Tour De France So Far

With just over half the tour and 11 stages remaining, this year's Tour de France is beginning to hot up. After a few medium-mountain stages in the first week, today sees the first fully fledged mountain stage. These stages go a long way to shaping the final general classification due to the time riders can make up over their rivals when climbing. Given his previous track pedigree, Bradley Wiggins was never previously considered a climber and despite working hard before the start of this cycling season, questions still remained over his ability to go uphill. The Brit, though, has swiftly dispelled those rumours by winning the Criterium du Dauphine, the Tour de Romandie and Paris-Nice this year, the first time anyone has won them all in the same year. Not even the great Eddy Merckx achieved it. It appears Wiggins is in good shape to stay with his rivals throughout the mountains by himself, but his Team Sky team-mates will also be a huge help to him. Richie Porte, best young rider at the 2010 Giro d'Italia, and Michael Rogers, three-time world time trial champion, help Wiggins at the bottom of the climb. But his biggest help comes from Chris Froome, runner-up at last year's Vuelta A Espana and a potential Grand Tour winner. Froome is a talented climber and will be there to ensure Wiggins gets up all the climbs in a good position. The well-oiled Team Sky could be the reason why Wiggins will be in the maillot jaune come July 22. And with the stages that are left, I fully believe there will be the first British winner of the Tour de France.

The points classification will go a little quiet for a few days during the mountain stages as the sprinters are not known for their climbing ability. So far, Peter Sagan has fulfilled potential in his first Tour by winning three stages and be the current leader of the points. The challengers to him appear to be Matt Goss, former lead-out rider for Mark Cavendish, and Andre Greipel, former team-mate of Cavendish. Even though both Goss and Greipel have good lead-out trains to get them to the line, Sagan seems to have the ability to find the right wheel to follow when he doesn't have a train. For that reason alone, I think Sagan will stay in green. A quick note on Cav, though, who went into this Tour saying he only wanted a stage win and wasn't worrying about the green jersey. During the first week, the Manx Missile challenged during the intermediate sprints, which is often only contested by riders going for green. Safe to say Mark is in a good competitive mood ahead of the Olympics.

The only big classification yet to take shape is the King of the Mountains, and that's because there haven't been many mountains to climb. Currently leading the standings is Sweden's Fredrik Kessiakoff, who is surely going to lose the polka-dot jersey by end of stage 10. As I mentioned earlier, Chris Froome will be Wiggins' assistant going up climbs, and for that reason alone I wouldn't mind having money on the Kenyan-born rider winning this classification. The defending King of the Mountains has already pulled out of this tour and many of the other climbers are carrying knocks after all the crashes that happened during the first week of the tour. Cadel Evans' history in mountain biking may also help him reach the top of the KOTM classifications, but I'm sure he'd rather have a second yellow jersey.