Tour De France Betting Stage 1
A $50.00 outsider is the value bet.
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Few previews of this year’s delayed Tour de France will start with an analysis of a $50.00 outsider, but with a market seemingly befuddled by the uncertainty around the 2020 season, cycling pundits and punters have forgotten how to assess form when predicting the likely outcome of this year’s race.
Tour de France Betting Odds. The Tour de France is one of the three Grand Tours in cycling. Held annually each July in France, it consists of 21 day-long stages over 23 days. The race occasionally passes through nearby countries with the route changing every year. Organized since 1903, the Tour de France is currently run by Amaury Sport. How to bet on Tour de France 2021. Read our complete guide for a full overview of the Tour de France 2021. Find out the best Australian bookmakers for betting on the Tour de France 2021, the history, the odds and the past winners. TOUR DE FRANCE STAGE 1 BETTING PREVIEW Stage 1 provides a chance for the sprinters to get their spot in the limelight with a 195km loop through Flanders, into Wallonia and back into Brussels. This stage is Belgian classics heartland and can be quite challenging, with narrow roads, little hills and street furniture along the way.
So, let’s get straight to it. Nairo Quintana is a huge price to win the Yellow Jersey that he has coveted since bursting onto the elite scene in 2013. With two grand tours to his name and two second-place finishes in the Tour, he has the strongest pedigree of all the 2020 starters.
As so often happens in sport, though, this kind of deep form is often forgotten and overlooked by those lured by the recent, new, and novel. Consequently, after a few years in the wilderness, where he was hamstrung by an unsupportive and ill-managed Movistar team, Quintana has fallen off the contender list in most people’s minds: considered an over-the-hill relic of the old guard, already swept away by a new generation of young guns.
It will likely prove unwise to discount Quintana so soon, however. Still only 30, he has seemed rejuvenated by a move to Team Arkéa–Samsic this season, shown by his dominance on Stage 7 of Paris-Nice in March of this year, climbing some of the summits that will feature in this year’s Tour. Since the resumption of cycling, he has shown solid form in the Tour de l’Ain and Dauphine, despite losing some training time after being knocked off his bike by a car in training in his native Colombia.
Tour De France Stage Results
A route for the climbers.
Quintana could not have chosen a better year to return to form, with a route for the Tour de France seemingly designed with him in mind.
Beginning in Nice and taking a counter-clockwise spin around the southern half of France, which sees the race visit five mountain ranges, riders barely go a day before they are taking on another arduous stage of ascending endurance.
This route planning represents a shift from the norm – we typically see mountainous stages blocked together, interspersed with flatter ones in between – and it is a shift that will suit Quintana.
He will be especially pleased that the individual time trial which has so often ended his race ambitions in previous grand tours ends with a climb of La Planche des Belles Filles, meaning he should lose less time than normal to his more powerful rivals.
Egan Bernal the best of the favourites.
For the same reasons that the route favours Quintana, it will also be to the advantage of his compatriot Egan Bernal, a pure climber. Last year’s winner of the Tour is still only 23 years old and has the strength of Team Ineos – who have provided seven of the last eight Tour winners with four different riders – to marshal his bid to become the first person to defend a debut win since Miguel Indurin in 1992.
Bernal has shown excellent form since post-lockdown racing resumed on August 1st, winning La Route d’Occitanie, placing second in the Tour de l’Ain, and showing well in the Dauphine, before abandoning the race after Stage 3 with a back problem. It was described as a precautionary move. With Team Ineos uber-coach Tim Kerrison overseeing Bernal’s preparations, last year’s winner is likely to reach his peak when it matters on the roads of France.
If a $50.00 back of Quintana is too speculative for you, then, and you prefer your punting to be led by the greater certainties of single-figure odds, Bernal, at around $3.75, is good value for a repeat.
An over-reaction to the wasps of Jumbo-Vista.
He’s certainly better value than Primoz Roglic at $2.90, whose odds for Tour glory have tumbled on the back of his – and his team’s – recent showings. Winning his first grand tour at the Vuelta a Espana in 2019 and following that up in recent weeks at the Tour de l’Ain, Roglic also looked set to take the honours at the Dauphine before abandoning before the last stage to nurse cuts and bruises sustained in a fall.
Ever-present in Roglic’s successes have been his dominant team, the yellow and black jerseys of Jumbo-Vista setting punishing splits as they have spearheaded the peloton in just about every stage in which they have had riders in recent weeks.
And Jumbo-Vista’s chances don’t end with Roglic. Tom Dumoulin, the winner of the Giro D’Italia in 2017, has also been riding well in support of Roglic, and as an $8.00 shot, it would be no surprise to see Dumoulin featuring prominently in the three weeks of the Tour.
A case can be made for either rider claiming the Yellow Jersey in Paris, but neither of them represents value. Both are cut from similar cloths – superb time trialists who have lost weight to be able to survive long climbs in the mountains – and both will be feared.
However, the market needs to recognise that strong form in warm-up races – whether from teams or individual riders – rarely counts for anything in the Tour de France, which tends to reward those who peak in its final week. The route certainly won’t help their chances.
Other contenders for the Yellow Jersey.
Of the other riders, Julian Alaphilippe, at around $44.00, is the most interesting. Leading the race for two weeks in 2019, his derring-do style of racing might serve him well on a route that invites swashbuckling speculation.
It would be no surprise to see him taking an early lead in the General Classification again, and punters backing him pre-race might be able to trade out of their positions for a guaranteed profit. Provided they don’t maintain their faith in Alaphilippe for too long, that is.
Because for all his cavalier approach might be to his advantage in the early stages of the race, it will also likely be what costs him in the end: expect to see him implode in the Alps in the third week.
Otherwise, it’s hard to get excited about the prospects of any other rider. Thibaut Pinot ($9.00) has been well touted, but expect another hard-luck story at some point. Tadej Pogacar ($13.00) is talented but unlikely to be good enough in such a deep field. And Daniel Martinez ($34.00), the winner of the Dauphine, might be able to survive a week at the top end, but will likely capitulate if asked to maintain his form across three.
As for the others, the usual suspects of Mikel Landa ($70.00), Miguel Angel Lopez ($70.00), Rigoberto Uran ($120.00), Richie Porte ($120.00) and Adam Yates ($200.00) will be in the minds of some punters at big odds, but the best hope for these riders will be to target stage wins, rather than trying, unsuccessfully, to muddy the waters of the race for the Yellow Jersey.
Tour De France Betting Stage 1x2
It’s a year for the young and not-as-old-as-you-think of Colombian cycling to dominate.
Tour De France Betting Stage 10
Best Bets
BACK – Nairo Quintana to win the Tour de France
Tour De France Stage Schedule
BACK – Egan Bernal to win the Tour de France