General hopes:
Classics hopes - some contradictory:
- Tom Pidcock not to have his talent ruined by Skyneos, such as by being merely the fourth man in the Carapaz train at Romandie or some BS. Let him race how he wants to race in smaller races and see what his talent is at the over-23 level.
- Cavendish to have a swansong final win somewhere, and not somewhere random like the Boucles de la Mayenne.
- Froome to be better than he currently is.
- Jakobsen to recover as well as possible.
- Evenepoel to recover as well as possible.
Classics hopes - some contradictory:
- Phil Gil to win MSR.
- WVA and MVDP to give us a real show in the classics, albeit saving one big race for...
- Sep Vanmarcke to win a monument at last.
- Niki Terpstra to have a good season (I don't know why I like him but I do).
- Moscon to confirm (again?) whether his 2017 classics results were a fluke or not.
- Yves Lampaert to win a big race.
- I have a general bugbear that I wish classics riders would ride all the monuments. WVA, among others, has the ability to win all five. It always annoyed me that Cancellara and Boonen never rode LBL. Of course they would have been highly unlikely to win but not ever even riding it felt kind of disrespectful.