2009 Tour de France preview
The only cycling event that matters to most American returns on Saturday with the Tour de France. And no sportsbook on the Web offers more prop bets on cycling’s Super Bowl than WagerWeb.com.
This year’s race runs through Sunday, July 26, and will be made up of 21 stages, as follows: 10 flat stages, 7 mountain stages, 1 medium mountain stage, 2 individual time-trial stages, 1 team time-trial stage.
Of course the big news is the return of Lance Armstrong, who is +375 to win his eighth Tour on WagerWeb.com. Armstrong’s last Tour was 2005, when he won an unprecedented seventh consecutive victory. Most don’t really give him a chance to win this year, but he’s in it to win it.
“I’m doing this Tour to win, not just to be there,” he said/ “Now it’s 2009, not 2004…. It’s not going to be easy to win. In December and January, I thought it would be easier.”
Armstrong’s Astana team should definitely be considered the favorite. Armstrong joined it last September and it includes Spain’s Alberto Contador, who is now regarded as No. 1 in the world after recent wins in the Italian and Spanish tours, and in the 2007 Tour de France. Contador is the WagerWeb.com favorite to win this year at -110.
Armstrong said he would help his teammates Contador or Levi Leipheimer win, if either one proves to be a better rider than he is.
“Whatever it takes,” Armstrong said. “The most important thing is for us to win.”
Leipheimer, probably the top American hope other than Armstrong, finished third in the 2007 Tour but wasn’t allowed to ride last year because officials barred the Astana team from competing because of past doping violations that did not involve him or other riders on the current team.
Other top contenders figure to be Carlos Sastre of Spain, the defending champion, and Denis Menchov of Russia, who won the Giro d’Italia in May and will be attempting to become the first man since 1998 to win the Giro and the Tour in the same season.
Time-trials have been given relatively less importance than the mountains this year. That could be to Sastre’s advantage.
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