FTDF countdown - 3 days to go......

There's only a couple of days now till the start of the Tour, and all the pro teams have now announced their squads. We now know all 198 riders who'll be lining up on Saturday, so there's officially no reason to have not selected a team yet. And no reason not to have entered the Tour de Pance mini league. Unless you've forgotten the league code that is, so here it is again.

22150725

I don't know about you, but I'm finding picking my team this year to be especially difficult. The Bile Beans have now had more line-up changes than The Fall. Much like The Fall, there has always been one constant in my team, but you'll have to wait till Saturday to find out who I think is cycling's equivalent of Mark E. Smith. I can tell you that it's not Michele Scarponi, as although they look very similar, Scarponi won't be at the Tour, after riding a tough Giro.

Let's see what we've got on the way for Stage 1 then...... In a break from recent Tour tradition, there's no Prologue for Fabian Cancellara to win. Instead there's a road stage that looks like this.

You may notice that the stage starts on the Passage du Gois, which featured back in 1999, with a memorable crash which ended the hopes of Alex Zulle.

The bunch should be able to make it across in one piece this year though, as the race will be neutralised for the first 18km. After that I think we can expect attacks, breaks, chases, crashes and the like, before it most likely comes back together for the last 5km.

As you can see, it's got a hill at the end, so don't expect a sprinter like Cav to get the win. It should be someone with a bit of uphill punch and Philippe Gilbert seems to be the favorite. But on the opening day of the biggest race of the year, just about anything could happen.