Pogacar Overwhelming Tour de France Favorite as Rivals Crash and Burn
Tadej Pogacar is an overwhelming 1/14 favorite to claim back-to-back Tour de France victories courtesy of two imperious performances during the first week of action. In Wednesday’s individual time-trial the defending champion claimed the stage to put himself second in the overall classification.
On Saturday, the first day the riders climbed the Alps, the Slovenian delivered a devastating solo attack to take the yellow jersey and a huge time-advantage over his rivals.
Mark Cavendish wins stage four of this year’s Tour in a sprint finish. ©Deceuninck – Quick-Step Cycling Team
The Race For Second
While Tour de France riders enjoyed their first rest day on Monday, industry leading bookmaker bet365 formed a ‘without the favorite’ market appreciating the race had lost much of its fizz as a betting spectacle.
At the outset former ski jumper Primoz Roglic was expected to make a big impact on proceedings. He was just 15/8 to improve on his 2020 runner-up spot. Likewise, Geraint Thomas, the 2018 winner, was considered a big contender at odds of 11/2. However, both were involved in heavy crashes during the early days of the race.
Failing to overcome injuries suffered in a multiple rider pile-up on stage three, Roglic withdrew from the Tour ahead of Sunday’s mountainous stage. Thomas, who dislocated his shoulder in a separate incident on stage three, is clearly suffering and now trails the race leader by almost 40 minutes.
Wounded All Over the Battlefield
With nine days down and 12 to go the 2021 Tour certainly resembles a fast-moving parade of the walking wounded. Of course, that should be cycling wounded! The carnage started on the opening stage when a fan caused a huge crash that caused most of the peloton to crash. Her punishment was a night in police cells.
There was a second major incident on the day, it involved half of the field and took Chris Froome out of the reckoning. The former champion is continuing but is nearly two hours adrift of the leader. Froome is positioned 153rd in the overall classification.
Battle For Places
So, the race is for places according to bet365 odds compilers. It is 2/1 about Ben O’Connor to finish in overall second (behind Pogacar) or win the race. A first-time participant in the Tour, O’Connor impressively took stage nine of the race and sits two minutes behind the race leader in second position.
Richard Carapaz is 9/4 second favourite in this ‘best of the rest’ market. He is currently fifth overall, five-minutes and thirty-three seconds adrift of the leader. 15 seconds up the ‘virtual road’ is Rigoberto Uran who can be backed in this market at 7/2.
Cavendish Proving a Point Or Two
Interestingly the top-10 riders in the overall classification represent 10 individual teams. Deceuninck-Quick-Step is not one of those, but the Belgian team have Mark Cavendish sat at the top of the green jersey points classification.
The remarkable 36-year-old has claimed two stages of this year’s Tour taking his career record to 32 – just two short of Belgian great Eddy Merckx’s all-time record of 34. In bet365’s green jersey market the veteran rider rated the 10/11 favourite ahead of Sonny Colbrelli (4/1) who trails Cavendish by 121 points to 168.
