The Tour de France has rolled around again and that means only one thing—a pre-Tour Thursday dope scandal—and the Tour day Schmalz is back for its sixth installment. The TdS is a haven for delusion and merriment where I relentlessly tease and make fun of the hard working professionals of the Tour de France. It is obviously not fair that I heckle and toss jibes at the elite of the sport of cycling, but I am a spiteful man, and as such, I must prop up my fragile ego by taking juvenile swipes at those who ride much much faster than I can ever imagine. So without further ado, I bring you my Tour preview.

In essence, this year’s Tour is going to come down to whether Alberto Contador is tired or not. At the "Giro Up Murder Mountains", he not only looked comfortable, he appeared to traipse up those inclines with ease. He was toying with the opposition. He attacked when he wanted to, and was able to follow every attack. He gifted stages. He raced the Giro as if he were sitting with his knees on its shoulders and making it slap itself in the face. "Stop hitting yourself Giro. Why are you hitting yourself?"

Of course, the last time someone pulled off the Giro Tour double was when Marco Pantani did it in 1998 (he probably did it with blood so thick that he had to microwave his extremities to get his circulation going, but that’s neither here nor there). What we have to decipher is whether the effort of the Giro was taxing enough to eliminate the possibility of Contador winning the Tour. Basso tried the double last year and his Tour went over like a fat fart in a Fiat. But I think that Alberto has a better chance at success than Basso. Granted his racing programme has had all the forethought of a stoned Eurorail ticket-holding backpaker’s trip through Europe. "Dude, let’s go to Italy! Cool! What? We don’t have to go back yet? Hey, have you heard of France?" And he had the stress of being investigated and then cleared by the Spanish Federation, a group akin to the most permissive parents in the world. They just bought a keg for Valverde and his friends because they didn’t want them drinking and driving. That’s just realistic partying—c’mon, they are just going to drink anyway.

Despite these complications, Alberto comes in as an overwhelming favorite, and his success will depend upon whether he has been getting his rest and um, eating right…

Which brings us to the race for second place, which may actually be the race for the win, depending upon whether Alberto has to return all the oversized novelty checks and pizza-sized wheels of cheese he wins at this year’s Tour (here’s a hint, Berto, I would stick those cheeses right in the refrigerator—think of them like a piece of wedding cake—you may have to save them for up to a year). Andy Schleck has all the right stuff to end up second, he can climb, he’s done it before and everyone claims he’s too nice to win anything. Andy was turned down as a potential host for a PBS children’s show because he lacked "edginess".

The good news for Andy is that he will have big brother Frank with him again this year, the bad news is that there nothing intimidating about Andy Schleck saying, "I’m going to get my big brother!" Andy and Frank had Gilbert outnumbered at LBL this year, and then proceeded to take kitten-like swipes at him until Gilbert just got annoyed and rode away from them. This is not "stomach full of anger" style racing; one only has to look at Gilbert to see what real angry racing looks like—but Andy and Frank wouldn’t have seen that because Gilbert left them gasping like a pair of anorexic perch—and anger is not best viewed from behind.

The hilly course and decreased TT kilometers do suit Andy’s racing style (the Schleck brothers are to time trialing as the Menendez Brothers are to Father’s Day gifts), but unfortunately the course profile also suits Contador’s talents—and Alberto doesn’t TT as if he’s riding the wrong direction on the course. So it’ll probably be a sad Tour for Andy again, he just has to hold off the other contenders for second (which could turn into first) place. Let’s look at the race for third/second shall we?

Ivan Basso

You know what you never hear? You never hear anyone say, "Remember that audacious attack by Basso?" If Basso wants to win the Tour, he’ll need to take some tactical risks, which he doesn’t do. Which bring us to…

Vino

Vino does attack audaciously (he’s attacking a turnip panini right now), but he’ll most likely be riding this Tour using his own blood, so I don’t see him lighting up the GC.

Jurgen Van den Broeck

Some call him VDB, but I think that may be a disservice. The original VDB is dead and quite frankly, was a bit of a disaster. Van den Broeck is in need of a nickname upgrade, it’s too bad he’s the second and not the third VDB, otherwise we could go with VD3. This moniker conundrum is really bothering me, it even overshadows the fact that VDB will probably finish fifth.

Garvelo

Speaking of fifth, Garvelo brings a potentially three-headed hydra to the race. Ryder Hesjedal, Christian Vandevelde and Tom Danielson all have a case for being the Garvelo leader. Christian has the best case, as he’s finished highest and comes to this year’s race with all of his bones un-cracked, and a win or podium by him would be an absolute delight. Ryder finished ninth last year, but will have to really do something special to hit the top five. Tom Danielson remains Tom Danielson, and is limited by his Eskimo heritage when it comes to processing foods. When your performance excuses finally come down to Eskimo blood, that’s a sign that you are not going to win the Tour.

Sammy Sanchez

It is breathtaking to watch Sammy Sanchez descend down a mountain—it really is a highlight of any Tour stage for me. You know what isn’t breathtaking? Watching Euskaltel do a TTT. Sammy will have to drop like Steven Seagal off the high dive to regain the time that they lose.

Fränk Schleck

If Fränk is in contention for the Tour podium, something will have gone seriously wrong on Team Leopard Schleck. I’m not saying that Fränk will pull any tricks (that would result in his "big brother in flip flops" stick figure sticker getting totally scraped off the back of the Schelck family mini-van), but he should be sacrificing for his brother to win, and that doesn’t bode well for his chances in the GC.

Robert Gesink

Gesink is able to climb terrifically when he wants to, it just seems that he neglects to remember that he should be near the leaders on EVERY stage of a race, if he wants to hit the podium, he should try to keep this in mind. And in his Rabobank kit, he looks like a stretched Razzy, so every time I seen him, I angrily lunge at the screen like a lap dog attacking the TV while watching a Benji movie—I can’t help it—it’s instinct.

Tejay Van Garderen

Tejay is a big potential talent, but he needs a year or two of experience and he needs to wait until the Tour organizers take out their yellow crayon and draw a less hilly race map around France. But it looks like he’ll be working for Tony Martin anyway. Which obliges me to mention…

Tony Martin

Tony Martin in an attack-y race in the mountains equals seventh place.

Cadel Evans

It’s hard to say which Cadel we’ll get this year. Will it be the swashbuckling rainbow-striped Cadel of last year, or will it be the more cautious Cadel that we’ve seen every other year of his career? He was second to Wiggins at the Dauphine, but it looked like he was using the Dauphine to ride into form ("The Dauphine, the Tour’s Turbo Trainer!"), so it’s hard to gauge how he’ll fare. Personally I’d like to see him get yellow so we could have his tiny dog on TV more, but it’s not wise to go against the facts—it’s feels like he’s due a fourth place.

Chris Horner

Chris Horner is the drunk guy photo bombing the Radio Shack sorority’s group picture at the spring formal. If he’s looking to capitalize on his Tour of California success, he’s going to have to win the race to lead the Shack. This inter-team race will make the early mountain stages interesting, but will only serve to see who finishes sixth.

Janez Brajkovic

If Horner is a photo bomber, Brajkovic is the guy Horner is blocking in the picture.

Andreas Kloden

I’ve always felt that Kloden was the worst teammate you could ever have. He used to chase Ulrich and Vino, and really only seemed to be in it for himself. He’ll try at least one sneaky self-serving move during the race, and I will enjoy watching it come to grief.

I suppose this is as good as time as any to take a look at our June champions, first up, Tour de Suisse winner, Levi Leipheimer. Levi triumphed over his diminutive doppelg
nger Damiano Cunego in the 9 stage romp through Europe’s Wisconsin. We know he can win shorter stage races, but the issue here is that Levi has trouble with three week races—not to mention the top shelf at the supermarket—and he usually has a bad day or two at the Tour.

In the interest of math, let’s take a statistical look at the success of the other past Suisse winners at the Tour. The past ten winners are: Fränk Schleck, Fabian Cancellara, Roman Kreuziger, Vladimir Karpets, Jan Ullrich, Aitor González, Jan Ullrich, Alexandre Vinokourov, Alex Zülle and Lance Armstrong. Their subsequent Tour placings were as follows: DNF, 91st, 13th, 14th, DNS (hello Puerto!), DNS, 4th, 3rd, DNS and 1st. Tossing out the DNFs and DNSes, we get an average Tour finish of 21st for the past Suisse winners. I suppose that doesn’t bode well for Levi’s chances, and it’s a slight downgrade from last year’s 13th place.

Also winning in June is Bradley Wiggins at the Dauphine ahead of Cadel Evans. The past ten winners of the Dauphine are: Janez Brajkovic, Alejandro Valverde, Alejandro Valverde, Cristophe Moreau, Levi Leipheimer, Inigo Landaluze, Iban Mayo, Lance Armstrong, Lance Armstrong and Cristophe Moreau. They went on to finish the Tour in the following places: 43rd, DNS, 9th, 37th, 12th, 100th, DNF, 1st, 1st and DNF. Once again tossing out the DNFs and DNSes, we get an average Tour finish of 29st for the past Dauphine winners.

Wiggins was able to hold off the assaults of Cadel Evans (don’t laugh) at the Dauphine, and was also able to Indurain his way to a win by riding steadily up the climbs. I doubt he will have the chance to do that at this year’s Tour, but 29th seems a little pessimistic. You could talk me into a top ten finish for Wiggo, but will England be happy with that? Probably not.

When we reverse engineer the Tour numbers by looking at the placing of the last ten winners in both the Dauphine and the Suisse, we find that nine out of ten winners used the Dauphine as a warm up (suck it Switzerland). Only Lance Armstrong in 2001 successfully used the Suisse as warm up (and if Tyler and Floyd are to be believed, he used it for lab tampering practice also). If we use the finishes of the Tour winners in the Dauphine as an indicator for success, the average finish of past Tour winners in the Dauphine averages out to be 6.111, so without further ado, let me introduce you to your predicted Tour winner (rounded to the closet number) for 2011—Cristophe Kern! Don’t try to deny it—there’s math involved.

The Sprinters

This year, instead of having two or three bonus sprints per stage, the bonus sprints for each stage have been congealed into one big pot of argy bargy per stage. The points go fifteen deep, so the bonus sprints will resemble a mini-finish for each stage. This will add chaos to the race, as opportunistic racers will counter the sprints. This will make the job of the sprinter’s teams harder also, as they will be involved in more chasing. Look for the strongest teams to do well in the hunt for the green, and look for Bert Grabsch to demolish the hotel buffet after every sprint stage.

Mark Cavendish

I think Cav has 4 sprint wins in him this year. Stage one is a road stage, but the organizers have deviously made the finish uphill, and Cav has trouble with any finish that tilts higher than a highway overpass. He’ll take his wins later in the race on the flats finishes that allow Bert Grabsch a chance to get to the front and sweat like pork all day. Look for Cav’s first win to bring forth tears of relief on the podium, look also for Cav’s Fourth win to elicit a chest thump and Greipel-taunting crotch grab.

Philippe Gilbert

Gilbert is not technically a sprinter, but this is the "Year of Phil", and I will not count him out of any competition. He could wear yellow, green or even be the lantern rouge if he wants to (here’s a tip—he doesn’t want to be lantern rouge). This year’s first stage has a profile that suits him perfectly. And if he gets yellow, he may want to try and keep it. There’s three uphill finishes in the first week, which could put him in contention for the green jersey. And we’ve seen this year what Phil is like when he wants to win something (or he wants to bleach his hair), he has been racing like an animal this year and he makes me delightfully wet myself just a little with his beastly attacks. If you don’t like watching Gilbert, there’s something wrong with you, and you are NOT coming to my party at Color Me Mine.

Tyler Farrar

Tyler has the disadvantage of sprinting in the Cavendish era. Hopefully Thor SMASH (as a note of explanation, I type SMASH after every mention of Thor’s SMASH name—it’s been this way for six years now) won’t be riding a disgruntled Tour and Tyler can count on a Norwegian fling to the finish. They will have to play it perfectly to come away with a win, and if he wins it will be a great day and there won’t be a dry eye in France at the podium presentation.

Andre Greipel

Remember Greipel? Kinda? Well, this year’s Tour won’t help jog your memory.

Alessandro Petacchi

If the Tour is a VCR, Petacchi’s is blinking 12:00—and he’s so old he uses a VCR. This does not bode well for his chances at the Tour, and he won’t have advantage of Italian relegation judging the like he did at the Giro.

Side stories

John Gadret and Nicolas Roche are back together again! After not giving up his wheel to teammate and AG2R team leader Roche last year (which prompted Roche to threaten to put his head through a window), Gadret is back and ready to help no one. I will be watching every interaction between them with the utmost interest.

Tommy Voeckler

Tommy Voeckler has grown up before our eyes, he started as a plucky kid who pulled faces trying to hold the yellow jersey and has grown into a cold blooded French assassin. He still pulls the faces, but he does it while he crosses the finish line first. I am not afraid to admit that I delight in watching him attack—and he will.

Katusha

Katusha has dropped Joaquin Rodrigeuz in favor of fielding an all Russian team. This is akin to dropping all the Globetrotters off your basketball team in order to give the Washington Generals a shot. Kolobnev can do well, but I’m pretty sure Denis Galimzyanov isn’t going have a Meadowlark Lemon style Tour.

Hoogerland is in the Tour! Everyone’s favorite attacking Dutch madman is in the race! Ours is not to question why Hoogerland attacks, ours is just to wager on how many attacks he will put in on every stage, the over/under is set at two attacks per stage.

The Polka Dot Jersey

The climber’s jersey competition has come to resemble Fred Durst’s career as of late, initially fueled by drugs and wildly popular, but now mostly an afterthought. Look for someone who’s French to give a crap about the polka dots about halfway through the race.