Tour de France predictions and cycling betting tips: Tadej Pogacar can seize his shot at history

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Tour de France predictions

All roads lead to Nice for the 176 cyclists who will line up on the start line in Florence for the start of the 111th Tour de France on Saturday.

Next month’s Olympic Games in Paris mean that the battle for the yellow jersey will not finish on the iconic boulevards of the French capital this year for the first time since 1905.

More than a century later, the racing is more than a little different than when Louis Trousselier led home a French one-two-three.

It’s 39 years since a home winner of the Tour as first Spanish and then British riders took a stranglehold over France’s most famous sporting export. More recently Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia and Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard have dominated the Tour, sharing the last four yellow jerseys between them.

Pogacar and Vingegaard are back to contest the latest instalment of their personal duel and there is a sense of role reversal from last year as they both bid to join eight other cyclists in winning the Tour for a third time.

Twelve months ago Pogacar arrived at the race with his preparation a huge unknown following a broken wrist sustained at Liege-Bastogne-Liege in April. This time it’s defending champion Vingegaard who heads to the race under an injury cloud after a heavy crash at the Tour of the Basque Country left him with a punctured lung and broken ribs.

At the time the Dane had been odds-on to a land a three-peat in France this summer but he is now 5-2.

Pogacar found out just how hard it is to compete, let alone win the Tour, following such an injury-hit preparation last year, when he finished more than seven minutes adrift of Vingegaard.

While the Danish champion has been recuperating at home following his crash in the Basque Country, Pogacar has been making hay. The 25-year-old has been nigh on untouchable in 2024, winning one-day races Strade Bianche and Liege-Bastogne-Liege and the Volta Catalunya, all in dominant fashion, before running away with May’s Giro d’Italia as he won six stages to win by almost ten minutes.

It has set up a date with destiny for the Slovene, who is seeking to become the first rider since Marco Pantani in 1998 to complete the Giro-Tour double.

A fit and firing Vingegaard would be a sizable obstacle to overcome in that endeavour but the Dane’s misfortune has opened the door for Pogacar to add his name to an illustrious band of cyclists.

Outwardly at least, Visma-Lease a Bike are still pulling behind Vingegaard and he has an impressive cast in his servitude, but so too does his great rival Pogacar with Adam Yates, Pavel Sivakov, Joao Almeida and young gun Juan Ayuso all ready to do the hard yards in the mountains.

The sheer number of unknowns of Vingegaard’s condition make betting on this year’s Tour a tricky proposition but if Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates squad get their tactics right, there is a chance that they could turn the screw from the very first pedal stroke.

There is no easy introduction to this year’s route with climbing on the menu from the off.

The peloton will tackle 3,600m of vertical gain on a punishing first stage in Tuscany and the first super-category climb of the race, the Col du Galibier, comes on only stage four before the first week ends with a 199km test featuring 32km of gravel roads – an area Pogacar will no doubt be targeting as a prime opportunity to take time given his prowess on such roads as a two-time winner of Strade Bianche.

Pogacar had put clear daylight between himself and the rest from an extremely early stage at the Giro and there is a chance that Vingegaard’s form could be irrelevant by the time of the first rest day in any case.

Of the alternatives, Primoz Roglic has never quite cracked the Tour while Remco Evenepoel also suffered injuries in same crash as Vingegaard. Ineos’s Carlos Rodriguez is improving all the time but Yates could be the man to follow home his teammate Pogacar. 

Imperious at the recent Tour de Suisse, Yates has been revitalised since leaving Ineos for UAE Emirates and was third at last year’s Tour.

He may be a distant second to Pogacar but there are fewer question marks over Yates’s form and fitness than many of the other alternatives.

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