mark Cavendish of
Britain -- looking to improve from his 25 stage wins -- and
man-of-the-season Alexander Kristoff of Norway in the absence of
German Marcel Kittel, with another German, Andre Greipel, looking to
snatch stage wins.
They will be challenged in the points classification by Germany's
John Degenkolb, Slovakia's Peter Sagan and Frenchmen Bryan Coquard
and Nacer Bouhanni.
For the first time an African team will be on the Tour when
MTN-Qhubeka line up at the start in Utrecht.
(Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Ken Ferris)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
