The great thing about making predictions in newspapers is that, by the time events have transpired, said newspapers are chip paper. Forecasts in newspapers rarely come back to haunt you.
Websites are a different matter. And so I feel duty bound to return to the predictions I made on the eve of the Tour de France, particularly since they remain, disconcertingly, only a click of the mouse away. Plus, if I don't bring them up, I know someone else will.
Wiggins: fourth overall is the equal highest ever placing by a British rider
I shouldn't claim too much credit for successfully predicting that Alberto Contador would win, because many others said the same... but I will, if only as consolation for the fact that I was spectacularly wrong with my forecast that Cadel Evans would finish second for a third consecutive year.
Evans is - or was - a master of consistency. I couldn't see him having a bad day. And he didn't: he had several. The Australian finished way down in 30th place.
A pat on the back, please, for saying - to quote myself - that "the big shock could be Wiggins' overall position."
Richard Moore
Quotes of the week
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For third I said... Lance Armstrong. Eat your heart out, Nostradamus.
And in fourth, I plumped for last year's winner, Carlos Sastre. But Sastre had a Cadel Evans-esque nightmare, slumping to seventeenth. In fact, you could say that last year's podium was cursed, with Sastre and Evans both off the pace, and the rider in third, Bernhard Kohl, subsequently exposed as a drugs cheat and handed a two-year ban.
I nominated Andy Schleck for fifth place. I thought his poor time trialling ability would count against him, and it did in terms of him challenging Contador for the yellow jersey, but he was good enough in the mountains to finish second behind the Spaniard.
I also made some specifically British forecasts, introducing them as "foolish predictions." I was right about that, at least.
No stopping Cavendish
I was also half-right in saying that Cavendish would win three stages - he won six. I just couldn't see him repeating his four victories of last year - and, in fairness, I don't think he could, either - but he did, and then added two more with such ease that you wonder how many he can win next year. Eight? Ten?
I thought Bradley Wiggins would claim the yellow jersey after the team time trial in the first week, and he was close, but there was no cigar (or yellow jersey). I said that David Millar would win a stage in the second week, but he came agonisingly close towards the end of the first, racing alone into Barcelona and only being caught on the climb up to the finish. He didn't quite hold on, but it was a heroic effort.
A pat on the back, please, for saying - to quote myself - that "the big shock could be Wiggins' overall position". Indeed it was: fourth is the equal highest ever placing by a British rider. But I won't gloss over what I went on to say, which was that I thought he'd have at least one bad day, and not achieve his goal of a top twenty placing. Oops.
Still, in the predictions for Cavendish and Wiggins I am glad to have been proved wrong - each rider wrote his name into cycling history, and contributed to Britain's most successful ever Tour.
I will check back in tomorrow with some of my picks of the Tour: the highlights, lowlights, and funniest moment, involving Bradley Wiggins and a curtain...
Video
Comments (4)
Mark Caton says...
the next couple of tour de france will be intriguing with andy schleck and contador being main men.armstrong can never get back to the level of the past and wiggins will never be able to attack on mountain stages so he will never win the tour !
Posted 17:13 28th July 2009
Byron Perrett says...
I was over the moon for Wiggins this year he worked tirelessly for the whole tour and was nothing short of spectacular amid all the hype (and deservedly so) surrounding Cavendish, Wiggins sometimes seemed like a ghost coming up through the rankings until he hit third and i doubt anybody, even wiggins could've seen him comming in fourth. Congratulations to both men for not only completing their first tour but also surpassing everybodies expectations, they really are inspirational. A BIG CONGRATULATIONS TO TWO OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCES FROM TWO INCREDIBLE SPORTSMEN, IN THE BIGGEST TEST SPORT HAS TO OFFER!
Posted 13:34 28th July 2009
Ben Sherman says...
What Wiggins has done is amazing - going from an athlete who specialises in 4-5min efforts (4000m persuit) to an all day, every day effort performer as a grand tour rider is just about unimaginable in any other sport. However, brilliant as he was on the mountains, I would imagine a Cadel Evans style wheel sucker is the best he could ever be - I can't imagine him ever being the aggressor. And gaining that level of climbing capability seems to have been at the detriment of his TT skills. It's so hard to pidgeon hole him into a type of rider as so many of the high profile boys that you could have compared him to in the past (Indurain, Ullrich, Riis) turn out to have been juiced up.
Posted 13:33 28th July 2009
Robert Thompson says...
In his boomk Wiggins indicated that he was looking to beat Redgrave's haul of medals at the Olympics - but the book was written before he was a bona fide Tour contender. You might find that his head has been turned more to what he can achieve on the road now. Also, unless he ends up riding for the Sky+ team (Vaughters seems confident that he's staying at Garmin) then I can't see his road team being too keen on paying the sort of sums he must be able to command now, only for him to spend half a season concentrating on the track. It's unfortunate that his emergence as a top climber has coincided with Contador's emergence as a top TTer. The option to win the Tour by limiting your losses in the mountains and taking back the lost time in the TTs seems to have gone now that Contador seems capable of winning in both (as Armstrong did in his prime).
Posted 13:31 28th July 2009