5 Things we Learnt from the Dauphine

It's always difficult to judge how much sandbagging is going on at the Dauphine Libere. Some things are irrefutable though and BikeRouteHub has taken a look at the 5 things that we have definitively learnt from this edition of everyone's favourite warm up.

5. Things are still looking bleak for LottoNL Jumbo
We're now closer to the end of the season than we are the beginning and LottoNL are still stuck on one win. Just to put that into context, Cannondale-Garmin a team who have also had a woeful season have done 400% better than their Dutch colleagues and Cannondale don't even have a sprinter.
One small crumb of comfort is that Wilco Kelderman seems to be getting close to some kind of form and the hope will be that one of him, Ten Dam or Gesink will be able to break the top 10. Away from that though it's looking pretty lean. Their one sprinter, Moreno Hofland, has already raced the Giro so he won't be in Utrecht, although he is unlikely to have won a stage anyway.
It looks like it will be a case of breakaways and mountain toil if the Dutch lottery funded team are going to get anything from their jaunt round France.

4. Cofidis need to back Bouhanni

Bouhanni is turning into one of the best sprinters in the World.

The French team have been pretty resistant to the idea of rallying behind a sprinter at the Tour, although that might just have been because they never had a sprinter to get behind. They now have the skinsuited Bouhanni however and he represents their best chance for Tour glory.
I suspect that they will try the two pronged attack of supporting Dani Navarro's top 10 ambitions and also giving Nacer some help on the flat. This is a poor idea though, Navarro was a top 10 GC rider at his best and unfortunately he's past that. Secondly, he doesn't really need any mountain help, he is the kind of rider who will ghost their way to a high GC placing without ever needing to appear on the TV.
Bouhanni isn't the best sprinter in the peloton but he is in the top strata of sprinters and he has an excellent chance to add a Tour de France stage win to his palmares.

3. Vincenzo Nibali won't win the Tour this year
Admittedly we don't actually know this yet. But looking at his form all season I would be very surprised if the Italian is able to replicate his success of last year. Although it is unfair to say that there was an asterisk next to Nibali's win last year it is true to say that he benefitted hugely from Froome and Contador's abandonments and Quintana's decision to race the Giro in May.
The supporters of the Italian will point to his long range break to Villard-de-Lans as proof that he is at the peak of his powers however the fact that he was dropped on all the other mountain stages suggests that he is certainly lacking the top end fitness that will be required to win the Tour. His season has been a disappointment. He came 10th in the Tour of Romandie but could only manage 24th in the final time trial.
There are elements in the Italian's favour. He will benefit from the cobbled stage early on and from the first week's classic feel. I suspect that he will be close to the overall lead after the first week but once the high mountain's kick in I think we'll see him getting dropped.

2. Simon Yates should be made overall leader for Orica-GreenEDGE

Yates deserves to be backed by the Australian team.

Orica-GreenEDGE have understandably been wary of over racing the young Brit and so he's yet to have finished a Grand Tour, he's only started one. They have been supporting him in the week long stage races and so far this year he has raced 4 and only finished below the top 10 in one.
The Australian team are also without a real over contender and Yates fills this niche perfectly. He will be hugely helped by the fact that there's only 14km of individual time trialling and a team time trial which his squad will be favourites to win. He will also benefit from being eased into the race with a route that has no mountains for the first ten days.
Orica are quite rightly worried that they might ride Yates into the ground if they give him too much responsibility early on but to use a cliche - If you're good enough you're old enough. The aim should be a top 10 place on GC from the start but they can re-position this as stage wins if he loses time early on.

1. Cannondale-Garmin need to manage Talansky and Martin
The unfortunate truth for Cannondale is that they won't win the Tour this year or get into the Top 5. They have a chance to go for stage wins but without a sprinter or a dominant climber they are limited to just breakaway attempts. They would've been looking at the team time trial stage but that also seems to have been something that they have turned away from, they came 4th last in the recent Giro TTT despite having a team of very strong powerful riders. It's unlikely that they will be able to field a stronger TTT squad for the Tour.
Cannondale-Garmin will need to decide how they choose to race the Tour. Dan Martin appears to be the best chance they have of overall success but neither him or Talansky deserve the whole backing of the team. What Vaughters needs to do is learn from what Ag2r did last year when they got both Peraud and Bardet into the top 10. This is certainly easier to do with two decent overall contenders rather than two excellent contenders (Froome and Wiggins anyone?) or a sprinter and an overall contender (Cavendish and Wiggins anyone?).