[UCI World Tour] Tour de France 2019

Tour de France 2019

How it works

Predict who is going to win each stage of the Tour.

• Leave your prediction for each stage on the giveaway (they all include maps and profiles and link to the official site).
• Below is a table with all stages but you can just go the first one and use the "next stage" link there.
• We're not going to make it too easy so it's not allowed to just spam the same rider for all stages.

Stages

This table/chart is RaChart™ compatible and was created with Giveaways Table/Chart Creator

Preview

Welcome to the Tour of the Missing Favorites. This year there are almost more column inches devoted to those who won't be there then to those who will be. These are just some of the people who we won't see: Chris Froome, Tom Dumoulin, Primoz Roglic, Fernando Gaviria, Mark Cavendish, Arnaud Démare, Nacer Bouhanni.

It's definitely a Tour for the mountain goats; there are 65 cols and 402 kilometres to be ascended, there hasn't been this much climbing since 2010. Pretty clearly the ASO is still trying to get a French victor with Romain Bardet who's time trialling skills are quite poor. With so many favorites missing, this is the year he better produce.

And there have been changes again; there are now 8 bonus seconds to be earned on some cols in some of the stages. No half-stages or Le Mans style starts this year though.

See also the PEZ Preview. Some of the stage descriptions are from them as well.

Sites
Official Site
Wikipedia
A better list of riders than the official site, with thanks to bartwu

General Classification (abbreviated as GC)
This is the one it's all about, who will bring the maillot jaune (yellow jersey) to Paris?

• Egan Bernal sure is getting the nod a lot; he was 15th last year so he has experienced the circus that is the Tour de France. He won the Tour of Switzerland just weeks ago and also won Paris-Nice earlier in the year; most cyclists would give their eyeteeth just for that.
• Team Ineos has a choice to make; Geraint Thomas won last year, they can hardly just drop him now for Bernal. They'll probably go for the common solution; "joint leadership".
• Astana is bringing Jakob Fuglsang; will his third time be the charm? He sure had a good Spring.
• Nairo Quintana and Mikel Landa are the two riders to do it for Movistar, they will likely also wait to see who is doing better. They sure will have some high quality support in world champion Alejandro Valverde.
• Thibaut Pinot is France's other hope; he might just end higher than Romain Bardet this year.
• Mitchelton-Scott is bringing the Yates twins, with Adam being designated to lead.
• Team Jumbo-Visma focused a lot on the Giro this year though it was not enough for Primoz Roglic to win there. Now Steven Kruijswijk will be the man to do it but the team is bringing quite a few men to support Dylan Groenewegen, leaving him in the lurch?
• When I say "GC rider crashing", we all say: Richie Porte. I so hope this year he won't have any bad luck and good qualification at the end.
• There's a few more people we can mention but it would take quite something for them to win the Tour this year: Rigoberto Uran, Dan Martin, Vincenzo Nibali, Enric Mas, Fabio Aru, and Emmanuel Buchmann.

King of the Mountain (often abbreviated as KoM)
The maillot a pois (polka dot jersey) goes to the best climber; who will it be this year? Obviously the GC riders will all feature in this classification but there are some others...

• Julian Alaphilippe won the jersey last year and he is odds on to do it again.
• Chances should be pretty good we'll have a French winner of this jersey; could Warren Barguil (he won the French title last week) have a remonte or will it be Bardet or Pinot?

Sprinters
Will we have a Tour where one man wins most of the sprints? It's hard to predict this year.

• Dylan Groenewegen has set his sights on the first stage to be the first Dutchman since 1989 to wear the yellow jersey. He certainly has the skill and class to win multiple stages again this year. He did have a crash a few weeks ago, we'll have to wait and see if that has had any effect.
• His main rival is probably Caleb Ewan, both of them have had quite a good year so far.
• Elia Viviani has more experience, can he make it count?
• And then there's Sonny Colbrelli, André Greipel, Alexander Kristoff, Cees Bol, or maybe Rick Zabel will make his father proud this year.
• Michael Matthews will be contesting the more selective sprints.
• Edit: noticed I never mentioned Peter Sagan here. :p

Feel free to leave your predictions for jersey winners and other speculations in the comments below.

Man of the Tour

For the third year running I'm going to say Peter Sagan. This hasn't been his year so far and I don't think he can consistently beat the real power sprinters. But he can definitely make it to Paris and bring home the green jersey again; if he does he'll beat his own and Erik Zabel's record of six. Hopefully he'll show us some of his bike skills and have some real fun interviews as well.

Tour Trivia

More Peter Sagan; this year he lost his national title to his brother Juraj. He's also not the current world champion which means he'll be starting the tour in his regular team jersey. This will be the first time since 13 June 2011 that he has worn it!

The Grand Départ from Brussels honors the 50th anniversary of Eddy Merckx’s first yellow jersey, with two stages in the Belgian Capital - A 192 kilometers road stage starting and finishing in Brussels and a team time trial.

View attached image.