Tour de France Betting Review

Now that the dust has settled and the champagne corks have been swept up from Team Sky's party, it's time to look back at the Tour and how our pre-tour bets turned out. In my pre-race preview I said that Froome would probably win it, but I thought odds-on was very short ahead of what was going to be a tough Tour.

I didn't think the race would be won in the first week, but I  thought it was a sensible lay. Thankfully I didn't go too big on it as it was one I wasn't too comfortable with. As it was, Froome blew the race apart inside the first few days and his price collapsed to 1/4. At that point I covered, just trying to reduce my loss on the bet. So round one to the backers of Froome!

I did however highlight my lack of faith in Contador and felt he would reach the top 3 at best. Instead I plumped for Rodriguez at 3/1 to make it to the top steps in Paris, a bet I topped up before the second last stage as I highlighted here. This turned out to be a very nice winner, even if it looked doubtful for most of the three weeks! Patience paid off on that one.

I was spot on with my prediction of how Evans would go, but we were let down by a disastrous start to Tejay Van Garderen's Tour, which was over in a matter of days. A very disappointing Tour overall for BMC, with Gilbert seemingly on holidays for 3 weeks. I did highlight Quintana as one to watch but I thought the value was gone with him and that he might concentrate on the white and Polka dots. Well, he even surprised me by taking second, as well as the two prizes I thought he would go for. In my 'KOM and Points' preview I thought that Quintana may well be concentrating on GC should Valverde disappoint (which he did, although it was bad luck more than anything else cost him) and decided to leave him for this year - but I did point out that Voeckler and Rolland were not bets for me for the KOM.. just about got away with that one!

My selections were kessiakof and Rodriguez, but Kessiakoff abandoned after only a few stages and Rodriguez wasn't close enough in week one to put himself in a good position. I did rescue a profit from the market though by laying Rolland at 2/1 and backing Quintana before the stage to Annecy.

My conviction that the green jersey competition was not as close as the 50/50 chance that the bookies more or less saw it proved to be correct, and once again the competition was over within a matter of days. After backing him at 11/10 I was able to lay out the bet at 1/10 in less than 5 days. Once again Sagan did the business and did it in style, his 'no-hands wheelie' on Alpe d'Huez being one of the most talked about highlights of the Tour!

In my rest day one update I suggested Quintana needed to ride a bit more clever in the Alps and he could win a stage - which he duly did, with a brilliant ride to Annecy-Semnoz. My Dan Martin for Top 6 bet disappeared though with a virus killing off his hopes of doing something in the Alps, just finishing the stages in the autobus was a challenge. Still, a Tour he can look back on with pride.

I did also recommend on Twitter before the Tour started and in my preview on this forum (bottom of page 4) that over 162.5 finshers at evens was a good bet, that landed as 169 riders finished, most crawling over the Alps just to get to Paris! I also recommended Rodriquez without Froome and Contador at 7/2 - that just missed out with Quintana taking 2nd, but the bets before the last stage to Annecy-Semnoz I recommended helped make a profit on that market too.  

So overall a very good Tour for me, plenty of winners, from the odds-on certainties like Tony Martin for the TT through to 55/1 and 38/1 winners in Dan  Martin and Rui Costa made it a profitable year again. Stay tuned for the next previews, I hope to get more of the races in between now and the Vuelta starts in a month, but often for smaller races info is light and liquidity is poor. Watch this space.