{"id":5069,"date":"2023-06-28T12:16:52","date_gmt":"2023-06-28T10:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/uk\/?p=5069"},"modified":"2023-06-30T12:26:01","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T10:26:01","slug":"who-will-win-this-years-tour-de-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/uk\/2023\/06\/28\/who-will-win-this-years-tour-de-france\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Will Win This Year\u2019s Tour de France?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Predicting the winner of this year\u2019s Tour de France yellow jersey looks like a no-brainer. Just toss a coin: if it comes up heads, two-time Tour winner Tadej Poga\u010dar (UEA Team Emirates) will win; if it\u2019s tails, last year\u2019s victor, Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma), will be wearing yellow in Paris on July 23, barring injury or illness.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This year\u2019s Tour is a climber\u2019s race, filled with steep mountains and offering only a single time trial, which should also be won by a climber. There are other excellent ascenders in the Tour but only the two favourites appear to possess the stamina and the ability to recover from strenuous efforts day after day over three weeks that are necessary to win a Tour de France. The ability to give everything one day and bounce back strong the next distinguishes a Tour de France GC winner from an also-ran. Weakness in a single stage is usually enough to lose the winner\u2019s yellow jersey as Poga\u010dar showed in last year\u2019s stage 11 when he lost some 3 minutes to Vingegaard and never challenged again.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think the key to this year\u2019s Tour is how well Poga\u010dar has recovered from the broken wrist he suffered in a crash in the Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge and how much the lack of racing since April has affected his racing fitness. Until the crash, the 24-year-old Slovenian had a brilliant season, winning the Vuelta a Andalucia, Paris-Nice, the Tour of Flanders, the Amstel Gold Race and the Fl\u00e8che Wallonne.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He did ride in the recent Slovenian national championships, winning the time trial by more than 5 minutes. <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/cycling\/tadej-pogacar-my-hand-no-longer-hinders-me-but-i-have-to-be-careful-not-to-hit-my-wrist\">Afterwards, he said<\/a>, &#8220;My hand no longer hinders me but I have to be careful not to hit my wrist.\u201d If that\u2019s true, it\u2019s a worry because I don\u2019t see how you can race on a bike for three weeks, over different terrains and in different weather conditions, and not bang your wrist now and then. When healthy and fit, Poga\u010dar can do more things on a bike better than anyone else in the world. The only question is if he will be racing this Tour at the peak of his powers.<\/p>\n<div class=\"embed-controller-wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"fr\" dir=\"ltr\">21 stages. 21 battles. It begins Saturday.<br \/>21 \u00e9tapes. 21 batailles. D\u00e9but des hostilit\u00e9s samedi.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udc9b <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/TDF2023?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#TDF2023<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/ejwR7Y5Mmj\">pic.twitter.com\/ejwR7Y5Mmj<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Tour de France\u2122 (@LeTour) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LeTour\/status\/1673270398052601856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 26, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async data-src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On the other hand, Vingegaard seems to be a stronger and more mature rider this year than he was when he won the Tour last year. He demolished his rivals in the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9, winning the GC by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2023\/06\/12\/vingegaard-bullies-dauphine-in-dominant-tour-prep\/\">the biggest margin of victory<\/a> in 30 years. Sure, Adam Yates, who finished second, is no Poga\u010dar but he is a strong climber and a very good time trial rider and the 2 min 23 sec that separated him from Vingegaard revealed an enormous gulf.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I also think teams will again play a vital part in the race outcome this year, as they did in 2022. Unfortunately for Jumbo-Visma, the excellent domestique <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/steven-kruijswijk\">Steven Kruijswijk<\/a>\u00a0suffered serious injuries in a crash in the Dauphin\u00e9 and will miss the Tour. Still, that leaves Sepp Kuss, the best mountain domestique in the world, the indomitable Wout van Aert, Wilco Kelderman, Nathan Van Hooydonck, Tiesj Benoot, Dylan van Baarle and Christophe Laporte, an astonishing lineup of very strong riders. Poga\u010dar will have Adam Yates, Marc Soler, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.procyclingstats.com\/rider\/rafal-majka\">Rafa\u0142<\/a> Majka and Felix Gro\u00dfschartner supporting him, all strong riders, but I think Vingegaard has more firepower on his side. The GC victory may eventually just come down to luck \u2013 a puncture halfway up the Grand Colombier, waking up with a cold, one day without strong legs\u2026)<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The only reason to talk about other riders winning the Tour is for the unlikely case that both favourites suffer bad luck or are forced to abandon. Should that come to pass, I think Adam Yates would have a fair chance to ride away with the yellow jersey, based on his performance in the Dauphin\u00e9; or perhaps the always promising but rarely delivering Enric Mas (Movistar); or France\u2019s David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ), former Giro winner Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe) or even (why not?) Wout van Aert (with plenty of help from his team on the climbs); or perhaps Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) has one more good race in his legs. But the truth is, beyond the Big Two, you just throw the dice and wait for them to stop rolling.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One interesting rider in the race is Alpecin-Deceuninck\u2019s Mathieu van der Poel who has started the last two Tours winning one stage but never finishing a race. He could be the first wearer of the yellow jersey, as the hilly stage 1, run in and around the city of Bilbao, fits him like a custom-tailored suit. If he sticks it out for the entire three weeks, don\u2019t be surprised to see him ride as a lead-out for the team\u2019s excellent sprinter Jasper Pedersen. Otherwise, expect to watch an exciting duel between the two strongest Grand Tour riders in the world, which will probably be won by Vingegaard.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can also expect a lot of conversation during <a href=\"http:\/\/letour.fr\">this year\u2019s Tour<\/a> about rider safety, for the race will be run in the long shadow cast by the death of the popular Swiss rider Gino M\u00e4der who died at age 26 from injuries sustained in a crash on a high-speed descent in this year\u2019s Tour de Suisse. According to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2023\/jun\/25\/fear-casts-a-shadow-over-peloton-for-tour-de-france-after-maders-death\">The Guardian<\/a>, new safety proposals will likely be announced before the Tour starts on July 1. The new head of the riders\u2019 union the CPA, Adam Hansen, told the paper that a special meeting was to take place on July 28 with the Tour organizers, the ASO, the participating teams, the UCI and Hansen, to discuss what action to take with certain downhill finishes in the race.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One promising suggestion, Hansen said, was to deploy safety netting, as used in downhill skiing, on the most dangerous descents, particularly when long, fast straights are followed by tight turns. This idea was first put forward by EF Education-EasyPost\u2019s general manager Jonathan Vaughters immediately after M\u00e4der\u2019s death. Hansen said that the Tour\u2019s organizers are open to doing everything possible to ensure the race is as safe as can be. \u201cOur goal should be to minimize danger as much as possible,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Predicting the winner of this year\u2019s Tour de France yellow jersey looks like a no-brainer. Just toss a coin: if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":5087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"global-categories":[],"class_list":["post-5069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-the-latest"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.3 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Vingegaard Will Win the Tour de France \u2013 Unless Poga\u010dar Does<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/uk\/2023\/06\/28\/who-will-win-this-years-tour-de-france\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Who Will Win This Year\u2019s Tour de France?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Predicting the winner of this year\u2019s Tour de France yellow jersey looks like a no-brainer. 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