The way to beat Froome is with chaos. The base assumption is Froome looks really strong in this Tour, and fresh.
Tomorrow, everyone gets to the foot together and bam! power drag race and VAM to the top. If Froome wins, it will set the tone for the strategy to come, which is either long bold attacks from far out, or wait and watch for opportunities, bad days. If he out-climbs everyone, there are not a lot of options. So Froome is all in tomorrow to out-ride the favorites. So is Quintana. It is a steep and long climb, this is his stuff, he does not mind the "drag race". TJ, Contador, Nibali will try to follow (reasons to come...) unless there is a weakness in Froome. Not surprised here if Quintana gets away somewhere and Froome is locked in with someone like Contador or TJ for most of the climb close behind.
After that:
- The Tourmalet descent is not that technical W bound, lots of long straight drops, and Cauterets is like the backside to Sestriere after the Finestre. So no major selection here unless a favorite gets dropped, etc. on the Toremylegs(off).
- The peaks before PdB are 50 km apart, so that would indeed be a daring attack along those. So this sets up like Tuesday's stage, just more fatigue at the start of PdB. This will also be attack grounds for Froome and Quintana.
- In the transitional stages: Stage 14 offers a 35-40 km out opportunity for attack (not just the final pitch), and Stage 16 into GAP descends the La Rochette (climbs from the W tho) which was memorable from 2003. If you recall who "rocked the baby" you can guess who would attack there or on the climb preceding.
- The Alps then present the REAL chaos stages because climbs and descents are immediately connected (no 20 km valley stretches between). Nibali exploited this in the Dauphine w/Pra Loop. So this the astute place to create chaos, descending attacks, 60 km out, teams and leaders all over the road...That's where the real fireworks will be...So that is where guys like Contador and Nibali will look to create chaos if they can, not in the Pyrenees. Stages 17, 18 and 19 fit this bill.
- The Alpe is essentially a drag race however, 110 km long stage, not a technical descent of the Croix de Fer E to W, so basically the guy in yellow just marks and will get attacked, not an early stage open affair like 2003 for instance.
In summary, I think the Pyrenees will be anti-climatic in terms of chaos/attacks. It's the Alps and the third week are where it will get crazy. I would even say guys like Contador may lose time in the Pyrenees (Quintana may gain back some), but the gaps going into the Alps won't be so large (<2 min) as to be insurmountable when chaos is injected. (BTW a Giro-fresh Contador with no crashes would have been a different story).