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Published on Wednesday, 28 June 2017 00:12

Tour de France Outsiders

Can anyone stop the top 3?

I have covered the Favourites to win the 2017 Tour de France in this other preview already, now let's take a look at the best of the rest to try to find someone who could pull off the shock of the year and land the big prize. 

According to their odds, there's an 87% chance that the winner will be either Froome, Porte or Quintana. Last year it was a 92% chance that the top three in the betting would win the race, so it looks like it a slightly more open race this year than last. Still though, it leaves just a 13% chance that one of the other riders will win.. Adding in Contador and Fuglsang and we're already at 100%, so the chances of someone outside the top five in the betting winning are pretty slim it would seem!

It's not unheard of to have big shocks though, particularly in getting on to the podium, Bardet was 66/1 to win it last year (and 10/1 for a podium spot) and Pinot and Peraud were huge prices to win in 2016 (I was on Pinot e/w at 150/1). Froome was a short price to win it in 2013 and there was a bit of a shock with Contador finishing off of the podium, eclipsed by Quintana and Rodriguez. In 2012 Wiggins was hot favourite, but Froome was a surprise to follow his team-mate home in 2nd and in 2011 the big shock was Wiggo crashing out on stage 7 - Evans winning and the two Schleck brothers in 2nd and 3rd was a pretty surprising podium.

There is always a chance that someone could sneak on to a podium place, maybe thanks to a lucky breakaway and riding solidly for the rest of the race or something like that, so let's take a look at the best of the rest now..

Louis Meintjes - UAE Team Emirates -Best odds 80/1 (Paddy Power)

'Little Louis...', 'The dimunitive..' The commentators (well some in particular, hi Carlton!) love Louis Meintjes, but he has yet to really deliver on the promise and expectations on the big stage.

He has just one professional road race win on his palmares (if you don't count the African road race championships of 2015) and that was in the final stage of the Coppi e Bartali in 2015, which was also good enough to take the overall victory. 

He has shown that he can ride GC in Grand Tours though, taking 8th in last year's Tour and 10th in the 2015 Vuelta. He took a fine 4th place in stage 19 last year to Saint Gervais Mont Blanc, but that was as close as he got to winning a stage, 23" behind Bardet.

But he has been going well this year, to possibly suggest that he can launch a solid top 10 attempt at this year's race again, if only there were no pesky TTs to hold him back! He was in 13th place in Romandie going in to the ITT but slipped to 20th overall after it. He rode very well in the hillier stages of the Dauphiné to take 11th, 13th and 3rd on the last 3 stages to move him up to 8th overall. But again, it was the TT that killed him, he finished 45th in it and slipped from 22nd to 32nd, then had to work his way back up to 8th. 

His ride to Plateau de Solaison on the final stage was excellent though, finishing on his own 27" behind Fuglsang, but well clear of the likes of Porte, Contador and Froome. It was also good enough for him to finish 2nd in the Youth jersey competition, 40" behind Emanuel Buchman, but guess what? Buchman beat him by 41" in the ITT... It could well be that he is a major challenger for the Youth Jersey in the TDF this year too. As for his overall chances? I think he will go well in the mountains, but the two TTs will hurt him. His focus may well be on the Youth jersey, and as a result he will be going hard, but steady every day, so he is capable of a top 10 again I think. But he won't be breaking in to the top 3..

Geraint Thomas - Team Sky - best odds 80/1 (Stan James)

Last year Thomas ranged from 20/1 to 100/1, this year from 33/1 to 80/1 - and like last year, at the risk of repeating myself, if you back Geraint Thomas for this, you are basically betting that something happens to Froome early on in the race and the whole team focus switches to Thomas. But even then, you probably also need something to happen to Porte and Quintana too, as he will not be beating those guys in the mountains, and maybe not Porte in the TTs either. 

But that's not to discount his chances of putting in a big ride completely. He had focused his entire season on the Giro and was one of the favourites to take it, with the team behind him. But all that work and effort went up in smoke very early on when he was brought down in the crash with the motorbike on stage 9 to Blockhaus, slipping from 2nd to 17th in the GC. Then it got a bit weird... injured, hurt, sore, he went out the next day and rode a sensational time trial to finish 2nd to Dumoulin over 40kms. And then promptly abandoned two days later due to his injuries. 

Before that he had ridden impressively to take the Tour of the Alps, finishing 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 12th in the stages, beating Pinot, Pozzo, Landa and Rolland. He finished 5th in Tirreno this year, but he hasn't really done a whole lot of GC races in his career and has only done the Tour once, in 2016 when he finished in 15th place. I think it will be a similar result this year. 

Rafal Majka - Tinkoff-Saxo - Best odds 100/1 (Various)

27th, 28th and 44th in the last three years in the TDF doesn't look like a great return for Majka, but he has gone home with the KOM jersey both in 2014 and 2016, as well as winning three stages. The little winker has a knack for getting in the right breaks on the right days to take maximum points towards the KOM jersey, and I fully expect him to do the same again this year (see the KOM Jersey preview for more). 

He's warmed up for this with two good performances, taking 2nd overall in the Tour of California, as well as a stage win and a 2nd place on Mount Baldy, outgunned by Talansky at the finish. He then came back from the States to train for three weeks before doing the Tour of Slovenia, a race that was a huge success for the Bora team with Majka taking a stage, the KOM and the overall and Sam Bennett taking two stage wins and the points jersey. Majka looked very fit and toyed with the opposition before accelerating away to victory in the sprint from Visconti.  

I think he will be very active in this race and I think the KOM jersey is going to be his target again this year. I also think he could be working in support of Sagan when he needs to, and for Emanuel Buchmann if Buchmann is going for the Young Riders jersey. And if that's the case, then Majka will sacrifice any GC chances, and he's not worth backing, even at 100/1. 

Johan Esteban Chaves - Orica-Scott - Best odds 66/1 (Various)

Chaves started the season well with a fine 2nd place in the TDU behind Porte after finishing 3rd on both Paracombe and Willunga Hill and followed that up with a 9th place finish in the Herald Sun Tour. But then he started to suffer from serious knee pains and had to pull out of the Colombian National Champs. He had been out of action for four months recuperating and returned at the Criterium du Dauphiné, where he was understandably below par, but still finished a creditable 26th considering how long he was out of action for. 

2nd in the GC in the Giro and 3rd in the Vuelta in 2016, it looked like this year was going to be the year he'd make the breakthrough in a Grand Tour, and he was targeting Pink in the Giro after his performance in the TDU, before disaster struck. I am not sure he will be fully tuned up for this race, and it may be that he will use this as training for the Vuelta, so I'm not touching him I think. But keep an eye out for him for stage wins in breakaways if he slips down the order. 

Daniel Martin - Quickstep Floors - Best odds 150/1 (Stan James)

Dan Martin is yet another, like Pinot, Aru and Valverde who could be anything in this race. He showed some impressive climbing legs in the Dauphiné, and was regularly on the attack, all that was missing was a stage win. And most crucially, he actually rode a pretty good ITT for once, finishing in 26th, which kept him in the hunt for the GC. His ballsy attacking away from the Froome group on the Solaison saw him take 2nd on the stage and leapfrogged up to 3rd in the GC, for the second year running. 

That performance by Fuglsang on the Solaison was highly questionable if you ask me. To drop Dan Martin, who was going well, and also to hold a rampaging Richie Porte at a pretty steady gap for the last 5kms was pretty incredible. So maybe Dan could have won the stage instead, but as it is, he comes here with some good training in his legs, but not the fatigue of the Giro. 

His 9th place last year was his best result in a Grand Tour so far, and he was only 6" off of 7th place. He had some good results whilst just not being able to get his hands in the air, finishing 2nd, 4th, 5th, 7th and 9th. He started well, moving up to 10th on just stage 2 and never slipping lower than 13th for the rest of the race. He's been in excellent form all season too, with 5th in Valenciana, 6th in the Algarve (and a stage win), 3rd in Paris Nice, 6th in Catalunya and 2nd in LBL and Fleche.

He is sure to be in the mix on most of the mountain stages, and like in the Dauphiné he may well be able to sneak away from the likes of Froome and Porte if they are just marking each other and he could move up the GC. I think he is well capable of a top 10, a top 6 isn't out of reach, and if things really fall in to place and others suffer issues, he could even podium. He's never really been one to go for the KOM jersey though, so forget about him for that, but at 110/1 with Betfair he's worth a tiny nibble for the overall. 

Others?

There are so many other top, top riders in this race, it's difficult to call some of these guys others on an outsiders list, it's almost disrespectul! Simon Yates, Andrew Talansky, Bauke Mollema, Sergio Henao, Ion Izagirre - these guys are 150/1 and upwards... Hard to believe that the likes of Mollema and Izagirre are 250 and 200/1.. Ion Izagirre is a guy who could go well, there are stages that will suit him and he won't be inconvenienced too much by the TTs. And then you have the likes of Pierre-Roger Latour, Robert Gesink and Jarlinson Panatano at 500/1! 

But yes, they are all capable of top 25 results, but it's unlikely we will see them in the top 6, and almost certainly not the top 3. So from that point of view, 500/1 is probably right!

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS:

Last year's race looked ridiculously hard to call and I was torn between Froome and Quintana, eventually going for Quintana. In the end, they almost finished in the betting order, Froome 1st , Quintana 2nd, but 66/1 man Bardet snuck in to 3rd ahead of Quintana. 

This year is no different, with Froome, Porte, Quintana and Contador looking like they should make up the podium, only thing left to figure out is the order. Well, after weeks of deliberating and thinking about it, I still find it really hard to separate them. Froome will put Porte under all sorts of physical and mental pressure and Porte has shown before how flaky he is..

BUT Porte looks far superior to all these other guys this year, flying in TTs, flying up the climbs. I backed Porte at 9/1 and 10/1 in January and I'm happy with those e/w bets, there's no value in him any more at just 13/8. But, I think and hope he can silence all the doubters and take it, let's hope he hasn't bad luck this year, maybe Nico Roche can bring him the rub of the green. 

Fabio Aru, Romain Bardet, Louis Meintjes, Dan Martin, Emanuel Buchmann and Simon Yates will all be involved in the scrap for 3rd and stage honours, Bardet and Dan Martin are worth a nibble at 25/1 and 100/1 respectively. 

Recommendations:

I'm already on Porte at 10/1, but little value now in him at just 2/1. Maybe look to back him if he loses a little bit of time in the first week, he should come alive in the Alps and Pyrenees.

0.5pts each-way on Romain Bardet at 25/1 with Ladbrokes

0.3pts each-way on Dan Martin at 110/1 with Betfair 

Matchbets

To Come