Tour de France 2019: Who will win the yellow jersey?

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Crashes have dominated the build-up to the Tour de France, robbing this year’s race of headliners Chris Froome and Tom Dumoulin, and perhaps that has overshadowed the other main talking point of the cycling season - the emergence of a new generation who are ready to win at the top level.

Those two strands may well come together in the most open Tour in years as the twenty-somethings duke it out with leading rivals who are pushing their mid-thirties. For the younger group this is a golden opportunity for a major breakthrough and history favours them, with only five first-time Tour winners aged older than 30 in the past 50 years.

The average has been pushing up in recent years, with victories for Cadel Evans, Bradley Wiggins and Geraint Thomas, but one who is in the optimum age range is Adam Yates, who turns 27 just after the Tour ends, and he looks ready to be a big player.

As open as this year’s race looks, the winner is likely to score well on the usual key factors – a focused build-up, solid form, strong team, excellent climbing and decent time-trialling – and Yates does. The Tour has been his aim all year, he has ridden well in the right races. He was second in Tirreno-Adriatico and Catalunya, and probably would have been in the Dauphine if he hadn’t dropped out on the last stage). Mitchelton-Scott have a leading chance in Sunday’s team time trial and Yates was sixth in the Dauphine time trial.

That is a strong package with the added bonus that his twin Simon will be alongside him with the stated aim of being his super domestique to repay Adam for his role in helping Simon win last year’s Vuelta.

What we don’t know for sure about most of the contenders is how they will cope with the demands of a high-intensity third week, but Yates was fourth in the 2016 Tour, aged only 23, and that year just more than 70 per cent of the time he lost to Froome, the winner, was in time trials. This year’s route has exactly half the amount of individual time-trialling compared to 2016 and in any case Yates is stronger in that discipline now.

Who will win the green jersey?
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He also has the racecraft to cope with a tricky opening through Classics country, having been an excellent fifth in this year’s Liege-Bastogne-Liege, and with a final week that promises to reward a proactive approach.

Remarkably, if he is successful, Yates would make it seven wins for Britain in eight years, following Sir Bradley Wiggins, Froome and Thomas.

Froome’s devastating crash at the Dauphine has left Team Ineos relying on reigning champion Geraint Thomas and 22-year-old Egan Bernal, but they are opposable on grounds of form in Thomas’s case and value with Bernal, whose odds have contracted sharply in the past month.

Thomas was the form rider going into last year’s Tour after his excellent win at the Dauphine but is way below that level this time. He is short of racing days after a disrupted season and had to bow out of the Tour de Suisse after crashing, while Bernal went on to underline his credentials with overall victory.

In any case it is debatable whether Thomas is so well suited by this year’s route, which features 30 categorised climbs, five summit finishes and a reduced amount of time-trialling. Race director Christian Prudhomme has called it "the highest Tour in history", with three of the five mountain-top finishes above 2,000m.

That surely enhances the claims of Bernal as he bids to become the first Colombian winner of the Tour, having switched targets after a broken collarbone forced him to miss the Giro d'Italia. The most serious negative is his inexperience. There was nothing to fault in his wins at Paris-Nice and the Tour de Suisse, but this is only his second Grand Tour (he was 15th in support of Thomas and Froome last year) and he will be the third youngest Tour winner if he is successful this year.

Egan Bernal has shortened to favouritism as he attempts to become the third youngest winner in Tour historyCredit: Daniel Kalisz (Getty Images)

By contrast Froome would have been bidding to become the fourth oldest Tour winner and there is still a rider who can do that in Jakob Fuglsang, who has never finished better than seventh in eight attempts but has been in the form of his life this season. He had a brilliant Classics campaign, winning Liege-Bastogne-Liege, and took the Dauphine last time out. The Dane looks a solid contender but the victory should go to a more dynamic climber.

The climbers whose form has not reached its usual level include Romain Bardet (tenth in the Dauphine, third last year) and Nairo Quintana (ninth in the Dauphine). Steven Kruijswijk, last year’s Tour fifth, was also disappointing at the Dauphine, pulling out after showing a similar lack of zip as Quintana on the main mountain stage.

It would be no surprise if Quintana comes more to the fore at this year’s high altitude. Before last year’s lacklustre Tour tenth, his first Grand Tour of the previous five years had produced a win, three seconds and a third.

Thibaut Pinot is being talked up as a dark horse after a good season that includes fifth places at Tirreno-Adriatico and the Dauphine and a couple of minor stage-race wins, but prolonged hot weather could be against him.

There are several riders at 25-1 or bigger whose top form gives them a shout and among those who could give a decent showing in the mountains are Vincenzo Nibali, Julian Alaphilippe, Dan Martin and Enric Mas, last year’s Vuelta runner-up – but surely not Richie Porte, whose time looks to have been and gone.

Perhaps the best of the longer shots is Mikel Landa, who has come up short as a leader at Movistar but still has the talent to be a factor. He rode well at the Giro, finishing third, but no top-three finisher in Italy has done better in France this century (also a negative for Giro runner-up Nibali). Like several others who lack Classics experience, Landa could also leak crucial time in the first week.

One of those is 2017 Tour runner-up Rigoberto Uran, who has performed strongly in his first Grand Tour of the year in five of the past seven years (including three second places). His year was set back by a crash at Paris-Nice but he follows his own idiosyncratic programme anyway and will be a threat if he makes it to the final week without any major mishap.

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