I’m going to start off this year’s tour day schmalz with a record setting understatement and claim that this year’s Tour de France will be run under unusual circumstances. Normally, when it comes to the Tour, the phrase “unusual circumstances” denotes some sort of route change or a shortened stage, but in 2020 unusual circumstances could range anywhere from “COVID stops the race on stage 3 and a sprinter finally wins the Tour” to “a thunderstorm that spews fire instead of rain scorches the Alps to smoldering ash”. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that what we cannot predict how things will turn into a poop show, we just have to come to grips that things will be a poop show and move on from there.

Having asserted that it will be impossible to predict what’s going to happen at the Tour, I’m now going to go ahead and try to predict what’s going to happen at the Tour.

Mayhem. Mayhem will happen. Normally, predicting a Tour winner is pretty easy. You look at who has been winning, check on them at the Dauphine or the Tour de Suisse and then you have pretty good idea of who will be challenging for the win. It’s not complicated. Even I have a decent track record at picking Tour winners, and I can’t be counted on to remember how to properly spell “recieve”. But this year’s lack of tune-up races has made predicting the Tour nearly impossible. It’s difficult to gauge racer’s fitness from just a few weeks of racing, and racers have been flung into the European season without the usual long, straight and boring Middle Eastern races that help them hone their pack skills before coming back to race on the Mario Kart-worthy courses of Europe. And it shows. Crashes are happening everywhere. Remco Evenepoel got flung off a bridge, Primoz Roglic crashed out of the Dauphine—it’s been a rough season.

It’s also a rough season for racers who race themselves into shape. Racers who would normally have a few months of racing under their belts are going to the Tour with only a few days or weeks. These “race to train” guys are at a disadvantage when competing against the “train to race” crowd. I can’t be bothered to research who is behind on their normal number of days of racing in the lead up to this Tour, but I bet it will be pretty easy to figure out after the race who’s in the “race to train” crowd. 
And perhaps the biggest potential twist in this year’s Tour is the looming spectre of COVID-19. You didn’t think there’d be anything written in 2020 that didn’t reference COVID-19, did you? The Tour organizers have stated that any team with two positive COVID-19 tests from ANYONE (on the team OR team staff) will be removed. This means you could have mechanics or soigneurs having an effect on the race that is much more pronounced. Will we see team swannies coughing on the evening buffets of rival teams? Hard to say, but it will add another wrinkle to the Tour.

UPDATE: The Tour seemed to soften their stance on this, while not exactly saying how they will do that. So there will be even more mayhem!

The Course
It’s just all uphill. Hills and mountains everywhere, even the ITT is uphill. It comes on the penultimate day, and could be the deciding factor in a crazy race, which I hate because I hate ITTs.

The Contenders
I will preface this section by saying that it’s nearly guaranteed the one or more of the main contenders will crash out of this year’s Tour. Sure, it seems like that happens almost every year, but this year will be even more brutal. The combination of the lack of fitness and the lack of racing will be a recipe for mayhem. That first week is going to be brutal. 

Primoz Roglic
At the Dauphine on the Col de Porte, Roglic didn’t even to have to stand up to drop almost every 2020 Tour hopeful. He simply set Sepp Kuss to “stun” and rode away after Sepp’s work was done. Then a few stages later, he fell down. Is he too injured to win? I have no idea, but if he’s healed up, he’s going to be hard to beat—especially now that we’ve got the pack of “Jumbo Bees” (that’s funnier if you pronounce “jumbo” in the Euro “yumbo” manner) at the front of the race.

Egan Bernal
Egan Bernal is a really good bike racer, like good enough to eliminate not one, but two British Tour champions from a British team’s Tour line-up. He won La Route d’Occitanie in early August, but had to drop out of the Dauphine with back pains. If he heals up in time for the Tour, it will be fun to watch the Ineos-bots fight it out with the Jumbo Bees.

The Rest
I’m not going to say these guys have no chance to win the Tour, because there’s always hope when it comes to disasters happening to the main contenders (note: Nibali’s entire Grand Tour career), but if Roglic or Bernal come in form and escape mayhem, these guys don’t have a shot.

Richie Porte
Richie Porte is a really good one-week stage race racer. If the Tour were one week long, he’d be a shoo-in. There’s an outside chance that the Tour could be one week this year, so this could be Richie’s best chance ever? If the race sees stage 11, Porte’s probably done for.

Adam Yates
Mitchelton Scott has announced that they’re targeting stage wins, so I guess this will be a last YOLO Tour for Yates before he joins Ineos and never gets to challenge Bernal’s Tour leadership.

Tadej Pogacar
Pogacar won the last Tour of California (sorry, I don’t see it coming back), and came third in last year’s Vuelta, but he hasn’t been really lighting it up as of late, but this is 2020, and anything can happen (like me insisting on still typing YOLO). Maybe he wins, but it seems unlikely.

Tom Dumoulin
Is there anyone who seems more excited than Dumoulin to NOT be the sole team leader? He seems to be super-excited to just help his teammates and race his bike. The guy is a born backup quarterback, a Dutch Don Strock, if you will.

Thibaut Pinot
Please, please, please let Pinot be in contention in the third week. I cannot begin to imagine the faces to be pulled, the tears to be wept, the agony to be relished. It would be a delight. WE MUST MAKE THIS HAPPEN.

Pinot also has an Instagram account for one of his goats, in case you need another reason to like Pinot. 

Nairo Quintana
And on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum—but to me just as delightful—a win by Nairo Quintana would evidence no facial expressions whatsoever. Nairo seems to have flourished after leaving the Real Housewives of Movistar, but after a strong early season (winning two stage races in February), he seems to have slowed slightly. I am a huge Nairo fan, and if he wins I will overturn my neighbor’s Subaru, but will do it with no expression on my face.

Wout Van Aert
OK, not a contender, but raise your hand if you thought Wout was always going to be owned by Mathieu van der Poel. Yeah, my hand is raised also. Wout is happening with wins at Milan Sanremo, Strade Bianche and a sprint win at the Dauphine. We’ll have to see if the Jumbo Bees let him go after the green jersey, because it’s definitely a possibility. 

Mikel Landa
You can always count on Landa to defeat Landa. Just toss him out onto the course, and he’ll find a way to not win. But people will be falling down this year, so he may Nibali his way to a win.

Rigoberto Uran/Daniel Martinez
One of these guys just Nibali-ed his way to win (Nibali-ing is wine everyone faster than you falls down—Nibali fans you know it’s true), and the other will need many Nibalis to happen for a Tour win.

Roman Bardet
Love Bardet. He’s an even more fun Pinot. His form has not been great though, so he’s probably going to go for stage wins or downgrade his ambitions to the polka dot jersey. Hey, it worked for Virenque.

Emanual Bachmann
Bachmann finished fourth last year (1:56 behind Bernal). He’s definitely Bora’s team leader, so that’s a thing. Race leader in Paris? Probably not.

Richard Carapaz
Sure Carapaz swept past his Movistar teammate Mikel Landa to win the Giro last year, but Bernal is no Landa. No way. Carapaz is another rider who will need gravity to mess up the works to get his shot.

Julian Alaphilippe
After last year’s fairy tale (and “my fantasy Tour team screwing”) Tour de France, Alaphilippe turned a lot of heads. Can he win the Tour? I would say “hell” and “no”, but I never thought Geraint Thomas would ever win a stage race—so you know, grain of salt and all. But in my defense, Alaphilippe was just chased down and out-sprinted at the French Championships by Arnaud Demare. Which either means Alaphilippe is down on form or Demare had a beastly ride. Leaning toward “beast” on that one.

The Sprinters

Caleb Ewen
Ewen finally got to ride the Tour last year, which is INSANE. He responded by winning three stages while somehow not burning his nose on his front tire while in his sprint tuck. He’s showing the best pure speed right now, and he will be a threat in every sprint.

Sam Bennett
Bennett inherited the mighty DQS sprint train from Elia Viviani (who left to go to Cofidis to presumably cash in and almost entirely disappear). He can be dramatically inconsistent (I keep imagining that the guys in the DQS team car laying bets on every sprint stage as to when Bennett radios in and says “I don’t have it today, guys”), but he can also be super fast. It’s fascinating to watch. He’ll probably get shoved across the line by DQS in at least one stage.

Peter Sagan
Is this the end of the Sagz? Will he try to get green? I imagine he will, but if Wout wants green, I don’t see what Sagan can do about it. But Sagan is Sagan, maybe he pulls out a win.

Giacomo Nizzolo
Nizzolo just won the Italian and European Championships, so he’s showing form. I could easily see him sneaking in for a stage win.

The Climbers

It seems like this year (like last year) the climber’s jersey is a perfect fit for Bardet. He can lose enough time in early stages to not be a GC threat and then he will be given free rein to prance away and get those intermediate points. France gets some excitement and Bardet doesn’t have to answer questions about whether he’ll win the Tour. Seems like a win-win.

The De Gendt Watch
De Gendt will be without his wingman Wellens, and that’s sad, but the race just go on. Will he attack? Duh, yeah he will. Will he wins a stage? Probably. I’ve always described De Gendt as a “Jens who wins” and then I get hate tweets from dentists, but that doesn’t make it any less true.