This year’s Tour de France is another grab-bag combination of everything bike shoved into twenty-one stages. It’s as if the Tour organizers got together with a bong and some frites and tried to come up with the bike-iest bike race of all time. You can almost hear Christian and his Prud-homies (see what I did there?), sitting in the bean bags chairs in the Tour basement and tossing ideas around.

(Please read all of these lines out loud with a French accent)

“Do you know what we should include? The Huy, man, that’s a rad hill.”

“Totally, and I like cobbles, we should do that again—with a beer tent filled with bears that you can pet.”

“I like bears.”

“Let’s find some crosswinds too, I’d like to see Geraint Thomas get blown into a ditch again.”

“Yeah, I saw that! That was so cool! Let’s put bears into all the ditches too.”

“What is it with you and bears?”

“I think I’m craving salmon.”

“Let’s add a TTT because, I don’t know—and then we’ll have the second last stage go up Alpe D’ Huez, but let’s keep the stage to Paris boring because I like getting blitzed on champagne on the drive to Paris.”

“Done. Planning the Tour is super easy, let’s get some salmon.”

END TRANSCRIPT

So there you have it, the first week of the Tour, with it’s classics’ crosswinds, cobbles, crashes and the Huy, will definitely knock out a contender or two (Ian Stannard’s job at the Tour this year is to bike-spoon Chris Froome through the first week). There’s also a stage nine TTT, which will guarantee that there will be at least one post-stage team dinner eaten in an awkward, hostile silence (I’m looking at you, AG2R)—and I would prefer to watch the livestream of that awkward team dinner over the coverage of the TTT itself—because TTs are super boring.

The rest of Tour has a bunch of mountains and NO long ITT, which means it’ll be climber’s Tour this year, and they are super fun to watch.

The Contenders 

There’a three-headed beast that will fight for the race win. Barring any cartoon-style mishaps where a GC rider finds himself in a cloud of dust with stars, exclamation points and feet poking out (which very well may happen this year), this year’s main contenders are Chris Froome, Alberto Contador and Nairo Quintana. And that’s pretty much it as far as contenders for the overall GC go, if you think anyone else has a shot, you should stop getting high with Prudhomme. So let’s consider the contenders.

Chris Froome
Sky is like the Consumer Reports of bikes. They test everything from Flowbees to Mood Rings in order to try and capture precious marginal gains. Richie Porte was the guinea pig for the Grand Tour RV (GTRV) at the Giro this year (there were some awkward moments when Richie noticed that all the sheets were monogrammed “CF”, but he brushed off the oversight and quietly hid a dead fish in the AC unit for July), but the UCI banned use of RVs because they are hell bent on destroying the dream of rolling around France in your own private hotel room while you solve crimes in your down time, which is really bad news for French towns haunted by guys in masks trying to drive the inhabitants out so they can buy up all the land at bargain prices.

RVs aside, Froome can climb and he has an explosive jump on the mountains, which will be a necessity this year because all the important things will probably happen uphill. The first week will be perilous for Froome, but I think that Sky has been working on a force field for the cobbled stage (and if that fails, Froome will ride out the stage in Stannard’s back pocket), so Froome should do just fine.

Nairo Quintana
Quintana doesn’t say much, nor does his expression change much during races. He just gets on his bike and gets to business. An attitude which is refreshing, especially when compared to the dooshiest celebration of all time, the Pistolero (and it is the dooshiest, there is no argument here).

Quintana lost the Route du Sud to Contador by 17 seconds in June, but I have the feeling that he’s building up to the Tour. He’s won the Giro and was on his way in the Vuelta last year until he was waylaid by crashes. He is younger than Froome and Contador and is an attacking climber—a riding style which blows the circuits of the Sky Bots. He took a tour of the cobbles during Dwars door Vlaanderen and the E3 this year, and his Movistar team is competent in the TTT. And I’ve heard he’s installed a shock collar on Valverde.

He’s also a big proponent of gender equality in his native Colombia, so if you didn’t like him before, maybe you will start now.

Alberto Contador
Contador is winning the poop out of all the races he’s been in this year, winning the Giro and beating Quintana at the Route du Sud in June. He’s been a factor in all the stage races he’s done this year, and he’s got the added bonus of team owner Oleg Tinkov drunk tweeting him advice during stages. Alberto’s also attempting to win the Giro and the Tour in the same year, something that hasn’t happened since 1998 when it was done by um, Marco Pantani. I’m just going to let that factoid sit there like a big third in the punchbowl.

Vincenzo Nibali
Nibz won the Tour last year thanks to the hard work of his teammates gravity and bone fractures. We can’t be sure that these teammates will be at the Tour again this year. His skillz on the cobbles helped him win last year, but if Froome, Quintana and Contador survive the first week, that doesn’t bode well for Nibz. His Astana team is a tire fire of allegations and suspicions, and his team director is Alexander Vinokourov, the Putin of bikes. All of these factors do not seem like a Tour winning recipe, especially if your strategy for winning involves all of your competitors falling over like fainting goats.

Tejay van IthinkIcanIthinkIcan
Tejay hung close in the Dauphine, and only lost to Froome by ten seconds. His “Little Engine that Could” style of grinding back mountain attacks is appealing and kinda worked against Froome, but will probably be a disaster against Froome, Quintana and Contador together. There’s 14k of ITT this year, which is about 400K too little. Best of luck in 2016, Tejay.

Andrew Talansky
Talansky is another very likable uphill grinder that will be carved into bite-sized chunks by Froome, Quintana and Contador.

Joaquim Rodríguez
J Rod will do that thing where he somehow loses about six minutes in the first two weeks of the Tour and then wins on a mountain after he’s no longer a GC threat

Thibault Pinot
Pinot is alleged to be over of his fear of descending, and he made the podium last year, but he had the same teammates as Nibz. I’m racking my brain to find the most polite way to type “absolutely no chance whatsoever”.

Romain Bardet
Bardet’s AG2R team is the main contender for the “Don’t take down the barriers, we haven’t finished the TTT yet” prize. All indicators point to Bardet not enjoying the team dinner after stage nine.

Sprinters

Alexander Kristoff
Hey, you know who has won more races this year than anybody? Why yes, it’s Kristoff. Don’t let the fact that his helmet fits him like a cat 7 Fred fool you, Kristoff is on a tear this year winning sprinter’s classics like the Scheldeprijs, real Classics like the Freakin’ Ronde van Vlaanderen and the Three Day of De Panne, you know, for variety. He’s durable and fast and he’s got Paolini guiding him, be afraid sprinters, be very afraid.

Peter Sagan
Sagz is in that awkward stage in his career where he’s no longer a pure sprinter, but he hasn’t quite made the jump to classic’s specialist yet, which means he’ll probably win the green jersey—and will be desperately looking for a new team during the Tour so he does’t have to answer Tinkov’s texts about sprint strategy.

Mark Cavendish
Cav beat Kristoff at KBK, and he has some wins at the Tour of California, but that doesn’t feel like the Cav of old. I think he’ll sneak in a win, but that will be about it.

Michael Matthews
The unfortunately nicknamed Michael “Bling” Matthews will be starting his first Tour this year. Matthews is good in stages that are hilly enough to knock out the pure sprinters, unfortunately those stages also suit Degenkolb. Those stages look to be coin flips between the two of them.

John Degenkolb
Degen-stash and Matthews will be battling it out on the hilly flat stages. Degenkolb won Paris Roubaix and Milan San Remo, which are, you know, pretty well known races and he’s also won two stages at Bayern Rundfahrt—which allows me to giggle as I type the word Rundfahrt.

André Greipel
Greipel’s won a stage at the Tour for the past four years in a row, there’s no reason to believe he won’t win a stage again this year.

Arnaud DéMare
DéMare will be in the mix, but fate (or a sniper) will need to play a hand in him getting a win.

Nacer Bouhanni
After a crash at the French National Championships (that’s not the Bouhanni I know!), Bouhanni’s participation was in doubt, but it appears that portions of Bouhanni will take part in the Tour, and those portions will not be enough to win a stage.

The Polka Dot Jersey

I’ve been hard on this competition in year’s past because it’s no longer the goal of riders that it once was. I’ve said in the past that it’s the jersey won by the guy who says “what the hell, I’m close in points, I guess I’ll go for it.” So I did a little digging, and the facts tell me that the last three winners were: Rafal “Hurray! Alberto’s out, I get to ride” Majka, Nairo Quintana and Thomas “I’ll take any jersey that they give out” Voeckler.

Sorry, polka dot jersey, you’re still the most attractive person left at closing time.