The easy thing to say is that this Tour was won back in April on stage 4 of the Tour of the Basque Country in a pile-up that sent Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel to the hospital and knocked Primos Roglic out of the race. If I were trying to be clever, I’d find some contrarian stance to try and prove that this isn’t the case, but that would be foolhardy, it looks like Pogo has this one wrapped up. Well, thanks for coming, TdS preview over.

Still here? Well, I guess we can delve into gossip and wild theoretical options for alternate outcomes. LET THE SPECULATION BEGIN!

Brief lingo note: Vingo= Vingegaard, Pogo=Pogačar, Rogo= Roglič. This makes my life easier.

I always like to go back and check what my predictions were for the previous Tour (I’m wrong a lot, but the Tour is a crap shoot, so whatever), and I predicted that Vingo would buckle under the pressure and that Pogo would recover from his wrist injury in time to take the Tour win. That prediction was almost completely wrong. Vingo has ice flowing through his veins and may be part android. He may seem annoyed by having to do press interviews, but he doesn’t seem to care one bit (byte?) about what gets written, at least as far as the effect on his racing performance goes. He’s a cool customer, but this year he’s ordering butt loaf from the bike deli.

This year, the roles have been reversed and Vingo is the one recovering from injuries while Pogo has been unaffected by any maladies. But it’s not as if he didn’t try. Even before all his rivals hit the ditch in Spain, he planned to do the Giro-Tour double this year—an absolutely bananas idea in this day and age—but that’s why Pogo has so much appeal, he just sends it to see what happens. He’s a throwback. Also a throwback? Winning the Giro-Tour double, which hasn’t been done since Pantani in 1998, in an era when um, ah… yeah…

Let’s just let that turd bob in the punchbowl while we move on.

What about that Netflix, huh?

Unchained season two has been entertaining. Does it attempt to create needless drama and amplify small situations into table-overturning housewife-like scenes? Absolutely. Pidcock is not secretly taking the air out of Carlos Rodríguez’s tire before every stage. Would he like to be team leader? Yes. Did he see the writing on the GC wall last year? Of course, how could he miss it? This is the year of “Ineos is hoping for a stage win”, which is a downgrade from years past.

UAE got smart this year and allowed access to Pogo, he’s been more than ready for his close-up, and he was entertaining. Pogo gets media, and whether he’s genuine or not (I think he is btw), he comes across as someone you want to root for. As opposed to…

Jumbo, Jumbo, Jumbo. (Insert “Are we the baddies?” Meme here.) As good as Pogo is at winning fans, Jumbo is at killing any buzzes found in their vicinity. Richard Plugge should just buy a Darth Vader helmet and get it over with. His beer-drinking comments about FDJ were at best a clumsy unnecessary punch down at a much smaller team (one that contained Saint Pinot, btw), or at worst a clumsy attempt at a deflection away from Jumbo being um, really dominant. Do I think the audio of the roadside booing was turned up a bit? Yes, I do. Do I think that Jumbo is inching closer to the classic “the French just don’t like winners” canard? Very much so. FYI, that strategy doesn’t work, Jumbo, google “US Postal”, and find out.

So I guess we should look at the contenders

Tadej Pogačar 

It seems like Pogo has this wrapped up. Does he bust out the yellow Colnago on stage 1? Quite possibly. A win here will put him up one on Vingo in Tour wins. Can’t wait for next year!

Jonas Vingegaard

Vingo really got messed up in Spain. Suffering a broken collarbone, broken ribs, and a punctured lung. These are not injuries that allow a build-up to the Tour. He hasn’t raced at all, so things don’t look bright. Jumbo is qualifying their statement about his ambitions at the Tour, and Matteo Jorgenson is probably hitting the team Slack channel with statements like, “Went out riding today, felt really good, ready for whatever the team needs at the Tour.”

Remco Evenepoel

Remco was in the same crash as Vingo, but he’s recovered better. He raced the Dauphine and finished 7th, which doesn’t bode well for his Tour chances. He’s aslo never beat either Vingo or Pogo head-to-head, and he lost to Rogo in the Dauphine this year, so his chances of winning the tour can be summed up in this imaginary L’Équipe headline:

“Evenepoel Wins Crash-Devestated Tour”

Primož Roglič 

Let’s check with L’Équip again:

“Roglic wins Tour after top three contenders sleep through alarms and miss their TT start times by 2 hours.”

A Rogo side note, Red Bull has entered the sport. Not content with just decorating the heads of Wout and Pidcock, they’re going all in on a team sponsorship. Feels like they’re going to go team leader shopping, and they aren’t going to the Primož-mart. Life=unfair.

All the other contenders

Again, let’s check L’Équip from Monday, July 22:

“Half the peloton sidelined with scabies.” 

I’m not saying that a Pogo win is guaranteed (gravity comes for us all), but it is his to lose.

The Cav thing

Mark Cavendish is trying to get the all-time Tour stage win record, which he shares with Eddy Merckx. The odds of this happening are tremendously slim. Astana did get the band back together by paring with Morkov and Cav. (They won 4 stages together in 2021.) I love Morkov, in my opinion, he’s the greatest leadout of all time, but he’s a 39-year-old leading out a 39-year-old. If they pull off sprint win, it will be an amazing feat with a huge celebration—followed by a long soak in a hot tub filled with liniment.

The main reason why Cav won’t win is because Arnuad De Lie will be present at the Tour. He just beat everybody at the Belgian National Championships, and it looks like it will be either him or Jasper Philipsen getting those sprint stage wins.

Cav does have a super hot bike though.

The Route

Route positives – no prologue, they should never have one ever again. Will they have another one? Yes, they never learn.

Negatives – an ITT to end the race. I hate TTs and I will only watch if forced otherwise, my Tour watching ends on July 20th. I can get the recap, that will be fine with me.

I might try and find the NYVC Twitter account and fire it up for stages, so navigate to that hellscape site if you dare.