I'm going with Bagioli for the win. Showed great form already this year and should be one of, if not the, strongest climber in the race. As a Italian he is probably peaking for this. Thymen Arensman and Mark Donovan are both running a bit behind schedule concerning results this year but the route should really suite them, so if they've got the form they will feature. Another strong Italian who is in really good shape is Samuele Battistella. He is a excellent one day racer but lacks results in the big U23 stage races, so it will depend on him to be consistent because on his day he can be brilliant. Apart from those two Italians there are of course a lot of other strong Italian riders who could do well in GC or win stages. Alessandro Covi, Giovanni Aleotti or Alessandro Monaco.
Other notable riders, aiming for a high GC or stages, we can expect are probably one or two of the colombians, though at this point they are wildcards I think. Hard to tell how good they are and if they will ride for one guy or will be all over the place in the mountains like last year. Lizarte has Inigo Elosegui who is apparently turning pro with Movistar next year and Parra. GB U23 will probably go for stages with Ethan Hayter, Matthew Walls and Fred Wright, I just can't see Hayter being competitive enough in the high mountains to ride for GC. One of the strongest squads will be FDJ. Theo Nonnez really had kind of a breakthrough this year and could well be infiltrating the Top 5 with help from Kevin Inkelaar, who himself is probably aiming for GC. Other than those two, Jake Stewart and Cristian Scaroni will be hunting for stages. Hagens Berman Axeon, without their California squad due to the WT ban, are hard to predict. Sean Quinn and Kevin Vermaerke have been absolutely impressive 1st years so far and it will be interesting to see them climbing real mountains. The same for Karel Vacek, only that he has had a bit more difficulties to adjust to the new level of racing so far. But we know his talent and can hope for him to show us some glimpse of it in this race. Andre Carvalho is in pretty good shape and will probably hunt stages. Lotto U23 will have some cards to play, though I'm not sure Viktor Verschaeve is consistent enough to feature high up in GC. Thomas Vereecken and Julian Mertens will provide good support with ambitions for stages themselves. SEG will not only rely on Arensmans GC hope but will also have the best sprinter of the race in Kaden Groves, who is able to survive some hills, and a second GC hopeful in Ide Schelling. Team Tirol will want to challenge mainly for stages. With Nicolas Dalla Valle they have one of the few guys who could potentially take on Groves in the sprints, Markus Wildauer won a stage and wore the Pink last year. But their best shot should be Georg Zimmermann. Look out for him in the hilly stages. High up GC should be a bit too much for him though, maybe a Top 10.
With no complete startlist its hard to analyse all the teams and there probably will also be guys who we don't really know a lot about. Some Italians from the tiny teams stepping up, some Russian who as a team almost always deliver here, the Kazakhs are hard to predict and as I already said the Colombians. This was just a little try to highlight most of the important players and there a lot of guys I may have missed while writing this or who I have absolutely no idea of. So feel free to add.