The Tour de France has not panned out as predicted, with neither heavyweight looking dominant. What has gone wrong for the big two?
The rearranged 2020 Tour de France was billed as the battle of the super-teams, Manchester City versus Barcelona on two wheels. In the burgundy corner, Team Ineos, the squad of galácticos that have dominated the Tour since 2012, winning seven times with four different riders. In the yellow and black corner, the Dutch upstarts Jumbo-Visma, who have built a team gradually around the Slovenian Primoz Roglic, and put it in a new dimension last year by adding the 2017 Giro d’Italia winner, Tom Dumoulin.
Two weeks in, that battle has yet to materialise and it may not happen even though the final week’s racing is the perfect setting. There is only one flat stage, on Friday, plus Monday’s rest day, before the climactic time trial next Saturday in eastern France. The rest is all mountains, with the toughest finishes Sunday’s ascent of the Grand Colombier and Wednesday’s 21km climb to Méribel-Col de la Loze.
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