The rider who has dominated stage racing for the last two years is set to clash with a reinvigorated multiple grand tour winner in what shapes up to be one of the biggest duels in recent years when the 101st edition of the Tour de France kicks off in Leeds on Saturday. They will be challenged by two riders who both won a three-week race in 2013, a 34-year-old Spaniard who is in desperate search of his first Tour podium, and a host of young, upcoming talents that are knocking on the door for their big breakthrough. ASO has truly assembled a fabulous line-up that will test themselves on a more mixed and diverse route than usual, setting the scene for a great battle in the world’s most important race. CyclingQuotes.com takes a thorough look at this year's favourites and outsiders and finds out all about their strengths and weaknesses.

 

The 2012 and 2013 editions of the Tour de France evolved into pretty one-sided affairs that were completely dominated by a seemingly invincible Sky team. Last year Chris Froome was in a class of his own and already from the very first mountain stage it was clear that only bad luck could prevent the Brit from winning a maiden Tour title.

 

This year the defending champion is back for more but arrives at the start in Leeds on the back of a spring season in which nothing has gone according to plan. Furthermore, he faces much stiffer competition, led by a reinvigorated Alberto Contador who has been the dominant stage race of 2014 and reportedly is better than ever before.

 

All is set for a fascinating duel between what are probably the two best stage racers of their generation and the result is definitely not a foregone conclusion. So far Contador has had the upper hand but health issues have set Froome back and when they were both still at 100% in the Criterium du Dauphiné, Froome was clearly the strongest.

 

However, it is not all about Froome and Contador. Having taken a dominant victory in the 2013 Giro d’Italia, Vincenzo Nibali has set his sights on the only grand tour he hasn’t won, and Alejandro Valverde will continue to chase some luck in his dream race on the back of a fabulous start to the season. World champion Rui Costa will get his first chance to lead a team in a grand tour and Bauke Mollema and Jurgen Van Den Broeck aim to continue their steady progress through the grand tour ranks.

 

Finally, a host of youngsters like Andrew Talansky, Thibaut Pinot, Michal Kwiatkowski, Romain Bardet and Pierre Rolland continue their rise through the professional ranks and they will all be eager to put in a breakthrough performance on the French roads this summer.

 

CyclingQuotes.com has taken an in-depth look at the race's favourites, assigning 5 stars to the race's biggest favourite, 4 to his two biggest rivals, 3 to three other potential winners, 2 to four of the podium contenders and 1 to 5 of the race's minor outsiders. In this article, we take a look at the 3-star favourites that may be seen as outside bets for the overall win.

 

Alejandro Valverde (***)

It’s now or never for Alejandro Valverde. Ever since he emerged as a grand tour contender by finishing a surprise third in the 2003 Vuelta, the gifted Spaniard has had one big dream: to finish on the Tour de France podium in his career. A few years ago the victory was still his goal but the 34-year-old Movistar captain has now realized that he is probably never going to win the biggest race in the world. However, he still desperately chases that elusive podium spot that has so far escaped him.

 

Time is running out for Valverde though. Since his breakthrough, Valverde has mostly been the undisputed leader of the different teams led by manager Eusebio Unzue. In his first years, he shared the captaincy role with Francisco Mancebo but since the start of the 2006 season everything on the team has revolved around Valverde. Only during his suspension for his involvement in the Operacion Puerto did the team have a different setup but in those 18 months it always seemed like it missed an overall direction and only waited for its leader to return.

 

Valverde’s dominance has been enormous and great riders like Joaquim Rodriguez and Daniel Moreno have all been forced to jump the ship to get their own chances. With Valverde getting closer to retirement, however, things are about to change and the emergence of Nairo Quintana as a potential future Tour de France winner has naturally elevated him to a leadership role. Unzue knows that he has a very rare talent in his ranks and that he can build his future team around the tiny Colombian. Quintana has done nothing to hide that the race he wants to target is the Tour de France. Valverde’s time as the undisputed Movistar leader has come to an end.

 

However, it is testament to the close relation between Valverde and Unzue that the latter almost went through fire and water to ensure that his protégé got one final chance to chase that elusive spot on the Tour podium. In a public saga about the Movistar leadership for the grand tours dragged on for years and only in late January, Unzue managed to convince sponsor Telefonica that Quintana should line up in the Giro while Valverde would be the leader in the Tour, and the decision was clearly against Quintana’s own wishes. The official explanation was that the smaller scale of the Giro would be good for the Colombian’s development but it has always been evident that it was just as much about ensuring Valverde one final chance to lead the team in the Tour.

 

Valverde knows that this will be his final opportunity and that he will have to set his sights on different targets in 2015. Already last year, he sacrificed everything to focus fully on the Tour, limiting his racing in the early part of the season to stay fresh for his big objective, but this year he has taken it a further notch. Like last year, he neither did Paris-Nice nor Tirreno-Adriatico and his only major stage race in the first part of the season was Vuelta al Pais Vasco. Unlike last year, he skipped the Tour de Romandie and started to specifically prepare for the Tour as soon as he had finished the Ardennes classics. He even chose to use the three-day Route du Sud as his warm-up race instead of the traditional Criterium du Dauphiné and Tour de Suisse. Later in the season he will focus on the Vuelta a Espana and the Worlds but until now it has been everything for the Tour.

 

It may be Valverde’s final chance to reach the podium but at the same time it may be his best. No one can deny that Valverde’s versatile skills make him one of the most gifted athletes of his generation and if he had focused fully on one-day racing, he could probably have dominated the hilly classics for more than a decade. In stage racing, it is more about recovery and less about the explosiveness and sprinting skills that make him a natural winner. While always strong in the grand tours, Valverde always had a bad day in a three-week race which made him unable to win a big one until he final scored the elusive victory in the 2009 Vuelta.

 

Since his comeback from suspension, however, he seems to have become a lot stronger and this year he has been stronger than ever before. When he returned to racing at the start of the 2012 season, he came out with all guns blazing, winning the queen stage of the Tour Down Under but when he got to the biggest races, he paid the price for his long absence from competition. He clearly struggled in the long distances of the classics and his first Tour de France ended – partly due to bad luck - as a failure that was only salvaged by a win in the final mountain stage.

 

As it is often the case for riders returning from suspension, the completion of the first grand tour makes them a lot stronger and already in that year’s Vuelta, Valverde was close to his pre-suspension level, finishing second behind Contador. However, it was his performances in 2013 that finally marked his return to the top level and he put in an impressively consistent performance that saw him shine from the start of February until he finished 2nd in Il Lombardia in late September, finishing in the top 10 in almost all races he did the entire season.

 

Most importantly, he was stronger than ever before in the Tour and it is hard to deny the suggestion that he would have finished on the podium if he had not – again – been struck by an incredible amount of bad luck. On the windy stage to Saint-Armand-Montrond, Valverde had of course made the selection when Omega Pharma-Quick Step and Belkin had split the peloton in the crosswinds but another rid hit his wheel in the feed zone. A broken wheel forced him to stop and despite asking his entire team except Quintana, he never rejoined the front group and lost all podium hopes. Nonetheless, he showed his competitive spirit by continuing his fight and ended the race in 8th overall.

 

In addition to that Tour de France podium, the wins were missing for Valverde in 2013. He won a few races in February but despite being one of the most consistent riders he failed to win a single race during the rest of the year. That has all changed in 2014 and despite his very limited amount of racing, only Alberto Contador can probably challenge him in the battle for the honour of being the most successful rider of the spring season.

 

He completely dominated the Vuelta a Andalucia, winning three stages and the overall, before winning his home race Vuelta a Murcia. He next finished third in Strade Bianche before going on to take a very impressive victory in Roma Maxima by attacking from afar in a race that was expected to end in a sprint. While learning the trade of riding on cobbles, he played a prominent role in unfamiliar surroundings in both Dwars door Vlaanderen and E3 Harelbeke and won the GP Miguel Indurain before starting the Vuelta al Pais Vasco. In that race, he and Contador were in a class of their own but a surprisingly poor time trial saw him finish the race in fifth. Finally, he did his best Ardennes classics for years, finishing 4th in Amstel, winning Fleche Wallonne and taking 2nd in Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

 

Since then he has done very little racing but Valverde is one of those naturally gifted riders that don’t need to race a lot to reach peak condition. He finished 2nd overall in Route du Sud but his performances in the Spanish championships prove that we can expect him to start the Tour stronger than ever before. Most impressively, he crushed the opposition in the time trial and in the road race he appeared to be at ease when he bridged the gap to teammate Ion Izagirre before allowing the Basque to cross the line in first position.

 

That time trial result has a significant importance for Valverde. As said, he knows that he is unlikely to win the race overall. His sights are set on the podium and he won’t be too bothered about Contador and Froome. To reach that elusive top 3 spot, he needs to do a good time trial on the penultimate day and in the past he has often suffered in the individual discipline. While he has always been one of the strongest on hilly courses, he has lost too much time in the flat TTs. However, his extreme desire to do well in the Tour has made him improve a lot and last year he did an outstanding flat time trial to Mont-Saint-Michel in the Tour. He will never beat Froome in a TT and if Contador is really back at his former level, he won’t beat the Tinkoff-Saxo rider either. In the battle for the final spot on the podium, however, the TT may suddenly be an asset for him.

 

Valverde has all the cards on his side to finish in the top 3. Last year he proved that only the likes of Froome and Contador are stronger than him in the mountains when he is at 100%, he time trials better than ever and he has a strong team with climbers like Benat Intxausti, John Gadret and Izagirre fully devoted to him. He would have preferred the race to have bonus seconds but the course with its many summit finishes and short, sharp climbs in the Vosges suits him down to the ground. Even the time trial is of a rolling nature with many changes of rhythm that suits him down to the ground.

 

One thing he needs more than anything else, however, is luck. Very few riders have been hit by that massive amount of bad luck that has struck Valverde in the grand tours. Last year’s Tour is just the most recent example but one can also point to the 2012 Vuelta and 2012 Tour as races where luck has not been on his side. With a tricky first week and a stage over the cobbles, the pitfalls are many and it would almost be a surprise if Valverde gets to the Vosges without having had any kind of setback. If he avoids that, however, his dream may finally be realized. If nothing happens to Froome and Contador, his top level is not high enough to win the race but he is our favourite to reach the final step of the podium. And of luck is finally on his side and Contador and Froome both have some kind of setback, no one can rule out that 34-year-old will actually win the race that has always been in his dreams.

 

Richie Porte (***)

If everything goes according to the Sky plan, Richie Porte will never be in contention for the yellow jersey. The Australian lieutenant goes into the race with just one job: to help Chris Froome make it two in a row in La Grande Boucle. Nonetheless, history shows that it is no bad idea to have a back-up plan in a grand tour and if bad luck derails Froome’s race, Porte will be ready to strike.

 

Sky knows from bitter experience that a team leader not always gets safely through the opening part of a grand tour. When BradleyWiggins crashed out of the 2011 Tour, the team completely lost its purpose and since then the team has often had a couple of protected riders at grand tours. In the 2012 Giro, Sergio Henao and Rigoberto Uran both rode for GC, in the 2012 Tour Froome was protected throughout the opening week, in the 2012 Vuelta Henao and Uran were back-up riders for Froome and the duo had a similar role for Wiggins in last year's Giro. Last year Porte was intended to play a similar role in the Tour but a bad day in the Pyrenees took him out of GC contention.

 

When the race starts in Leeds on Saturday, Porte will enjoy plenty of protection and the team aims to present a formidable two-pronged attack in the mountains. The team hopes to keep Porte away from the pace-setting duties as long as possible, thus copying the 2012 strategy that saw Froome taking very few turns on the front until late in the stages.

 

It is no wonder that Porte plays a prominent role in the Sky tactics. Porte already showed signs of big improvement when he won the 2012 Volta ao Algarve and his performance as a Saxo Bank domestique during the 2011 Tour was a far cry from the incredible effort he delivered throughout that year’s French grand tour. Last year, however, he made the big step from super domestique to one of the best stage racers in the world. His Paris-Nice victory kicked it all off and from there he went on to finish 2nd behind Froome in the Criterium International and the Dauphiné and 2nd behind Nairo Quintana in the Vuelta al Pais Vasco - at a time where he was clearly fatigued from a long early season.

 

Going into last year’s Tour, he was hoping to do what Froome had done one year earlier: finish high up in the overall standings despite mainly working for a teammate. In the first Pyrenean stage, the Sky duo delivered a dominant showing that saw them finish 1-2 on the stage and for a moment, it seemed that the British team would take the two top steps of the podium for the second year in a row. One day later, however, Porte collapsed under an impressive Garmin and Movistar offensive and from there he settled completely into a domestique role.

 

Nonetheless, Porte continued to impress. In the Alps, he may not have been quite as strong as he was on Ax-3-Domianes but he was still up there with Froome, Quintana and Rodriguez on the final climbs and was clearly number four in the climbing hierarchy. Keeping his excellent TT skills in mind, he would probably have finished on the podium if it hadn’t been for that bad day in the Pyrenees.

 

It is no wonder that the success has given him the desire to go for grand tour glory himself and when he signed a contract extension in last year’s spring season, he was promised a leadership role in this year’s Giro. At the same time, he made it clear that this was probably his final Sky contract as a Tour de France captaincy will obviously require him to separate himself from the dominant Froome.

 

If everything had gone to plan, Porte should have lined up in the Tour as a newly crowned Giro champion but as a testament to a very complicated 2014 season for Sky, the first part of the season has been a disaster for Porte. It started well when he won the queen stage of the Tour Down Under and finished on the podium at the Australian Nationals but in March things started to unravel. He fell ill in Tirreno-Adriatico where he had taken over leadership from Froome who was suffering from back problems, and when the same virus forced him out of Volta a Catalunya later that month, it soon became apparent that his Giro campaign had to be abandoned.

 

Instead, Porte refocused and set his sights on the Tour but things were not well when he returned to racing in Liege-Bastogne-Liege and the Tour de Romandie where he delivered another very poor performance. When he got the Dauphiné off to a similarly bad start, being dropped early in the first mountain stage, people seriously started to question his role in the Tour de France.

 

The performance was a big surprise for Sky as Porte had been strong in training and it seemed it was more a case of a bad day than a reflection of his level. Later in the race he bounced back and when he almost single-handedly reeled in Contador in stage 5, he again looked like his former self. In the final weekend, he was back in his usual role as the penultimate rider in the Sky train and even though he may not have been quite as strong as he was in that same race 12 months earlier, it was definitely an encouraging sign.

 

With his form now on the rise, his lack of racing may now be a blessing in disguise. Last year he arrived at the Tour on the back of a pretty busy spring campaign but this year he should be a lot fresher. In last year’s Tour and Dauphiné, he proved that he is one of the very best climbers when he is at 100% and if he hadn’t been a Sky rider, he would have been an obvious winner candidate. He is not only an excellent climber, among the GC riders only Froome is a better time triallist and it was definitely no coincidence that he finished fourth in the final TT of last year’s Tour.

 

Porte has played with the thought of doing the Vuelta as Sky captain later in the year but first and foremost he wants to support Froome in the Tour while also finishing high up the overall standings himself. He still needs to prove that he can do a grand tour without having a bad day but if he can perform consistently over three weeks, he has the skills to finish on the podium even though he is set to ride in support of Froome. If Froome avoids any mishaps, he won’t be in contention for the overall win but as everyone knows a lot can happen during a grand tour. Porte is one of the select few riders with the skills to actually win the Tour and so he deserves to figure in a prominent position on the list of favourites.

 

Andrew Talansky (***)

Garmin-Sharp manager Jonathan Vaughters has never been the kind of leader that builds his team entirely around a single rider. Since 2003 when he founded the junior team that has since developed into the best teams in the world, he has always had a broadly-based approach to racing and has rarely gone into a race with a single focus and a clear leader. In the grand tours, he has usually had a focus both on the GC and stage wins and several riders have had their opportunities. The one exception is probably the 2013 Giro d’Italia where he lined up the defending champion Ryder Hesjedal who naturally deserved to have a team fully at his disposal.

 

Going into this year’s Tour de France, Vaugters has deviated from his usual approach. For the first time ever, he lines up for La Grande Boucle with a team that is fully devoted to a single leader. And this time the captain is not a proven grand tour contender or one of the world’s biggest stars. On the contrary, the rider that has convinced him to have a single-eyed approach to the race is a 25-year-old American who has only done the Tour de France once.

 

It speaks volumes about Andrew Talansky’s talent that he has earned himself this position in the Garmin-Sharp team in just his fourth year as a professional. In his final year as a U23 rider, he made the world aware of his talents by finishing 10th in the Baby Giro, 3rd in the Ronde de l’Isard and 2nd in the Tour de l’Avenir and showed that he could mix it up with the professionals by taking 6th in the Tour of the Gila that was won by Levi Leipheimer ahead of Tom Danielson. The results earned him a contract with Garmin-Sharp but in his first year his results were mixed. While he failed to be up there with the best in the climbs, he first marked himself out as a great time triallist with several top 10 results in WorldTour TTs.

 

He took the step from talent to serious contender in the biggest races when he finished second in the 2012 Tour de Romandie. What made his performance even more impressive was the fact that he had finished less than a second behind Bradley Wiggins in the final uphill time trial at a time when the Brit seemed almost unbeatable. Later that year he won his first major stage race, the mountainous Tour de l’Ain, before taking 7th in the Vuelta, the first grand tour he did as a team leader.

 

Last year he stepped up his game another level when he finished 2nd in Paris-Nice behind an almost unbeatable Richie Porte and went on to make his Tour de France debut later that year. His first outing of the world’s biggest race was not too impressive as he finished a pretty anonymous 10th and rode a pretty anonymous race.

 

When Talansky deserves the role as the youngster that could challenge the established grand tour stars, it is not related to his Tour de France debut. Our admiration for this youngster is based on the flashes of climbing prowess he has shown on two occasions that prove that he has the level to seriously contend for a top result in the Tour.

 

Based on his performance in Paris-Nice, he went into last year’s Criterium du Dauphiné with big expectations on his shoulders. Suffering from illness, however, he fell out of GC contention and devoted himself fully to teammate Rohan Dennis who did surprisingly well in that race. In the final mountain stage, however, Talansky was allowed to play his own cards at a point when Dennis’ white jersey was no longer in danger. At that point, Chris Froome and Richie Porte had left everyone else behind them and the Brit was trying to drag his teammate up to lone escapee Alessandro De Marchi in a quest to give the Australian a teammate. However, Talansky flew past several established grand tour stars and reached the Sky duo just before the line, forcing Froome to forget abot Porte and sprint ahead of Talansky to take second behind De Marchi.

 

That performance was the first sign that Talansky is an extraordinary talent and this year he confirmed it in that same race. Having had a disappointing spring season where he failed to make too much of an impact in both Tirreno-Adriatico and the Volta a Catalunya and had had bad luck in the Tour de Romandie which was his big goal for the first part of the season, Talansky came into the Dauphiné with all guns blazing. In the opening time trial, he finished fourth and then climbed solidly in the first mountain stage to take fifth.

 

However, it was his performances in the final weekend that really marked him out. In the queen stage, Alberto Contador had dropped Chris Froome who was suffering from injuries sustained in a crash but the Brit made a final desperate acceleration in a quest to rejoin his main rival. Initially, he dropped everyone but slowly Talansky and teammate Hesjedal clawed their way back to the world’s best climber. One day later he and Hesjedal blew the race apart on one of the earlier climbs and after the Canadian had sacrificed himself for his young teammate, Talansky – with just a bit of help from Jurgen Van Den Broeck – almost single-handedly held off no less of a figure than Contador to take the overall victory in one of the most prestigious race after having been on the attack all day.

 

More than anything else, those two Dauphiné performances elevate Talansky from top 10 candidate to podium contender. As his best grand tour performance is 7th in the 2012 Vuelta, there are a lot of question marks surrounding the young American and he still needs to prove that he can consistently perform at his highest level for three weeks. However, he is one of the select few that have shown that he is capable of challenge the best on the climbs. Until now, he has had a very steady and natural progression and in 2014 he seems to have taken the next step.

 

What makes Talansky exciting is his versatility. While his Dauphiné victory was based on his climbing skills, he first made himself known as a time triallist. Unfortunately, he seems to have lost a bit of his TT prowess as he has improved his climbing but his Dauphiné performance proves that he still has a decent time trial. Compared to most other GC riders, he should be able to gain time in stage 20 and not many riders will be able to drop him on the climbs.

 

His team is certainly not the strongest and he can only expect to have grand tour debutant Janier Acevedo at his side when the going gets really tough in the high mountains. That won’t be too much of a problem though as he is not in the position of having to control the race. More importantly, the likes of Sebastian Langeveld and Johan Vansummeren will make sure that he avoids the pitfalls of the first week and then it will be up to himself to match the best on the climbs.

 

Of course Talansky is unlikely to win the race overall and if riders like Nibali and Valverde are at their very best, the podium will be a hard nut to crack. Based on his previous performances, however, it won’t take long before the American will be riding for the win in the grand tours and in the past he has created lots of surprises. Another one could be in store in France this summer.