Suspenseful it may not have been, but the 2016 Tour de France was nip and tuck in one way: the time gaps behind the winner. Chris Froome’s victory margin was 3min more than in 2015 ahead of Nairo Quintana, but the gap to the rider in 10th was only 7min compared with 17min last year; 21min in 2014 for Vincenzo Nibali and 17min again in 2013. Incredibly, after 89 hours of racing, a mere 180 seconds spanned the riders between second and 10th. What this says is that Froome may be a decisive winner but he is not as dominant as, say, Miguel Indurain or Lance Armstrong who would pulverise the race. This points to a levelling of the playing field within cycling, given that only one team – Movistar – placed more than one rider in the top 10 overall.
Some of Froome’s future challengers will lie within that top 10, but there are absentees. Similarly, it doesn’t figure that just because a rider has finished, say, eighth in 2016, that he will automatically return in 2017 stronger, wiser, and with a better team, and in a position to challenge Froome as he and Sky attempt to win a fifth Tour for the British team in six years.
Some of those within the top 10 produced their best Tours in several attempts, suggesting this might be an “outlier” performance – Daniel Martin is the obvious example here, with all due respect to one of cycling’s best climbers and most spectacular riders. Thus far, Martin looks like a brilliant one-day rider who has turned in the best Tour of his career; there is nothing to say he will improve further.
Beyond the obvious names, who have won at least one Grand Tour and confirmed that performance – Nairo Quintana, Vincenzo Nibali and Alberto Contador – and old lags such as Richie Porte and Thibaut Pinot, what prospects for 2017 have been thrown up by this year’s race?
Romain Bardet
The obvious name, given that he has produced two decent Tours in a row (fifth in 2015, with one stage win, second in 2016, with one stage win), he is improving year by year and he doesn’t appear to suffer from the inconsistency that afflicts French cyclists, who appear to suffer from being in the spotlight. Crucially, Bardet appears able to get through the first week of the Tour without struggling too much, while he is clearly learning year on year to find openings for himself. He has weaknesses compared to Froome, however, starting with his team, Ag2R. While probably the best value for money squad in cycling – Leicester to Sky’s Chelsea – and a model in terms of youth development, with eight “home-grown” riders in this year’s Tour team, they don’t have Sky’s budget or firepower. Bardet will have to get lucky to beat Froome. He will also have to improve his time trialling.
Adam Yates
There has to be a chance that, having produced a Tour way above expectations in 2016 at the age of only 23, Yates may suffer a dip in performance the following season before bouncing back the following year. However, Yates’s trajectory to date has been sufficiently precocious – stage race wins, a Classic win in his second year – to suggest that he may buck that trend. It’s equally interesting to speculate about what will happen if Orica decide to unleash their other two bright stage race prospects – Yates’s twin brother Simon and the Colombian Esteban Chaves – alongside Adam in the French race. If the trio can be kept together and made to function as a unit with a strong squad built to back them, with a clever directeur sportif in Matt White to keep them in order they just might present Sky with a serious challenge, if not next year then in 2018.
Louis Meintjes
The South African followed 10th in the Vuelta in 2015 with eighth in the Tour this year. Meintjes rode through the Tour even more unobtrusively than Adam Yates and would have stepped into the white jersey had the Briton faltered; he was only 2min slower in Paris. Meintjes has a background in Belgian racing – a spell at the UC Seraing and the Lotto-Belisol under-23 team – and picked up his first stage race win last year. Clearly he can time trial and climb excellently, but the big question is whether he can develop at the Lampre team, where he transferred this year from MTN-Qubeka.
Fabio Aru
One bad day does not a lousy Tour make. The 2015 Vuelta winner cracked on the final Alpine stage, which dropped him out of the top six overall, but in spite of the frustration he can treat this as a valuable learning experience in his first Tour. Crucially he got through the first week intact; later in the Tour there were flashes of brilliance, such as his third place in the Megève time trial to Froome and Tom Dumoulin and he attacked harder than most, albeit to no avail. He will return, older and wiser and stronger.
Miguel Ángel López
Yet another climbing prospect from Colombia, the 22-year-old hasn’t even ridden the Tour de France but should be closely watched. In 2014 he won the Tour de l’Avenir, the traditional proving ground for talent of the future, while this year he scored a surprise win in the Tour of Switzerland. Not surprisingly given his youth, the Astana team are keeping him under wraps, but he could quite feasibly play a role in the 2017 Tour given the rate at which he is progressing.
