The 8th Stage of the Tour de France covers 186.3 kilometres and ends with a short, but difficult climb which should rule out any of the sprinters.
STAGE 7 RECAP
Stage 7 turned out to be an absolute thriller with favourite Pogacar and his rival Vingegaard battling up the final climb and going past Kamna, who was in the breakaway just metres before the finish line. In the end it was the two-time defending Champion that had that little bit extra to win the stage, but he will be in no doubt now that he has a race on his hands.
It was quite surprising that Pogacar put his UAE team on the front to chase down the break as it looked like the sort of stage where he might be willing to let the Yellow Jersey go to another team all be it on loan. He had other things planned though with his girlfriend at the finish line and that Cancer Foundation he was launching, soon became clear that winning this stage had been his the goal from the start.
JERSEY UPDATE
Pogacar remains the firm favourite at 1/4 with Vingegaard not into 5/2 and you can get 14/1 Primoz Roglic.
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As far as the other jerseys go, Wout Van Aert still has a firm hold on Green and he is trading as 1/7 while the King of the Mountains now has Pogacar as the outright favourite at 5/2 and the Team Classification appears to be boiling down to horse race between Ineos (15/10) and Jumbo-Visma (7/4).
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STAGE 8 BETTING – Click here to bet
Wout Van Aert 33/10
Tadej Pogacar 11/1
Michael Matthews 16/1
Matthieu Van Der Poel 16/1
Matej Mohoric 18/1
Christophe Laporte 20/1
STAGE 8 ROUTE AND PREDICTIONS
There is a flat start to the Stage and there should be quite a battle to get into the break and once the break is formed it remains to be seen who will do the chasing. I expect Pogacar to get his team to ride tempo just to keep the break within range, but it will be up to the other teams if we are going to chase this down for a selective sprint finish.
The route gets quite lumpy after the first 30 kilometres and there are a few Cat 3 and 4 climbs before the Cat 3 climb at the end which is 4.8 kilometres at 4.6%. This is misleading though as one of the kilometres is slightly down hill and the penultimate kilometre is absolutely brutal averaging over 9% with 12% in places. I am betting that this is the stage where the breakaway will disappear down the road never to be seen again.
It is something of a lottery selecting a winner from the break but I will go with Wellens as he has been very active and Cosnefroy who should love the finish and is getting back to his form of earlier in the season. I am also going to throw in Bettiol who should be free to chase the stage and loves these Classics routes.
SELECTIONS:
Wellens 33/1
Cosnefroy 40/1
Bettiol 28/1
Note: All prices correct at the time of writing but are subject to change
