The riders traverse some of the most iconic climbs in the Alps. The route travels over the Col du Galibier (23 kilometres at 5.1%) and the Col de la Croix de Fer (29 kilometres at 5.2%) to Bourg d’Oisans. The town sits as the base of the 13.8 kilometres road climbing Alpe d’Huez. Famous for its 21 hairpins, orange clad mob, and its 8.1% gradient.
As the route climbs from the start, we can rest assured that the breakaway will feature solely strong climbers. Chances are that the battle to be in the breakaway will last a good part of the Galibier ascent. And possibly it’s even not decided upon at the summit.
As the lead group will be made up of strong climbers, the likelihood of a succesful breakaway increases. Although things are never written in stone in cycling. But if we are forced to choose, we will put our money on a brave attacker. And to please the orange clad tifosi along the road to Alpe d’Huez it might as well be Bauke Mollema.
Favourites 12th stage 2022 Tour de France
*** Thibaut Pinot, Bauke Mollema, Michael Woods, Jakob Fuglsang
** Michael Storer, Steven Kruijswijk, Ion Izagirre, Andreas Leknessund
* Tadej Pogacar, Primoz Roglic, Adam Yates, Geraint Thomas, Jonas Vingegaard
Another interesting read: route 12th stage 2022 Tour de France.
Tour de France 2022 stage 12: route & profiles
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For me i would say:
* probable winner
** more probable winner
*** very probable winner.
This because in reality all the names on the list and few more are very probable winners. Just look at the few stages Kemna was one of the biggest favouritesv few days ago.. in one of them, he was so marked that he was not even allowed to go in a breakaway… every time he tried some other team desided to follow him and whole peleton followed… so in a sense, beacause of team tactics, there was a lot of less likely riders in the breakaway.
And tgen the breakaway fight is sometime long and tiring… then many riders join the fight and some of the more likely one give up… so you might end up with many surprises.
Although today, the hills will most likely make less of surprises, because the best climbers will the clear advantage. Still its not always easy to guess the teams tactics. For sure those fighting for the polkadot jersey will go in breakaway today. That does not mean they will win the stage, they might get in a position to try, but perhaps less fresh in their legs today. I would not rule out Barguil today, even if he used loots of energy yesterday. He might go for the polkadot. And Latour and Gesche has been riding hard for many days already. If he is lucky the GC contenders teams might wait until end of stage before speeding up…so the breakaway might get a big time gap. Giving all good climber in the breakaway a very good chance.
@Dave Richter:
It’s the chance of them winning *** = most likely 🙂
What do the asterisks mean after rider picks? ***? **? *?