Form ranking: Tour de France 2021 contenders, pre-race

Tour de France (Image credit: Getty Images)

There's not much room for improvement now. With just over a week until the Grand Départ in Brest, there's nowhere to hide for the Tour de France yellow jersey hopefuls in terms of their pre-race form.

As ever, Cyclingnews has been running a form ranking throughout the 2021 season, assessing the overall contenders after the early-season outings, then in the spring, and now for a final time ahead of the race.

The defending champion is the bookmakers’ favourite for the 2021 crown and his results so far this season indicate that’s not based on status alone. The Slovenian has continued to establish himself as a dominant force, with victories in three of the four stage races he has entered and a debut Monument to his name at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. The only stage race he didn’t win was the Itzulia, where he ended up working for his teammate Brandon McNulty on the final day, while his worst result of the season is technically 7th at Strade Bianche.

More recently, Pogacar has kept a relatively low profile, joining his compatriot and rival Primož Roglič in deciding not to do either of the traditional pre-Tour warm-up races - the Critérium du Dauphiné and Tour de Suisse – in favour of altitude training at Sestrière. However, he did resurface to win his home race, the Tour of Slovenia, and while the field was nowhere near the likes of Dauphiné and Suisse, his form was obvious in the way he put more than a minute into the field on the first moderately hilly day.

Victory at the Dauphiné always comes with a favourite’s tag for the Tour – indeed, five of Ineos’ seven Tour wins have come after Dauphiné victory, with Wiggins, Froome and Thomas all doing the double. It may well be that Porte ends up sacrificing himself entirely for Thomas and Carapaz, and there are still legitimate question marks once races stretch beyond one week, but as it stands he can’t be counted out as a GC candidate, and on form alone, he’s right up there.

There could be a case for the Ecuadorian to be above Thomas, given his victory in Switzerland and the quality of the field there. However, his victory was largely built on the timing of his attack on stage 4, plus he had a much slower start to the season than Thomas. Still, it’s clear that he has returned from a long training spell in Ecuador in flying form, and there’s not much to choose between the two Ineos leaders.

He was unable to hang with the favourites at Liège and we’ve not seen him since. The Slovenian has instead preferred to build with back-to-back clocks of altitude training, first in Sierra Nevada in Spain and more recently in Tignes in France. It seems a strange move from someone who strings together race results so consistently and someone who was dominating the Tour de l’Ain and Dauphiné ahead of last year’s Tour.

The Colombian’s season – his first with Movistar – was delayed due to a diagnosis of COVID-19 but after easing his way back at the Tour de Romandie, he quickly started racking up the results, winning the Ruta del Sol via victory on the major summit finish, before placing 6th in a tightly-packed top 10 among much stronger opposition at the Dauphiné. After that, he flew up Mont Ventoux, going solo some 12.5km from the summit and winning by nearly two-and-a-half minutes, with some speculation it was one of the quickest ever recorded times up the Giant of Provence.

López has clearly found his climbing wings again but what’s interesting to note is the improvement in his time trialling. That’s what saw him drop from the podium to sixth on the final day of last year’s Tour, but he seems to have ironed out that weakness, finishing around the top 20 in the two time trials at Romandie, and at the Dauphiné, where he lost just 19 seconds to Thomas over 17km.

Urán quietly rolled with the favourites before unleashing a time trial ride – up and down the Oberalp Pass – that saw him win by a staggering 40 seconds. He was unable to crack Carapaz to snatch the overall title on the final day but had arguably shown his best form since the 2017 Tour de France. He finished runner-up on that occasion, and Vaughters even admitted he’s now recalibrating the team’s ambitions and approach for July.

Since the Ardennes, he’s been preparing for the Tour and there were strong signs in Switzerland, where he was an attacking force on the opening stages before riding with the favourites through the mountains. He was second only to a flying Urán in the mountain time trial, and was set to clinch a spot on the final podium before he had to leave to attend the birth of his child. Alaphilippe is still not seen as a stage racer but that would arguably have been his best stage racing result with the exception of his top-five at the 2019 Tour.

Woods is a puncheur by nature but has been going well enough on the longer climbs to suggest he could build on a Grand Tour potential that was already evident from his 7th place at the 2017 Vuelta. He won the big summit finish at Romandie – helped out by Geraint Thomas’ mishap – up at Thyon 2000, before climbing with the best at the Tour de Suisse. Time trialling remains an achilles heel – he dropped from 1st to 5th on the final day at Romandie and finished 128th on the opening day of Suisse - but going uphill Woods has struck a rich vein of form at his new team.

The Australian has had a really consistent year – something he has struggled with since his breakthrough at the 2018 Giro. Things took off at Romandie, where he was second at the major summit finish at Thyon 2000 and secured sixth overall. He then went to the Dauphiné and placed 13th in the time trial before top-fives on the final two mountain stages. A late attack on the final stage wasn’t enough to move him up from eighth but he showed his newfound confidence with his intent.

He suffered a concussion at Paris-Nice and failed to finish the Basque Country, followed by a couple of quiet performances in the Ardennes. Since taking a break and training at altitude in Teide, however, he has steadied the ship and showcased his strength with a top-10 at the Dauphiné. After falling short of Porte and Thomas in the time trial, he was cast in a supporting role and while he looked like he might have been the best of the three in the uphill sprint on stage 6, he lost a little time at La Plagne the following day. On the final day he worked most of the way up the Col de Joux Plane and was cruelly dropped on the false flat over the top as Thomas responded to an attack from Jack Haig.

He was dispatched to the low-key rearranged Volta a Valencia for a confidence-boosting mission and duly won the summit finish at Alto de la Reina, but that came undone when he punctured in the final time trial and missed out on the overall title. At the Dauphiné, he had a poor time trial and lost time to all the GC contenders at La Plagne, leaving him unable to make the top-10 by the race’s conclusion. He then finished third at Ventoux but the difference between him and his teammate Lopez was stark.

The Colombian looked like he was back to his formidable best in the pre-pandemic months of 2020 as he joined French second-division squad Arkéa-Samsic, but he doesn’t possess anywhere near the same form this year. He won the Vuelta Asturias but the field was far from deep and when pitted against stronger opposition and a tougher course at the Dauphiné, he left a lot to be desired. He tried a brief attack on the Col de Joux Plane but never looked like going anywhere and finished the race down in 18th place.

5th in the Catalunya time trial is as good as it’s got for the 34-year-old, whose best stage race result was 15th at the recent Critérium du Dauphiné. Ahead of the final weekend in France, his own director said he needed to see more from Kruijswijk, suggesting the race was ‘no place to play hide and seek’. Kruijswijk attacked on the Col de Joux Plane on the final day but was soon caught and dropped, finishing more than two minutes down on the favourites.

Patrick is a freelance sports writer and editor. He’s an NCTJ-accredited journalist with a bachelor’s degree in modern languages (French and Spanish). Patrick worked full-time at Cyclingnews for eight years between 2015 and 2023, latterly as Deputy Editor.