This year’s Tour pays homage to the 100th anniversary of the first inclusion of the Pyrenees in the Tour route. This is of course, the 97th edition of the Tour, and sharp eyed readers will notice the numerical discrepancy—as 100 is greater than 97. This gap exists because the Tour was interrupted for two World Wars, so not only can we blame Germany for dark-socked, sandal-shod tourists and sausage so delicious it transformed Jan Ullrich from a Tour winning machine into a doughy disco denizen; we can also blame Germany for forcing us to do the math required to accommodate for the gaps in the Tour’s continuity—and wars (although WWI was more a result of entangled European alliances than anything else, but WWII—that one’s totally on you, Germany), we should probably not forget those. Thanks again, Germany!

Teutonic transgressions aside, the Pyrenean tribute Tour means that there will be lots of hills, mountains and drunken Spanish fans near the end of the race. And with only 59 kilometers of time trialing (8 of those in the prologue, and no team time trial—sorry Garmin), it stands to reason that this Tour will be won with attacks in the mountains. The wild card in this Tour however, will be the early stages. Stage two could see Lance Armstrong attacking Contador in a crosswind again (just like last year’s Tour!), and stage three will pass over 13.2 kilometers of hellishly Northern cobbles. And if you’re Spanish, you just wet yourself just a little bit reading that sentence. And don’t try and deny it, we know better Señor Spotty Pants.

In short, this will be a Tour that favors those that can climb and gain time in the mountains, the final time trial will settle the final seedings, but there will probably be large chunks of time separating the climbing haves and the climbing have-nots. This will not be a good Tour for: those who cannot attack in the mountains, those who rely on their time trialing to separate themselves on their rivals, or those racers who are old. And don’t shake that yellow wristband at me, you know it’s true. But enough about the route, we all know that the racers make the race, so let’s examine who will be making this year’s Tour.

The Overall Contenders
Alberto Contador
Barring any stomach flu, cobble-based disasters, or missed starts due to dodgy directions from the free Radio Shack GPS in the Tour gift bag, it’s hard to imagine how Alberto Contador loses this Tour. He’s won stage races already this year; he won on Alpe d’Huez in the Dauphine (although he couldn’t shake that pesky Brajkovic—take note, Lance); he had a blip at the Dauphine time trial, but of course, he did win the prologue. There just doesn’t seem to be much to dissuade me from thinking he won’t win the Tour again this year.

You could say that he doesn’t have as strong a team as last year, but if the rumors about Berto’s Astana teammates preferring Lance last year are to be believed, he didn’t have a whole lot of team support at last year’s Tour, and he won that race by about 9 bus stops. I’d think that any warm bodies willing to lend a hand will be an upgrade from his team last year. Plus, Lance won’t have the keys to Astana’s team cars this year, so Berto will have no trouble getting a ride to the start—not to mention the fact that there won’t be any Texas "upper deckers" waiting in his hotel toilet every night this year either.

It’s his Tour to lose. He’s been preparing quietly and will be ready in July. And speaking of preparing quietly, have you noticed how peaceful Alberto’s run up to the Tour has been this year (and for that matter, how quiet he’s always been before EVERY Grand Tour he enters)? Hmm, what’s different this year? I seem to sense a lack of snippy tweets coming from the Contador camp. Oh, that’s right, Alberto barely tweets. He has no PR firm guiding him along. He doesn’t make videos of himself to post on his website. What’s missing this year—oh, that’s right, Lance and Bruyneel aren’t around to color him as petulant, inexperienced or as a teammate who doesn’t follow the script.

Simply put, Berto’s preparations are peaceful this year because he’s not annoyed. He had good reason to be annoyed last year. He was by far the best stage racer in the world coming into the Tour, yet he had to pretend that he should share team leadership with an old codger coming out of retirement who hadn’t raced in three years. Then that same pensioner broke his collarbone, yet still wanted to work out the team leadership for the Tour "on the road". To be honest, Contador showed an amazing amount of grace in the situation. Imagine if you will, a parallel scenario. What if Miguel Indurain decided to come back and join the US Postal team in 2000? How do you think a young Lance Armstrong would’ve reacted? Would he have stayed quiet? Would he have agreed to let the race decide the team leader? Or would he have grabbed Kevin Livingston by the scruff of the neck and tossed him into Indurain’s spokes just before the prologue began?

The Schlecks
I’m grouping the Schlecks together, not because I think they both have a chance at winning the Tour (I don’t), but because I am trying to save space. To put it in cinematic terms, Frank is the Fredo to Andy’s Michael Corleone—older and less talented but an inspired brothel operator (I made up one of those traits—can you guess which one?). Frank just won the Tour de Suisse with an inspired non-disastrous final time trial, but Andy is the climbing talent in the family, and this Tour favors climbers.

The Schlecks will be able to take advantage of their Classics savvy teammates in the northern stages, as Fabian Cancellara and Stuey O’Grady will be able to drag them over the cobbles and tell them to stop crying as they fly over the cobbles. Unfortunately, they won’t be able to follow Fabian in the final time trial, and that’s where Andy will leak time all over the course like a dowager’s cat leaking urine all over a fainting couch.

The Schlecks also have the additional distraction of starting a new Luxembourg super team, which, um, means that they will be on it. Maybe they will give Kim Kirchen a call? But regardless, it will make for slightly icy communication between their director Bjarne Riis and themselves, as their leaving Saxo Bank could portend the downfall of Bjarne’s home for wayward pros. Look for Bjarne to try and direct the Schleck Brothers into oncoming traffic or off the sides of multiple mountains.

Lance Armstrong
I said last year that he wouldn’t win the Tour, and I haven’t seen anything this year to dissuade me from thinking he will not win the Tour again. Certainly, we will hear his name mentioned as a contender with a straight face (or in Bob Roll’s case, a face contorted by the effort required to form basic English sentences) from the VS tumescence squad, but he isn’t winning. To be honest, he isn’t even the strongest contender on his own team, that would be Janez Brajkovic, who just won the Dauphine ahead of none other than Alberto Contador. Janez stuck with him in the mountains and then beat him in the time trial. On any team other than The Shack, Janez would be hailed as a revelation, but on the team with Lance, he only serves as an "inconvenient youth".

In a nutshell, in order to win the Tour, Lance will need Janez Brajkovic to listen to Bruyneel’s voice in his earpiece as the Hog tells him that "Lance is right behind you"; he will need Andy Schleck to ride his typical time trial; and he will need Alberto Contador end up bleeding in a ditch in Northern France (this is the only reason I can see for the inclusion of former token Astana Kazakh Dmitriy Muravyev on the Shack Tour team—look for him to get curiously tangled in Contador’s spokes just as they hit the cobbles). So basically, Lance will need a combination of calamity, coercion and clocked-circuit catastrophe to get within a sniff of the top step of the podium.

He’s announced via his Twitter account (which he’s blocked us from—oh, how will we get our Lance news?) that this will be his last Tour, but he’s already had more retirement Tours than the Who, so who can tell if this retirement will take? And I still think he’s a bit of a dick.

Ivan Basso
Basso just won the Giro and now he has his sights set on winning the Tour, some thing that hasn’t been done since Marco Pantani did it in 1998. If I were Basso, I’m not so sure I would play up any comparisons between myself and Pantani, lest it bring about cavity searches so intrusive that the AFLD will need to number and count their flashlights before every excursion. You know who the AFLD is don’t you? They’re the doping agency that doesn’t sit around and have a casual coffee with guys who they have to watch whip out and use their man business, so you know they mean business.

Basso’s Tour participation also means that there will opportunities to mention his sister Elisa, who is a sort of Italian Kardashian; famous for not doing much at all and a Google image search of her name with safe search off will bring up photos of her unencumbered by clothing within the first few photos. She’s also in jail for drug trafficking, well, she may not be, but I’m not going to do the research to find out, as it will interfere with certain masculine incarceration fantasy sequences that must be preserved at all costs.

Basso will have a bit of "Tour"-moil (sweet pun, right?) this year, as he’s bringing Roman Kreuziger with him as his lieutenant, and Roman will have to shelve his Tour ambitions for another year as he watches Ivan grimace his way through the mountains. Basso does have an outside shot at winning this race though, and if he does, watch out for the extra-terrestrial comparisons to start fyling.

Denis Menchov
There are three men riding this year who have won three grand tours, can you name them? Sure there’s Contador and Armstrong (well, for now, the French can be very petulant when it comes to erasing the record books), but did you know Menchov’s won three Grand Tours (two outright and one because of Roberto Heras’ love of thick, thick blood)? He has!

This year Menchov will undoubtedly be having flashbacks to the 2007 Tour when he was challenged for the leadership of Rabobank by a pale, waifish climber from Northern Europe. Robert Gesink is no Michael Rasmussen of course, as people actually like Gesink. He is a good climber, and in this year’s Tour that’s important; but Gesink will have to enter the final time trial with about a day’s gap in order to win the Tour. Menchov will quietly grind his way to a top ten placing, and no one will be the wiser.

Carlos Sastre
If you don’t like Carlos Sastre, there’s something wrong with you. He’s quiet, classy and lets his legs do the talking (plus, he’s had a dust up with Christophe Moreau—who wouldn’t want to have a reason to punch Moreau?). That being said, the 2008 Tour winner will need a string of miracles (like the ones that created Justin Bieber, worldwide sensation) to happen in rapid succession for a chance to win the Tour. I’m not saying it’s impossible; it’s just very improbable (like Mr Bieber’s singing career lasting past his 21st birthday).

Michael Rogers
He did win the Tour of California, but so far the expiration date on Michael Rogers in stage races appears to be 10 days.

Cadel Evans
Has anyone been more transformed by winning the World Championship than Cadel Evans? Sure, many riders have turned to striped piles of slow after winning the jersey (excuse me, Mr. Vainsteins, can you top off my coffee for me?), but winning the World Road Championship has oddly turned Cadel into a tactically savvy and aggressive racer. Cadel has undergone a transformation akin to that of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly or of Courtney Love going from a crazy person to an even crazier person.

He’s a grinding climber in a Tour that will reward explosive climbers, but perhaps this new aggressive and tactical Cadel will go on the attack and try to get out ahead of his climbing competition—it can happen.

Bradley Wiggins
Team Sky is dedicated to finding a British Tour winner within the next five years, and after this year’s Tour they will have four years left to achieve that goal, because Wiggins isn’t going to win this Tour. This will be the first year that he gets to prepare specifically for the Tour, and he can hang in the mountains; but this Tour isn’t made for guys who can just hang in the mountains. He’s going to be battling for third place, and that seems about right.

Christian Vande Velde
I restate my promise from last year’s Tour to overturn cars and set them aflame in my neighborhood if VDV wins the Tour, but I get the feeling that my neighbor’s Fiero will be safe again this year. VDV goes into this year’s Tour with less broken bones than last year (only a collarbone and some ribs this year), so that’s a plus, and he will probably be Garmin’s undisputed leader (unless Zabriskie wakes up and realizes that he can ride fast), so he has those things going for him.

He has a strong team, but there’s no team time trial this year, so he will need to gain time in the mountains. All of these ingredients seem like they will make a fine bummer sandwich, but there’s always hope, and the off chance that Muravyev will take out more than just Contador.

The Polka Dot Jersey
The polka dot jersey is like that quasi-attractive member of the opposite sex that’s still lingering around at closing time—you didn’t intend to go after it—but it’s right there and, you know, what the hell? No one really sets out to get the polka dot jersey anymore, it just seems to fall into people’s laps these days. And like that late night hook up, the polka dot jersey has consequences, as four of the last five winners have been sanctioned for doping. In fact, the Tour organizers should consider changing the jersey from red polka dots on white to an old tyme oversized prison stripe pattern, just to eliminate the middleman.

The Green Jersey
So far Mark Cavendish has cagily eliminated at least two of his green jersey rivals (Tom Boonen and Heinrich Haussler) in one falling swoop at the Tour of Switzerland, but he will still have to get through a few others before he can claim his green jersey. Tyler Farrar has taken some quality wins this year and won two Giro stages against good competition, so he will be challenging Cav at the finishes. Thor SMASH (for those of you new to the TdS, every time I type Thor’s SMASH name, I have to type in the word SMASH in all caps behind his name—as he is mighty, and I may have a slight man crush on him. I assure it’s all perfectly harmless, and I have no restraining orders involving Mr Hushovd—honestly.) is showing some form finally this year, and he’s just won the Norwegian championships, so he will be wearing the Norwegian champion’s jersey at the Tour. All is right in the world. And that’s it as far as the green jersey candidates go, unless Oscar Freire wins a few stages and starts to show some interest.

Last year Cav was by far the fastest guy in the sprints, but he’s down a few leadout guys, so the finishes will be less controlled. That actually works in Cav’s favor, as he doesn’t really need a leadout, but the chaos and mayhem of a finish un-controlled by Columbia could lead to Cav again playing the part of bowling ball to the wobbly pins of the other sprinters; as he desperately makes his way to the finish line. I for one am looking forward to the sprints this year with anticipation akin to that of a Deep Purple fan awaiting a county fair encore of "Smoke on the Water"—in other words, intoxicated, underemployed and shirtless.

TdS Programming note
I will be in Iowa, the land that the Tour forgot, for the first three days of the Tour, so filling in for me will be the very capable and mildly attractive Mike Creed, who is a gainfully employed bicycle racer.