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Some surprises in L'Equipe's list of favorites

Published: Jul. 4, 2009
Contador at the team news conference in Monaco Friday.
Contador at the team news conference in Monaco Friday.
Photo: Agence France Presse

Predicting the outcome of the Tour de France is a hazardous undertaking, but it’s one that the editors of L’Équipe — the French sports newspaper that invented the Tour and is still part of its organizational team — always take a stab at. They generally get it right, but not always.

After Jan Ullrich won the Tour in 1997, L’Équipe predicted that he would become the first man to win the race six times. He didn’t win it again.

In Saturday’s edition, previewing the 96th Tour, the editors filled a whole page with their predictions, giving the top favorite five stars, down to the least likely contender one star. Here are their picks:

***** Alberto Contador
**** Carlos Sastre, Cadel Evans, Denis Menchov
*** Andy Schleck, Lance Armstrong
** Levi Leipheimer, Fränk Schleck
* Andreas Klöden, Roman Kreuziger, Luis León Sanchez

As if to hedge their bets, the French journalists also named an outsider: Olympic time trial champion Fabian Cancellara. They named his main strength as “his irresistible form,” and his biggest weakness as “the mountains,” but added the phrase “even so” in view of his winning last week’s Tour of Switzerland.

A more balanced list of Tour favorites was provided Friday, when the paper spoke to a selection of 30 people, including former Tour winners, team managers and current riders. This survey came out with the following result:

1. Alberto Contador
2. Cadel Evans
3. Denis Menchov
4. Andy Schleck
5. Lance Armstrong, Carlos Sastre
7. Levi Leipheimer
8. Roman Kreuziger, Robert Gesink

If all these experts are right, then Contador will win this Tour by a mile from Evans or Menchov. But no one should rule out that certain seven-time winner who decided to come back. A first inkling of what to expect will be delivered by Saturday’s time trial.

Follow John’s twitter at twitter.com/johnwilcockson, or via his latest book’s Web site www.lancearmstrongbook.com.