Tour de France 2012

[Platypus]

As an Australian, it looks like one of the more exciting years. No Spanish drug cheats, no German drug cheats, and no US drug cheats in the top tier, lots of varied stages, and a friendly route for our best rider, as well as the first tour for the new Australian GreenEdge team, which will hopefully get a top 5 team finish.

This year will be all about the stage wins, I think, which makes for more interesting viewing unless you have the opportunity to watch the vast majority of the days, which is hard to do in Australia where most stages start at 11pm-ish our time.

The Schlecks are still in the hunt, I think; there are quite a few exciting young riders who'll go for stage wins; and the sprinters and climbers jerseys should both be very good contests. As far as the yellow goes, Evans is certainly not a guaranteed winner, and I think he's a wonderful representative of the sport. Not only because he'
s Australian, but because he has been at the top level for years, never had even the tiniest smidgeon of doping allegations surrounding him (I truly believe he is clean), and is a genuinely nice guy and not the kind of arrogant prick who usually end up at the top of road cycling.

Like Wiggins. (And Cavendish, although there's a rumour he may skip the tour to focus on the Olympics)

[Platypus]

I genuinely believe Cadel Evans is clean, and I think he's always been that way.

...at least in a relative sense...

He's a good rider, he's a hard worker, and when the chips are down he pulled the most amazing ride out of his arse last year (d'Huez), and if only for his response to that stage, I reckon he's a worthy winner of the Tour and I hope to see him perform as well this time.

This year will be a tour of stages, the overall classification could be rather dull. But a lot of the stage finishes are set up in such a way as to really reward breakaways, especially in the mountains.

[Platypus]

Well, the Dauphine ended unspectacularly, but good to see two Aussies on the podium.

Sky is looking incredibly strong, certainly the strongest team, although between Evans and Wiggins are individual riders, I don't know who I'd give the edge to.

I'm thinking this might be a very, very good year for the Australians, hopefully a yellow jersey and a yellow medal a bit later on

[Platypus]

[Platypus]

Incredibly dull. Not even any properly great stages.