2008 tour de France

[RageWizard]

This years tour de France starts up Saturday with the first stage. The competition for the overall winner this year is wide open and a number of guys could be on the podium come July 27 when this thing rolls into Paris.

The two favorites have to be Cadel Evans (Lotto) and Alejandro Valverde (Caisse D'epargne), but beyond that there are also some other dudes with a good chance of pulling it off as well like Denis Menchov (Rabobank) or even Carlos Sastre (CSC). Out of about 200 dudes I think one of these will be the dude in yellow at the end.

So here are my wagers for the race.

Head to head:

Cadel Evans (Lotto) -268 vs. Denis Menchev (Rabobank) +248. Are you kidding me Evans is not worthy of this price, both lotto and Robobank have contenders this year and also have the teams to bring these guys home, so again take the dog and the big payoff in Menchev.

Alejandro Valverde(Caisse D'epargne) +415 vs. the Field. Valverde is my pick to win the entire thing and he is getting fairly good numbers to do it.

Team Classification:

Rabobank +124 vs. Barloworld -134 Go with the Rabobank, they will have a dude who will be in it to win it, so that means that the team will be under pressure to perform. Yeah Barloworld can coast into Paris while glass stroking the cranks but they really don't have a contender on the team.

King of the Mountains:

This is where all the action is, I can tell you from experience that there are two places that you can't hind and one of them is the mountain stages, the other being the time trials.

Cadel Evans(Lotto) -155 vs. Carlos Sastre(CSC) +145 Usually CSC has several sprinters in the field and it is not uncommon for them to possess the yellow for a couple of days. While this is great for the fans, defending the yellow every day takes a lot of energy and buy the time you hit the big mountain stages, there needs to be some left in the tank.
Evans is a freakin mountain goat, so is Sastre so the battle should be epic if your into this . If not it will look like a couple of dudes riding up a hill while a crowd of fruitcake Frenchy's run with them and scream viva la Chardoney or something like that. Anyways I'm eating the chalk on this on and going for Evans.

All investments are $200 so hopefully I can win a couple of these to feed the family. Truck and SUV sales are going down and I'm starting to get barrelled in on my career so I need the help.

In an effort to generate responses I have posted this is several forums so that I can get the maximum intelligent thoughts, if you have knowledge of the event please share so we can both beat the books.

[newb411]

tour de france has to be the most grueling athletic competition in the world..