What a brilliant week of sport. The first seven days at Wimbledon are usually pretty dull but it’s been anything but this time. Some superb matches and out bet on Roger Federer is still alive – just. He’s now 4.3/4.4 to win back the title. Rafael Nadal’s exit has opened the door for Andy Murray, who is trading at 7.2/7.3, but I’d still rather be a layer of the British number one with banana skins galore still in his section of the draw.
Euro 2012 has been a fantastic tournament and reaches its conclusion with Italy v Spain in Sunday’s final. The one thing the tournament has lacked is an avalanche of goals and I think the final could follow the same pattern. I’m sure the match will be full of high quality passing but doubt there will be many clear-cut chances and I’m going for 0-0 again after 90 minutes at 7.2.
Saturday sees the start of one of my favourite events of the year, The Tour de France. Bradley Wiggins’ price to win the race has collapsed of late and he is is now trading at 2.37 to back on Betdaq. He will never get a better chance to win the Tour de France, which starts in Liege on Saturday. The world’s two best riders, Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck, are both missing, other top riders are targeting the Olympics and this year’s route looks tailor made for the Brit.
I wrote Wiggins off a few years ago, saying he didn’t climb well enough to win a Tour. That has all changed now with his new training regime in Tenerife and the current ‘cleaner’ era in world cycling. Gone are the days when riders, fuelled by EPO and steroids, used to blow the field apart in the Alps and Pyrenees. Nowadays the climbs are a war of attrition and the steady climbers, like Wiggins and Cadel Evans, are able to hang in there at the slower pace.
Last year Cadel Evans was able to make time in the time trials and just stick like glue to Andy Schleck in the mountains. This year that will be even more pronounced as there is far more time-trialling for the riders – over 100kms.
It therefore looks like a showdown between Wiggins and Evans. From the opposition you can put a line through any rider that featured in the Giro d’Italia as that race was brutal, Vincenzo Nibali and the others near the head of the market on the Daq don’t time-trial well enough to live with the big two. The surprise package could be Robert Gesink, who I fancy to go well at 43.
Defending champion Cadel Evans is going to be a really tough nut to crack and there is less to choose between them than the odds suggest. He was a fair way behind Wiggins in the Dauphine time-trial but he is only interested in the Tour de France and is sure to improve and peak during the next three weeks. He’s a better climber than Wiggins and is an incredibly wily competitor. Evans is trading as second favourite at 3.3 and will be very hard to beat.
The key advantage Wiggins has is a vastly superior team. Team Sky were awesome in the Dauphine and in Michael Rogers, Chris Froome and Richie Porte they have riders good enough to be leaders in other teams. They will give Wiggins protection in the mountains when Evans is likely to be without any BMC teammates. They will need to protect him in the first week too when there are bound to be a load of crashes again. Let’s hope there’s no repeat of last year’s misfortune and broken collar bone for Wiggins. If he can get through the first week unscathed, Bradley Wiggins will have an outstanding chance of winning the Tour.
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