Chris Froome (in yellow) will be the man to beat this year, but Joaquim Rodriguez, seen leading here, will be one of his main worries. One of the men who lit the race up last year, Nairo Quintana (in white) is not riding this year, having already won the Giro this season (Photo: Sirotti)
On the eve of the Tour de France, we have potentially a fantastic three weeks ahead of us.
The battle for yellow has been billed as a head-to-head between defending champion Chris Froome of Team Sky and former winner and former World No 1 Alberto Contador of Tinkoff-Saxo.
However, Andrew Talansky (Garmin Sharp) upstaged them both when winning the Critérium du Dauphiné a couple of weeks ago, having come 10th in the Tour de France last year.
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Alejandro Valverde of Movistar and Joaquim Rodriguez of Katusha also won’t be too far from the head of the action, nor will Vincenzo Nibali of Astana who recently became Italian road champion.
In the sprints we should see a great battle between Mark Cavendish (Omega Pharma-Quickstep), Andre Greipel (Lotto Belisol) and Marcel Kittel (Giant Shimano), to name but three.
And on the climbs all of the big favourites are capable of lighting it up, along with a score of others who can do huge damage when the road goes up including world champion and Tour de Suisse winner Rui Costa (Lampre-Merida), Bauke Mollema (Belkin) and indeed our own Nicolas Roche.
If the recent Route du Sud Irish winner was given a chance, he could at the very least get a stage win.
Perhaps the only drawback from an Irish perspective is that Roche is the lone Irish man in the field this year.
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Philip Deignan of Team Sky was part of his squad’s Giro roster this year, Sam Bennett was deemed too young and inexperienced to get a start with NetApp-Endura and Dan Martin of Garmin Sharp simply did not have time to recover from his broken collar bone sustained in the Giro in early May.
But worry not, we’ll have three weeks of great coverage for you right here on stickybottle.
In the mean time, have a look at the extended news preview below where all facets of the 2014 edition of the world’s greatest race are teased out.
Extended news preview of Le Tour
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