Your 2020 Tour de France rooting guide
Previously: The Tour de France is taking place in 2020, against all sense
There is so much ephemera on every Tour de France stage — sweeping views, beautifully decrepit buildings, the occasional roadside butt — that the riders themselves sometimes get lost in the wash. It doesn't help that one organization, Team Ineos (formerly Sky), has dominated the yellow jersey for nearly a decade, nor that (assuming you're an American reading this) there haven't been many strong general classification contenders from the motherland in a long time.
There's good reason to pay attention to the names this year, however.
First, Ineos isn't the sole dominating force. Team Jumbo-Visma have looked like cycling's strongest squad since the August restart, counting two premier one-day race wins, three stage wins out of five at the Critérium du Dauphiné, and one really solid blow against Ineos at the three-day Tour de l'Ain, where assumed team leader Primoz Roglic won both mountain stages and took the yellow jersey ahead of 2019 Tour winner Egan Bernal.
Second is that cycling is in the midst of a power shift. A group of generationally-talented young riders is realizing its potential, and pushing hard against an aging group of riders that spent the 2010s trying and failing to derail the Sky/Ineos train. The result is a potentially explosive mix of ambitions and egos. The young guys want to prove themselves; the old guys want to seize on a year when no one's training plan has followed script, and chaos could rein.
Peloton dynamics are fascinating, and they raise an important question: Who do I root for? WELL YOU'RE IN LUCK. I've sifted out 20 main characters vying for the yellow jersey, tiered and ordered roughly from odds-on favorites down to the underdogs. I've also given each rider an equivalent NBA player and college football team to hopefully give you a sense of their careers and personalities.
Did I butcher some of these comparisons? Probably! If you want to yell at me about anything, well friend, you can go right ahead.
The riders who will be disappointed if they don't win yellow
Egan Bernal (Ineos)
Equivalent NBA player: Luka Doncic
Equivalent college football team: Ohio State
Bernal won his first Tour de France at 22 years old, which means that, like Doncic, we're already taking his early career stats and achievements and extrapolating them to absurd ends. And on paper, there's no reason why he can't win 10 Tours. Just as no team in the Big Ten can match Ohio State's resources, few teams in cycling even approach what Ineos can do with its gobs of sweet multinational chemicals company cash. Bernal is a machine within a machine.
Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma)
Equivalent NBA player: Kawhi Leonard
Equivalent college football team: LSU
Like Kawhi Leonard, Roglic's success wasn't ordained. He was a ski jumper who took up cycling in his early 20s and slowly became one of the sport's best all-arounders. He's peaking now at the relatively advanced age of 30, and embedded in a team that, like LSU, is flush with talent and excitement, and finally has its golden goose (but for quarterback/GC contender!). Jumbo will rule the peloton, and give us fireworks, too.
Tom Dumoulin (Jumbo-Visma)
Equivalent NBA player: Paul George
Equivalent college football team: Alabama
We could have been talking about Dumoulin as the Tour favorite if not for a bad crash in last year's Giro d'Italia. He's plenty good, but may not be back in the tip-top form we expect due to complications from his knee injury. Similar to George, he chose to be a lieutenant on a strong squad during the offseason when he could have been the top dog anywhere else. Which is admirable, but one has to wonder how much he likes the arrangement in actuality.
Richard Carapaz (Ineos)
Equivalent NBA player: Anthony Davis
Equivalent college football team: Georgia
The Georgia comparison is meaner so let's get it out of the way: Carapaz's yellow jersey chances are being discussed a bit out of default. He had been gearing his training towards the Giro in October, and wouldn't have been on Ineos' Tour team if Chris Froome and/or Geraint Thomas had been on form. However, like Davis, Carapaz is a spritely 27 years old and a phenom at his best. He won the 2019 Giro over Vincenzo Nibali and Roglic, and there's no question that this year's hilly Tour suits him.
Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ)
Equivalent NBA player: Kyle Lowry
Equivalent college football team: Texas
Pinot is going to receive a lot of undue attention by virtue of being the best French rider in the Tour de France. And he is very good. He sure as hell looked like he might win the Tour de France last year before an injury forced him to abandon in tears.
Sadly, this has become a pattern for Pinot: 1. Raise country-sized expectations, 2. Drain every last ounce of blood/sweat/energy trying to fulfill those expectations 3. Suffer injury/stiff breeze/act of god/crisis of faith that leads to existential meltdown. Like Texas, France is a blueblood in its sport that nonetheless has to constantly announce itself "back". Like Lowry, he has spent most of his career in an outsized role on a relatively underpowered team. (And unlike Lowry, there's no Kawhi Leonard equivalent coming to FDJ to end the letdown cycle.)
The riders who can blow it all up
Daniel Martinez (EF Education First)
NBA player equivalent: Caris LeVert
College football team equivalent: Pitt
Martinez is a young rider on a scrappy team who just won the Critérium du Dauphiné, arguably the most important warm-up race to the Tour, thanks in large part to some timely abandonments. If Martinez has a relatively anonymous Tour, no one will wonder what happened. But he's also just proven that if conditions are right, he can topple the biggest of the bigs. The question now is whether he's just used up all his superweapon energy.
Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates)
NBA player equivalent: Ja Morant
College football team equivalent: Minnesota
Pogacar is just 21 years old, and could be a force in grand tours for a long time. He's still searching for strong footing, however. At last year's Vuelta a España, he fell off the podium in the last week before clawing back to take third. And at the Critérium du Dauphiné that just passed, he finished a quiet fourth. He has a strong hype campaign behind him, à la Morant and Minnesota, but he hasn't yet shown the stamina to polish off a three-week grand tour. (Understandably … again, 21 years old.)
Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-Quick Step)
NBA player equivalent: Damian Lillard
College football team equivalent: Oklahoma
To the extent that cycling provides "highlights," Alaphilippe is probably the source of half of them. He's the rider most likely to make you yell GOD DAMN and run to your Twitter feed. He also isn't really suited to winning the yellow jersey, and everybody kinda knows it. Still, his stint in yellow last year was the best part of an incredible Tour. Alaphilippe attacks out of the peloton with a sense of flare and fun that's rare in an era of regimented team tactics. Like Lillard and Oklahoma in their respective fields, he's a crowd favorite who can light the hell out of a scoreboard.
Emanuel Buchmann (Bora-Hansgrohe)
NBA player equivalent: Kemba Walker
College football team equivalent: Wisconsin
A dependably good rider whose name often appears in top 10s but rarely on a podium. He finished fourth at last year's Tour, and he should vie for a podium again. If everything breaks right, he could conceivably win. But Buchmann is rarely talked about as an elite rider, which is both fair and diminutizing. It's hard to perform so solidly race after race, damn it.
Go Badgers.
Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana)
NBA player equivalent: Donovan Mitchell
College football team equivalent: UCF
Lopez has yet to participate in a Tour de France, despite having proven he has the mettle for cycling's biggest event. He can't claim an unofficial championship like UCF fans (and conversely, it'd also be unfair to say "he ain't played nobody"), but we have been looking forward to his shot at the Grande Boucle for a while now. Like Mitchell, Lopez is likeable, fun and the young star of a solidly second tier team, but not yet ripping doors off their hinges.
The riders with reputations, good and bad
Nairo Quintana (Arkéa-Samsic)
NBA player equivalent: Joel Embiid
College football team equivalent: Penn State
Like the The Process-era 76ers, Quintana's former team, Movistar, stockpiled talent and … didn't do much. And just as Embiid may be on the Sixers' trading block, Quintana moved to a new team this year after being the longtime face of another franchise. He has always been a supremely talented climber, but he has also been agonizingly conservative at the Tour, punting at seemingly every decisive moment. In short: He's James Franklin's Penn State incarnate.
Mikel Landa (Bahrain-McLaren)
NBA player equivalent: Russell Westbrook
College football team equivalent: Notre Dame
Maybe Landa will look great early before eliminating himself from contention with one bad stage. Maybe he'll bleed time over the first two weeks only to bust out a string of impressive stage performances late. Either way, there'll be a lot of people gushing about "WHAT IF" when, in fact, he's roughly the same rider every year. If you like to be teased, he's your man.
Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott)
NBA player equivalent: Andrew Wiggins
College football team equivalent: Iowa
Like Wiggins, Yates is ostensibly an all-world athlete, but the sum is consistently less than the parts. He'll flash panache, only to fall or bonk or lose his nerve. He's maybe the most fine rider in the peloton. He's your run-of-the-mill 8-4 Iowa team. He may have his moments, but ultimately you know where he'll end up. A poor man's Emanuel Buchmann, if you will.
Romain Bardet (AG2R La Mondiale)
NBA player equivalent: Kyrie Irving
College football team equivalent: Michigan
Like Pinot, Bardet has spent a lot of time in the spotlight as one of France's biggest yellow jersey hopefuls. However, declining performances suggest that he's missing a spark. Like Ohio State against Michigan, the Tour has been a dispiriting, unconquerable nemesis. At his best, Bardet can climb as well as anyone in the world. But like Kyrie Irving, he's an atypically philosophical athlete who struggles to keep his head in the game at times.
Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo)
NBA player equivalent: Jimmy Butler
College football team equivalent: Boise State
A tough, versatile veteran who is happy on any stage profile. He's not going to win the yellow jersey, but he can throw a big punch at any moment. Like Butler and the Broncos, he rides with spit and cuss.
The scrappy scrappers
Sepp Kuss USA USA USA (Jumbo-Visma)
NBA player equivalent: Klay Thompson
College football team equivalent: Utah
LOOK IT'S AN AMERICAN. Kuss is coming off a brilliant Critérium du Dauphiné doing lieutenant work for Jumbo-Visma. He may be the team's third banana, but his Stage 5 win proved that he's more than capable of going off on any given day, à la Thompson on a loaded Warriors squad. Like last year's Utah team, he's a well-rounded, likeable potential new power. A fine representative for the Stars and Stripes.
Guillaume Martin (Cofidis)
NBA player equivalent: Bam Adebayo
College football team equivalent: Cincinnati
Martin has made steady progress throughout his career, and may be poised to move to the front of France's pecking order, just as the Bearcats are hoping to win their mid-tier conference for the first time in six years. As with Adebayo, Martin has yet to find his ceiling, and the future's bright.
Richie Porte (Trek-Segafredo)
NBA player equivalent: Chris Paul
College football team equivalent: Tennessee
Porte is an old, hardened former Tour-darling whose name inspires either respect or eye rolls, depending on who you ask.
Alejandro Valverde (Movistar)
NBA player equivalent: Carmelo Anthony
College football team equivalent: USC
At 40 years old, Valverde is well past his prime. He's at the Tour to attempt a lot of ill-fated attacks out of fan service, just like Melo might jack up threes. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this.
Fabio Aru (UAE Team-Emirates)
NBA player equivalent: Derrick Rose
College football team equivalent: Virginia Tech
Like Rose, Aru is ostensibly his team's leader, but probably not the rider who fans are most excited about (that'd be Pogacar in UAE Team-Emirates' case, and Sekou Dembouya in the Pistons'). But sure, he's pretty good! Though like the Hokies, his recent form has been below expectations.