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Published on Thursday, 04 July 2019 13:00

TDF 2019 Other Markets

A selection of other bets to think about!

My usual look at the weird and wonderful world of the other markets to bet on in the Tour de France. For once, there is a wide selection of bets to look at and there is often value to be found, if you dig around a little.

To win a stage / Not win a stage

Elia Viviani to win less than two stages - 2pts at 4/6. I think he might win one stage, but I can can see Sagan, Groenewegen and Ewan sharing the sprints and Viviani might struggle to win more than one. He might not even make it to the final sprint in Paris. 

Peter Sagan to win two stages or more - 2pts at 6/5. There are a number of stages that look perfect for Sagan and it may be that we see him in a break some day too, and he'd probably win from the break. He is also likely to go close in one or two of the flat stage sprints, he will almost certainly win one stage, it's a pretty good chance he'll take a second. 

Julian Alaphilippe to win two stages or more - 3.5pts at 4/7. Alaphilippe will be after the KOM jersey and will get in the breaks a lot, from where he will probably win one of them. He also looks well suited to stages 3, 8 and 9. 

Luis Leon Sanchez to win a stage - 4/1. Lulu looked good in the Spanish nationals, attacking hard and getting away, with only Valverde able to go with him. He also was very impressive in the TDS stage 2 that he won, attacking hard, getting a gap and holding off the charging pack led by Sagan. I think there are a few stages in this race he could do that in too, and I will be backing him on occassions, just warning you now! 

Wout Van Aert NOT to win a stage - 2pts at 11/10. Think I'm probably going against the grain here a little, but Wout will be looking after Groenewegen in the flat stages, and working for Steven Kruijswijk in the hillier stages. He might get in a break some day, but if it's looking like the break will make it all the way we will be able to hedge it back at better prices than 11/10 in play I'd think. 

King of the Mountains Matchbets

Michael Woods to beat George Bennett - 2pts at 5/6.. This is a coin toss according to 365, but the way I see it is that both of them will be working for their leaders, but I can see Woods more likely to get in one of those breaks on the big stages that could see him go over a HC first, or close to it - that haul of KOM points from maybe one HC climb could see him win this. 

Rigoberto Uran to beat Porte - 2pts at 5/6.. A) There's a good chance Richie will find trouble again and not even finish the race. B) They both have had interrupted seasons, but Uran's return to racing looked better than Richie's to me. C) I think Uran will consistently finish higher than Porte on the mountain stages and will pick up handfuls of points here and there. 

Points Competition Matchbets

No singles really interest me, as most of the ones I like are very short. Instead, I've put them in some accas below, if you want to go big on a short priced one, take them out the acca bets and back them as singles..

Colbrelli to beat Pasqualon and Laporte to beat Debuscherre - 3pts at 9/10.. Colbrelli should score more frequently than Pasqualon and should make it to Paris, Laporte has a lot to prove having being given the nod ahead of Bouhanni again and should score more frequently than Debus.

Add Alaphilippe to beat Van Aert to make it a treble at 1.6/1.. Alap should be good for a stage win or two and should beat Wout I think.. 2pts on that too 

Top 10 Finish

I've already touched on this in my main preview, but I think Rohan Dennis is good value to finish in the top 10 at 3/1 - 1.5pts on that with PP/Betfair

I also think that Dan Martin looks a rock-solid bet at 4/5 to finish in the top 10, I think he will move in to the top 10 on La Planche and stay there, finishing 7th-9th. 3pts at 4/5 with various

I'm tempted by Jack Haig at 8/1, he could have a big Tour riding in support of Adam, but that is what's holding me back, that he will be working for Adam and may lose minutes when he takes the foot off the gas. 

Overall Head to Heads 

This is a match-bet for the duration of the Tour, who will finish the higher of the two. If just one rider finishes he is declared the winner of the Match-bet, but if neither finish, the bet is void and you get your money back. 

These were already added to my overall preview, just repeating them here:

Dan Martin to beat Buchmann - 3pts at 4/5 with 365

Egan Bernal to beat Geraint Thomas - 2.5pts at 4/5

Jack Haig to beat Sebastien Reichenbach - 2pts at 11/10

Fuglsang to beat Porte and Kruijswijk to beat Bardet - 3pts at 11/10 with Will Hill 

Number of Yellow Jersey Wearers

This looks nailed on to be more than 4 I think, we will have a sprinter take it on the first stage, maybe someone else take it on stage 2 after the TTT (unless Groenewegen wins and then Jumbo Visma do good enough in the TTT to keep it.) and it could well change hands after a breakaway success in another stage in the first week, then again on La Planche, and maybe at least once more in the Pyrenees or Alps when the eventual winner takes over. Over four wearers opened around 4/7 a few days ago, I should have taken that, it's 4/9 now but I think that's still a good thing. And it may even go to over 5, going to have a little on that too. 

5pts on over 4.5 jersey wearers at 4/9 with Bet365

2pts on over 5.5 jersey wearers at 11/10 with Bet365

Number of Finishers 

This is what I wrote last year, below.. It comes down to difficulty of the race and then we'll add a bit of historical statistics to my prediction for this year below.. 

"The numbers look really low this year (2018), with the over/under line at 148.5, whereas last year it was 170.5. But of course the peloton has been cut down by 22 riders, hence the difference, Bet365 have just literally taken their usual line and subtracted 22. Now this is an interesting one to ponder, because the whole idea of reducing the number of riders was to try to make pelotons safer, with less riders on the road, and I think on the whole it has been a good move. We didn't seem to see as many crashes as usual in the Giro this year, but we had, guess how many? 149 riders finish it, or 85% of those that started.. bang on 365's number.. 

But what about historically at the tour? Well, over the last 7 years when it has been 198 starters, we've had an average of 164.86 finishers, or 83.3%. Taking that percent to the 176 starters this year we should be looking at 146.6 finishers. That is already under the market price.. now if you go back 30 years, when the race moves up and down from between 176 riders and 198, we get an average of 190.5 starters, 146 finishers, or 76.5%. 

76.5% of 176 is 134 riders.. My prediction last year was that I thought we could slide under the 148.5, I went with 144 finishers or so at 5/6 with 365, and it actually ended up at 145, I was pretty close, but the bet won. This year, they have gone with the exact same number, they haven't nudged it down at all, which is interesting - do we think this course is harder or easier than last year's to finish? Well it doesn't have the cobbled stage that I thought would take some out of it last year, but in fact there were only two DNFers, Porte and Rojas, although Keukeleire and Vuillermoz failed to start the next day, I'm guessing after suffering injuries in crashes. 

This year we have a few tricky stages in the opening week, the first stage could be very nervous through the narrow roads of Belgium, but it gets hard in the second week with the stages in the Pyrenees and finishes with a very hard trilogy of stages in the Alps. I think we could see an average of at least 1 a day under natural attrition, which would take it down to 156, we might get another 4 or 5 OTL on some of those massive stages (the first real hard mountain stage last year on stage 11 to La Rosiere saw 3 OTL, and the next day to Aple d'Huez saw 2 OTL and 7 DNF!) and we could see at least 10 more retire in the final week, I am pretty strong in my belief that they have got it wrong again this year and we should be on the unders here. This is my biggest single bet of the Tour, you don't have to follow of course, but I'm going 12pts at 5/6 with Bet365. If there are more than 148 riders starting the final stage to Paris, I'm going to go over there with a big stick to poke in some spokes.. 

(Sorry, but since I started this preview they have cut it to 4/6, but still think that's worth taking.)

I'll add more if more markets come out in the next few days that catch my attention. If you want me to look at any other markets in the meantime, or want an opinion on a bet, drop me a tweet or email.