Three Things we've learnt so far

Wow! What an opening weekend of the 2015 Tour de France. We've had the fastest stage in Tour history on Saturday and the most exciting stage for a number of years on Sunday. In this post we will look at the three things that we've learnt from the first two stages.

3. Quintana is in Crisis

Quintana is in a dangerous place at the moment.

It might be a bit early to suggest that Quintana is in crisis but he didn't have a good time trial and he's now lost 1.23 to the other major favourites before we've even hit the cobbles of stage 4. He is the best climber in the race so this time loss isn't decisive yet, but, he would've hoped to have lost that time for the whole first week rather than just the first two days. He now has to face the cobbled stage 4 and team time trial without losing any more time to guys like Froome or Contador. It's going to be a frantic week as the Columbian focuses on maintaining his time gap to the favourites, he might even be able to reduce it on the stages finishing on the Mur-de-Huy or the Mur-de-Bretagne.

2. Bardet vs Pinot

Pinot is storming ahead in the French battle.

In the battle of the French riders, Pinot is definitely winning. He had a storming time trial on Saturday where he finished best of all the realistic GC contenders and then he was caught behind the split on Sunday. Bardet, on the other hand, has had a very difficult start to the race. He's been overshadowed by Peraud, his elderly team mate and he lies 3 minutes behind Cancellara and 1.53 behind Pinot.
Both have the potential to finish in the top 5 but Bardet will need his luck to change drastically if he's to do this. Pinot is in a similar situation to Quintana in that he needs to stop losing time in this first week, the difference however is that Quintana has a team who can turn in a decent time trial, Pinot doesn't have that luxury.

1. Van Garderen for GC

Could Van Garderen surprise us all?

I was a little unsure of Van Garderen's chances in the Tour. He's a strong rider but his time is sub par and his climbing is not as strong as the other overall challengers. However, in these two stages he's shown that he does have an important characteristic which is that he's always at the front. His team is built for the opening week and they need to build as large a buffer as they can now and in the TTT before they wilt in the mountains.
Tejay is the highest ranked of the overall contenders at the moment and he should fare well on the cobbles, he also has one of the best team time trialling squads behind him so, if he takes advantage of all those opportunities, he could enter the Pyrenees with a minute advantage over everyone else. If that happens then he could hold it to Paris.