The Tour de Suisse and the Critérium du Dauphiné are over and there are currently dozens of National Championships taking place throughout the world. This can mean only one thing, the Tour de France is almost upon us. As such, plenty of teams have finalised their Tour de France rosters while the remaining teams are expected to do so in the coming days. Unfortunately, like last year, there will only be one Irish rider present on the startline in Rotterdam. And like last year, this rider is Nicolas Roche who has recovered sufficiently from a hamstring problem which forced him out of the Tour of Romandy back in April.

Dan Martin and Philip Deignan are two riders who were hoping to make their Tour de France debuts this year but who will now both be sitting out the Grand Départ for different reasons. Martin was given the opportunity to ride the Giro d’Italia as Garmin’s G.C. leader. He took this opportunity and impressed on the two toughest mountain stages of the race, finishing 9th on the stage up Monte Zoncolan and taking 20th in the Plan de Corones mountain time trial. He also managed to make the huge split on Stage 11 when the race was turned on its head. Still only 23 years old, it was decided that racing the Tour directly after the Giro would be too much too soon. He’s due to ride the Irish National Championships Road Race on Sunday 27th June and then take a well deserved rest so he can come back to racing re-energised and focused on the Vuelta a Espana which he should be riding for the 2nd time this September.

Deignan on the other hand, was a victim of misfortune rather than any race related decisions. He suffered from a knee injury early on in the season. Having recovered sufficiently from that he was then forced out of the Tour of California with food poisoning. Most recently he abandoned the Tour de Suisse, again due to illness. He has said via twitter that he’ll spend his time off the bike during the July trying to find out what is causing him to fall ill all the time so he can correct the problem and focus on the remainder of the season. Who knows, depending on Roche’s plans we could end up seeing three Irish riders take part in the Vuelta a Espana.

I’ve bought all the Tour preview mags I can get my hands on, and have also read the many many previews available online. Most articles seem to be in agreement that Contador is so dominant in both the mountains and the time trials that the only way he can possibly lose the Tour will be due to a mishap over the cobbles on Stage 3 or it will be due to the strength (or lack thereof) of his team. But is his team really that bad? I’ve taken a look at the Grand Tour credentials of the 8 team mates of each of the overall favourites. For each team the average age, number of Tour starts, number of Tour stage wins, number of Grand Tour starts, number of Grand Tour stage wins and the number of Tour rookies have all been taken into account:

Details of the previous Tour de France and Grand Tour performances of the G.C. contenders team mates. (Information on Garmin's Tour roster was not available. Astana's roster has also not yet been finalised, see cyclingstartlists.com for details).

For me, one of the most striking details is the lack of experience on Bradley Wiggins’ Team Sky. They will start with four riders who have never ridden the Tour de France before, as well as Geraint Thomas who has only ridden one. They have the least Grand Tour Starts and the least Tour de France starts (apart from Liquigas, surprisingly). Notwithstanding the fact their designated leader, Bradley Wiggins at the age of 30, has only completed two Tours de France. At the risk of repeating myself, as I have posted about this before, Wiggins reckons he has made a move ‘from Wigan Athletic to Man United‘. I can’t help but think the opposite is more applicable to his current situation.

Admittedly, Wiggins’ team will be more than capable of guiding him through the hectic first three stages across Holland and Belgium. Edvald Boassan Hagen, although still only 23, is already a winner of Gent-Wevelgem. Juan Antonio Flecha is a perennial podium finisher in races like Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders. Both Geraint Thomas and Steve Cummings are also no strangers to cobbled races. Wiggins himself has the most experience over the cobbles of all the G.C. contenders.

Cadel Evans has said in this month’s Pro Cycling that “It’ll be more important to have a good team on the flat stages than in the mountains”. I’m not sure I agree with Evans on this one but it seems that Team Sky and Dave Brailsford agree with him completely as they have picked a team shockingly short of mountain support.

The two main domestiques that Wiggins will look to in the mountains will be Thomas Lovkvist and Simon Gerrans. Lovkvist is a solid rider who will be capable of staying with the leaders until the final climb of the day. However, there is also the issue of the Swede’s personal ambitions. Before Wiggins jumped on the Sky bandwagon late in the day, Lovkvist was under the impression he would be the Tour team leader for Sky.

Although he will now be aware he is working for Wiggins, he has said that he still harbours hopes of a high G.C. placing: “When we come to the Tour de France, I will be riding for the general classification”. This is bad news for Wiggins who needs his team mates to leave everything out on the road for him. A team mate who works for a leader most of the day but holds back some energy for himself so he might finish in the second group on the road is not ideal.

Then there’s Simon Gerrans who wasn’t picked for Cervélo’s Tour de France team last year, despite winning a Tour stage in 2008 and a stage of the Giro in 2009. The reason he was left at home was because the Cervélo team had been divided in two. One half was a lead out team geared to help Thor Hushovd win stages and the Green Jersey while the other half was a mountain team tasked with propelling Carlos Sastre to overall glory. Simon Gerrans, he was told, fit into neither. While Gerrans is a solid rider when the road goes uphill, he will always be hunting for stage wins for himself. He is a good rider to append to an already solid list of mountain domestiques but he is not good enough to form the crux of Wiggins’ mountains team. But when you look at the riders who Team Sky haven’t picked for the Tour, you begin to understand why they were so desperate to sign Vincenzo Nibali last winter.

Alberto Contador on the other hand, is the only Tour contender who can call upon a team mate who has won a Grand Tour of his own. In fact, in Oscar Pereiro and Alexander Vinokourov, Contador has two former Grand Tour winning team mates. While Pereiro’s Tour de France win in 2006 is seen as a default victory and the product of a freak breakaway akin to the one witnessed on Stage 11 of the Giro this year, he has also finished 10th at the Tour on three occassions. He has been hampered by injury for the past two seasons, but should he stay fit and healthy, Pereiro will be a valuable asset to Contador.

Additionally, should Vinokourov be persuaded to ride as a team mate rather than attacking for no apparent reason (as he was known to do when part of the T-Mobile team which included Kloden and Ullrich), the Kazakh should regularly make the final selection and provide a useful pawn for Contador. Although he is bound to have a stinker of a day (or two) along the way, he always does. Contador can also call upon Paolo Tiralongo a veteran of 13 Grand Tours and Benjamin Noval who has ridden eight, three of those as part of a Tour de France winning team.

I’ll come back to the table above in a further post and discuss the chances of other teams, but for the moment I’ll conclude by saying: Contador’s team for the opening stages looks decidedly weak (although he can rely on Maxim Iglinskiy who finished 8th in both Milan San Remo and the Tour of Flanders this year). However, if the Spaniard is to make it through to France unscathed and with his team intact, it’s hard to see anything stopping him. On the other hand, if Wiggins sails through the opening stages, he may look around the team bus and long for Christian Vande Velde, David Zabriskie, David Millar, Johan van Summeren, Dan Martin and Ryder Hesjedal instead of a group of classics riders he will then be stuck with. The Belgian born Wiggins could find himself horribly isolated by the time the Tour reaches the leg aching stages through the Pyrenees.

One of the more anonymous transfers during the off season was Michele Merlo’s move from the now defunct Barloworld team to Footon-Servetto. The transfer was made more interesting by the fact that Team Sky had made an offer to Merlo which he politely refused. Merlo’s refusal to sign with Team Sky prompted this recent response from cycling expert Matt Rendell on his Twitter feed:

Whaaa?!! Michele Merlo, 25, “had an offer from British team Sky, but turned it down because Gianetti’s Footon better suited him” he said.

Rendell is obviously shocked that this young Italian turned down an opportunity to join the British super team. But why should he have signed for Team Sky? He’s a young sprinter obviously wanting to be part of a team where he’ll get opportunities to challenge for bunch sprint victories. With the flood of talent that Dave Brailsford has at his disposal where would Merlo get any chance to race for himself?

Merlot performed well at the Tour of Britain last year finishing in the top six on five stages including a stage victory on the final day in London. This is probably what drew the attention of Brailsford. Other regular top placed finishers at the Tour of Britian last year were Ben Swift, Chris Sutton, Russell Downing and Edvald Boasson Hagen, now all at Team Sky. Michele Merlo would find it very difficult to earn the right to challenge for stage victories if he was sharing sprint duties with those riders. In fact Team Sky is full of riders who have come from teams where they were either domestiques or were sharing leadership with many others, riders who are now in search of a leadership role and personal success.

Edvald Boasson Hagen and Greg Henderson have signed on from Team Columbia HTC where the focus has switched more and more on lead out trains for Mark Cavendish and André Greipel, widely considered to be the two best sprinters in the world. Having the two in the one team is difficult enough to juggle, trying to satisfy the requirements of Boasson Hagen as well would never have been sustainable, one of the three had to make way. Greg Henderson would certainly have continued to be employed in a lead out train at Columbia HTC. Chris Sutton, in a similar situation to Henderson, has come from a Garmin team which includes Julian Dean, Tyler Farrar and new signing Robbie Hunter.

Classics men Kurt Asle Arvesen and Juan Antonio Flecha have both come from teams with a strong classics line up. Arvesen from Saxo Bank where he was battling for leadership with Fabian Cancellara, Stuart O’Grady and Matti Breschel, and Flecha who had Nick Nuyens, Oscar Freire, Sebastian Langeveld and Joost Posthuma on his Rabobank team. Simon Gerrans left the Cervelo Test Team primarily because he wasn’t picked for the Tour de France team. The management saying that he wasn’t a domestique for Thor Hushovd’s Green Jersey quest nor was he considered a mountain domestique for Carlos Sastre. With the free role within the team falling to Heinrich Haussler, Gerrans was left in the cold. Now at Team Sky, he may find himself in a similar situation caught between Boasson Hagen and Bradley Wiggins.

Thomas Lovkvist has signed from Columbia-HTC, who along with having the world’s two top sprinters also boast strong stage race riders Tony Martin, Michael Rogers and Maxime Monfort. At the time Lovkvist signed for Team Sky he was under the impression that he would be leader for the Tour de France. Perhaps he has been slightly perturbed by the signing of Bradley Wiggins who himself was leaving Garmin in search of a sole leadership role. Had he stayed with Jonatahn Vaughters’ team, Tour de France leader duties would this year be shared with Christian Vande Velde.

Instead of joining a team full of riders attempting to fulfill personal goals, Michele Merlo has joined Footon Servetto, a modest Pro Tour team where he will be considered the top sprinter. The only other rider on the team with a strong finishing kick on the flat is the Dane Martin Pedersen. Merlo will be afforded plenty of opportunities to challenge for sprint victories and will probably be allowed dictate most of his racing calendar for the year. What also must have been preying on Merlo’s mind when deciding to join Team Sky or not was the fact that he is not British. Sky have signed plenty of foreigners to bolster their base of British riders. However Brailsford has made no secret of the fact that the team’s long term goal is to produce a British Tour de France winner. They want success right now with any riders and they want future successes with British riders. It’s a sound business plan for a brand new British team and if anyone can make it work it’s the meticulous Brailsford. But helping the progression of an average young Italian sprinter is hardly high up on their to do list. So far Dave Brailsford has been juggling his resources very well with four different riders already taking victories this season but in my opinion Michele Merlo is better off at Footon-Servetto where he can further his development as a bunch sprint stage winner.

This week Bradley Wiggins has finally completed his move from Garmin-Slipstream to the new British outfit Team Sky. Ever since he finished 4th in the Tour de France last July, this transfer has been rumored, and with a Tour contender shaped hole on the Team Sky roster it seemed like a probable move. I honestly thought that Team Sky had missed the boat and the rider transfer wouldn’t happen until next year. Most teams have already started their winter training camps and all team roster changes are usually finalised before November. Wiggins’ signing has come very late in the day and Team Sky boss Dave Brailsford has finally landed the Tour contender he so dearly wanted. I had suggested in a previous post that Team Sky could not take a Tour place for granted and they could be up against it to secure a wild card invitation to the French Grand Tour next year. With the signing of Wiggins they still can’t take a Tour place as a given, but they now have a much better chance of being extended an invite at the expense of one of the weaker teams.

The transfer itself seemed to be a very drawn out process which was never far from the headlines. Garmin boss Jonathan Vaughters had repeatedly stated that Wiggins had a year left on his Garmin contract and that he expected the rider to honour that contract. Wiggins had been saying the same, sort of. He also said, now infamously, that to win the Champion’s League you need to be playing for a team like Manchester United, but he was currently at a team more like Wigan Athletic. Now Bradley Wiggins has gotten his wish and has moved to what he feels is a stronger team than Garmin and he will now have the chance to chase road success with the same backup team that supported him throughout his success on the track. His goal next year will undoubtedly be to finish on the podium in the Tour de France, but by leaving his Garmin team mates behind has he really put himself in a better position to achieve this goal?

As I see it, the Tour teams of Team Sky and Garmin-Transitions (as they’ll be known next season) will look something like this:

Possible 2010 Tour de France lineups for Bradley Wiggins' new team and former team.

Firstly, looking at the team mates Wiggins has left behind; he would have been able to call on the climbing talents of Ryder Hesjedal, Tom Danielson, Dan Martin and Christian Vande Velde. Hesjedal won a mountainous stage of the Vuelta a Espana this year and will be riding all out as a domestique for Wiggins in return for a protected rider status at the 2010 Vuelta. Danielson will be doing the same having put in a solid performance at this year’s Vuelta, abandoning with an illness on stage 18 whilst in 9th place overall, having previously finished in the top 10 twice in the Spanish Grand Tour. Dan Martin is a young, up and coming pure climber who served effectively as a domestique to Danielson in the Vuelta. Christian Vande Velde has himself finished 4th in the Tour de France (2008) and proved himself to be invaluable to Wiggins’ challenge for a podium spot this year.

In addition to the climbing talent, there’s the time trialling expertise of David Millar and David Zabriskie who can both also be relied upon to do a turn on the lower slopes as the road rises upwards. The two Davids will also be expected to form part of the sprint train for the young American Tyler Farrar who will be harvesting hopes of defeating Mark Cavendish in the bunch sprints. Julian Dean will also be employed as a lead out man for Farrar. The final rider will be Johan van Summeren who is an all rounder who is regarded as one of the best domestiques in the peloton.

Not much will change for Garmin, who started the 2008 and 2009 Tours with the goal of getting Christian Vande Velde on the podium. Wiggins’ new found climbing ability was still in the unknown stage when he took to the start of the Tour de France, the transition of Wiggins to team leader only occurred once the Tour had already started. Getting Vande Velde on the podium will again be Garmin’s goal in 2010, along with stage victories for Farrar.

Now to Wiggins’ new team mates at Team Sky: Kurt Asle Arvesen, Kjell Carlstrom and Juan Antonio Flecha are all experienced Tour riders with fifteen Tour starts between them. But they are riders more suited to the spring classics, and therefore at the Tour, will not be much use as domestiques for Wiggins in the mountains. The two other Brits in the team, Thomas and Froome have only ridden the Tour once each and again are not ideally suited to protecting Wiggins in the high mountains. Edvald Boasson Hagen will be making his Tour debut and will be expected to challenge the likes of Cavendish, Farrar and Hushovd for sprint victories with Flecha, Arvesen and Thomas forming a lead out train.

That leaves Wiggins with Simon Gerrans and Thomas Lovkvist as the two most likely men to be there or thereabouts when he requires protection in the high mountains. However, while Gerrans is a competent climber, the reason he left Cervelo is because he didn’t fit the bill as a domestique for Carlos Sastre and ultimately didn’t make the Tour team. It will be hard now to convince Gerrans to curb his quest for stage wins in favour of riding for Wiggins. Lovkvist, until Wiggins came along, was under the impression that he would be assuming the role of leader of Team Sky at the Tour next year. Perhaps his nose will now be slightly bent out of shape having been bumped down to the role of domestique for Bradley Wiggins.

On paper I feel that Garmin are stronger in all areas than Team Sky. They are a more rounded team with clearer goals in mind for the Tour. Obviously, Dave Brailsford’s goal for the Tour will be to get Wiggins on the podium, but he’ll have a tough time motivating and preparing  the rest of the team for this task. Wiggins may think he’s secured his move from Wigan to Man United, but I can’t help but feel he’s done the opposite.