To answer the OP's question, I can't. Though in 1992 the first ITT at Luxemborg was so long and flat that Miguel Indurain put 5 minutes into everyone else, and the Tour was over. In 1994 Indurain's biggest threat, Tony Rominger, crashed out on like stage 4 and the Tour was over. Heck, in 2005 when Lance passed up Ullrich in the prologue the Tour was over. Those years were more boring than this.
We will change our minds some in the last week to some extent. But there's also the very real possibility that we'll get through the ITT at Annecy and the top four riders will all be on Astana as we head to the Ventoux.
As I said in the other thread, the Giro's stages weren't that hard, however, they were designed so the GC riders came out of hiding much more often. They did this by having a lot of uphill finishes. Not necessarily mountain top finishes, but enough to stir things up. This route, by comparison, is lame. Let's hope the lack of race radios stir things up.
The Barb said:
What makes it even more disappointing is that the field this year is considerably more interesting than usual because there is a unique mix of:
Last year's contenders: Sastre, Evans, Menchov
A potential great who didn't ride last year: Contador
The most successful Tour rider ever coming out of retirement: Armstrong
A bevy of young talents threatening to step up: Schleck, Martin, Kreuziger.
In a perfect world we'd have more riders though that like to attack. Such as Basso, Rasmussen, Ricco, Landis, Valverde, Kohl, Vinokourov, Heras, Peipoli, etc. By these guys are "dopers", so no tickee.
