On July 6, the 106th Tour de France rolls out of Brussels with 22 teams and 176 riders. But who are all those skinny guys in bright spandex? Or at least, who is worth giving a damn about? To answer those, and your other pressing Tour queries – like who’s actually going to win, and who’s just going to stink up the French countryside like a rotten wheel of brie – we offer reporter Joe Lindsey’s handy, no hugs, all BS, Tour guide. And to back up this writer’s bold Tour forecast, Bicycling offers this promise: All predictions guaranteed wrong, or your money back.

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INEOS

Going for: Yellow jersey

Marquee riders: Geraint Thomas, Egan Bernal

Notable results (TdF riders): Won 6 of last 7 Tours de France with 3 riders.

After Chris Froome’s horrific, multi-bone breaking crash at June’s Dauphine, and defending Tour champ Geraint Thomas’s own tumble at the Tour de Suisse, Ineos might want to just roll Egan Bernal up in bubble wrap until the Grand Depart, because the Colombian climbing whiz is going to be the next winner of the Tour.

That’s our call: Ineos, which took over as sponsor from Sky in May, will win its seventh Tour in eight years with a fourth rider. They’re that deep, thanks to Sir Jim “Moneybags” Ratcliffe, the team owner. And even before his crash, Thomas’s results weren’t looking like a repeat was in the offing. Plus, this year’s course features multiple high-altitude climbs for Bernal, who grew up in Bogota (2,600 metres above sea level), to excel on. GM Dave Brailsford excels at mind games with the fans, other teams, and his own riders, so look for him to talk up Thomas’s chances right up until Thomas can’t hold the pace on Stage 15’s Mur de Péguère and Bernal schools him at Drop U to go for the W.

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ASTANA

Going for: Yellow jersey, stages

Marquee riders: Jakob Fuglsang

Notable results (TdF riders): Criterium du Dauphine (Fuglsang), so they’re screwed.

No team has been better in stage races this year than Astana; with 10 victories already, most recently the final pre-Tour prep event, the Dauphine. There won’t be an 11th in July. Dauphine winner Jakob Fuglsang might be a fashionable fantasy pick, but he’s 34 and has never gone better than seventh overall in a Grand Tour. This is the year the stars align? Yeah, but nah.

Remember Amstel Gold, when Fuglsang played coy with Julian Alaphilippe in the break until both got roasted in the sprint by Mathieu van der Poel? Somehow, Fuglsang will find a way to screw this up. Besides, we all know winning the Dauphine is a death knell (unless you’re a Chris Froome, and a Froome Fuglsang is not) because you can’t sustain that form for six more weeks. Astana will get stage wins along the way, but this probably isn’t Fuglsang’s year anymore than his last eight Tours were.

SUNWEB

Going for: Green jersey, stages

Marquee riders: Michael Matthews

Notable results (TdF riders): Squat outside of Chad Haga’s Giro TT win.

Sunweb: so much potential, so much disappointment. Tom Dumoulin, the team’s best rider by far, crashed out of the Giro and then he (and/or the team) tried to rush back too quickly – he bailed out of the Dauphine with knee pain, only to find out that there were still chunks of gravel in there from the Giro crash.

That leaves the team relying on sprinter/classics guy Michael Matthews. I’ve never understood the excited fascination with Matthews, who prefers to be called “Bling.” First, that’s a genuinely terrible nickname. Second, the hype outstrips the results. Yes, he’s got three Tour stage wins. But he’s as liable to underperform as to win, and the victory rate is slowing, despite the fact he’s not exactly a geezer at 28. That’s the problem with a nickname like Bling: it seems more flash than cash. Do keep your eye on American Chad Haga, though, winner of that TT stage at the Giro.

BORA-HANSGROHE

Going for: Green jersey, stages

Marquee riders: Peter Sagan

Notable results (TdF riders): Sagan’s six green jerseys tie the Tour’s record.

Aside from a wide-open fight for the yellow jersey, there may be no bigger question mark in the 2019 Tour than Peter Sagan. His spring classics campaign fizzled like a wet bottle rocket, and he only won a single stage at his security-blanket race, the Tour of California, where he routinely wins by the handful. But he did bounce back with a stage at the recent Tour de Suisse, so maaaaybe the form is finally coming around?

Here’s the thing: even that might not matter. Sagz is looking for a record seventh green jersey at the Tour. And what’s interesting about that is his previous six came primarily from consistently high stage placings, without a lot of stage wins (11, in seven starts). Sagan is 29; sprinters age faster than other riders, and last year Sagan didn’t win at least 10 races for just the second time since he turned pro, in 2010. Maybe his ninth pro season is the year Sagan starts to show his age.

DIMENSION DATA

Going for: Green jersey, stages

Marquee riders: Edvald Boassen Hagen, Ben King

Notable results (TdF riders): Meh…OK, EBH got a stage at the Dauphine.

You gotta feel for Dimension Data. One of the lower-budget teams in racing, they’ve historically come up with some solid goods at the Tour, like in 2016 when they won a quarter of the stages. But the last couple of years, results have really tailed off. Their biggest star, sprinter Mark Cavendish, has more Tour stage wins all-time (30) than anyone not named Eddy Merckx. But as he hasn’t won any kind of race in 16 months, he didn’t make Dimension Data’s Tour squad.

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Next up is Edvald Boassen Hagen, whose entire career has basically been a mix of amazing and frustrating results. A superb talent (78 career victories), he spent his best years mostly getting scraps from Team Sky, but came up with the goods just often enough to keep you believing. Louis Meintjes is a kind of token GC contender better known for a painful unawareness of sun protection; he’s a good racer who would probably be better served focusing on stage wins at the Tour or the climbers jersey than the overall. The best stage win hope? Might just be American Ben King, who knocked off two stages at last year’s Vuelta Espana.

LOTTO-SOUDAL

Icons: Green jersey, stages

Marquee riders: Caleb Ewan, Tim Wellens

Notable results (TdF riders): Two stages of the Giro d’Italia (Ewan).

Lotto-Soudal has always been Belgium’s B team, with Quick Step hoovering up most of the wins in marquee races. But keep an eye on them; if they don’t win they’re at least going to be damn fun to watch. Take breakaway specialists like Tim Wellens and Thomas de Gendt. Wellens like to attack at weird moments (“There’s Tim Wellens Wellensing again…” as he charges off the front too far from the finish, or just as a climb finishes) but improbably makes them stick sometimes. Maybe this year it works in the Tour? De Gendt just likes to get in long breaks on the hardest days and cheerfully grind his companions to jelly with a metronomic pace.

Then there’s cute little Caleb Ewan, all 5’5” of him. Ewan’s at exactly the right age (24) and trajectory (two Giro stage wins) to be the breakout sprinter of this year’s Tour.

Finally: Tiesj Benoot, the dude no one quite knows how to classify. He’s 6’2” and only 158 pounds. Is he a classics rider? Sure. A GC rider? Maybe? He was just fourth at the Tour de Suisse. He’s totally unproved over three week tours, but he’s so damn versatile I can’t count him out for a top five. Lotto-Soudal, people: Are you not entertained?

MOVISTAR

Going for: Yellow jersey

Marquee riders: Mikel Landa, Nairo Quintana, Alejandro Valverde

Notable results (TdF riders): Valverde’s on a tear with three recent wins, including the Spanish road title.

Ah, Movistar, such a flirt. Every year, they threaten to upend the Tour with a deep, talented roster. And every year, they end up sitting second place, or worse, to Ineos (formerly Sky). Last year we heard endless yammer about the “trident” attack of Nairo Quintana, Alejandro Valverde, and Mikel Landa, only to have the whole thing flame out with Landa best in seventh.

If there’s a year for them to get over the hump and finally win the damn thing, this is it, even leaving recent Giro d’Italia winner Richard Carapaz at home. Froome’s out, the field is wide open, and both Quintana and Valverde seem to be in excellent form entering the race. They bring a talented, experienced team that should do well in both the mountains and the team time trial, and have multiple leaders to choose from. So of course they’re gonna ball it up. The only questions are when and how.

CCC

Going for: Stages, TV time

Marquee riders: Greg Van Avermaet

Notable results (TdF riders): Jack squat, unless you count GVA’s stage at the Tour de Yorkshire (kinda?).

Hey, didn’t you guys used to be somebody? You know this outfit as BMC, but last fall, with that sponsorship ending, the team engineered a late merger with a second-division Polish team and became CCC to survive in 2019, with more than 50 percent turnover in the offseason. Jeffrey Loria couldn’t have more thoroughly demolished the roster.

With Richie Porte, Tejay van Garderen, and Simon Gerrans bailing, there weren’t many big-name riders left, especially when Geraint Thomas spurned a reported offer and instead re-upped with Ineos. CCC’s last real star, Greg Van Avermaet, doesn’t win that often but wins big when he does. The problem is that neither he nor anyone else on the team have been winning much at all this season. With BMC-turned-CCC’s GVA TBD, TDF results could be MIA and the team owner all “WTF?”.

MITCHELTON-SCOTT

Going for: Yellow jersey

Marquee riders: Adam Yates

Notable results (TdF riders): 6 WorldTour stage wins.

If your cycling fashion sense includes wearing massively oversize mirror shades, then the Yates brothers are your jam. The British twins have been the heart of the Mitchelton team for seven years now, and it paid off with Simon’s Vuelta Espana victory last year. But his Giro didn’t go so great this year, and brother Adam got the nod to lead for France.

It’s cute how they trade turns, but it ain’t gonna win the 2019 Tour. Adam DNF’d from the Dauphine after getting sick, and while there’s plenty of time to recover and Mitchelton is a fairly strong team, Adam’s trajectory as a Grand Tour rider has been down since he was fourth overall in 2016. May we suggest smaller sunglasses?

KATUSHA-ALPECIN

Going for: Yellow jersey, stages, TV time

Marquee riders: Ilnur Zakarin

Notable results (TdF riders): Giro d’Italia stage win (Zakarin).

Katusha is pro cycling’s poster boy for underachievement. Despite one of the richer budgets in the sport, the team named for a Russian mobile rocket launcher (Google it) hasn’t won much of late: just three wins this year and five last year since letting its best rider, Alexander Kristoff, leave for another team.

Its hopes at the Tour rest mostly with Ilnur Zakarin, a 29-year-old climber who’s a regular top-10 finisher at Grand Tours while also seeming to never really be a threat to win overall. The Stork of Tatarstan (thank you, INRNG) raced the Giro too, so he may be a wee bit peaked. Trouble is, Katusha doesn’t have much else to work with, since sprinter Marcel Kittel, its big signing last year, terminated his contract in May to take a break from the sport. If we’re permitted to be serious for a moment, we hope that Kittel’s break brings him mental and physical health he needs as a human being (bike racing can wait). But, back to snark: Katusha supposedly has one of the top five budgets in pro cycling, and has three wins this year, with Zakarin as its only star. What the heck are they spending it on?

TREK-SEGAFREDO

Going for: Yellow jersey

Marquee riders: Richie Porte, Bauke Mollema

Notable results (TdF riders): TdU stage (Porte), national road title (Toms Skujinš)

Hey, you guys remember Richie Porte? Think of him like a backup quarterback: He seems far more interesting when he’s not the team leader. Sages predicted Great Things™ for Porte after his impressive work hauling Chris Froome across the Alps while on Sky, and when he left in 2016 for BMC he seemed on the verge of delivering, with a fifth overall at the Tour that year.

Since then? Things fell apart, quite literally. DNF in 2017 (crash), DNF in 2018 (crash), and 84th overall at the Vuelta last fall – his worst GC finish ever in a Grand Tour. He’s back, again, but he’s 34 now, and it’s clear that Trek has lost confidence in him since word is Vincenzo Nibali is coming aboard for 2020 even though Porte’s contract runs through next season. Nibbles is the same age as Porte, so read that as a demotion. Porte could make things interesting with a podium finish this year, but first, he has to actually stay upright and finish the race.

BAHRAIN-MERIDA

Going for: Yellow jersey, stages

Marquee riders: Rohan Dennis, Vincenzo Nibali

Notable results (TdF riders): 2nd overall in the Giro d’Italia (Nibali).

If there’s a rider who can challenge Bernal, and if there’s an Old Dude who can win the Tour, it’s the same guy: Vincenzo Nibali. Oddsmakers do not agree; the Shark of Messina (def a better nickname than Bling) is way down the list of likely winners, but allow us to make the case: previous winner (2014); one of just seven riders in the history of the entire damn sport to have won all three Grand Tours; has a strong team that will destroy that early team time trial; was second overall at May’s Giro d’Italia.

Case against: Nibbles raced May’s Giro d’Italia, which tends to tire a guy out. And, at 34 years and eight months, he would be the oldest Tour winner in almost 40 years, and one of the oldest ever. Do not discount his chances, though. He races like he DGAF and that’s the one thing that Ineos’s methodical racing style cannot compute. It’s a hunch, but no one will push Ineos harder.

UAE-TEAM EMIRATES

Going for: Yellow jersey, green jersey, stages

Marquee riders: Fabio Aru, Alexander Kristoff, Dan Martin

Notable results (TdF riders): Gent-Wevelgem, Tour of Norway (Kristoff)

Think of UAE as an older, more expensive version of Lotto-Soudal (that’s oil-sheikh money for you). They have two outside GC contender (Dan Martin and Fabio Aru), a top sprinter (Alexander Kristoff, with Giro stage winner Fernando Gaviria getting a pass), and likely breakaway riders in Sergio Henao and Rui Costa. Their problem is that their GC guys are 28 and 32 – not 25 like Lotto’s Tiesj Benoot – and seemed to have peaked. The team may be committing too many resources for a valiant battle for eighth overall.

For a small consulting fee, here’s our game plan for surefire success: Build the team around Kristoff, who accounts for a quarter of the team’s total victory count this season. He’s your moneymaker. Then, tell Martin and Aru to forget about the overall. No one cares who was eleventh in the 2014 Tour or whatever. You wanna never buy a drink in your hometown bar again? Win a stage, or take yellow and die valiantly defending it. Aru’s won a Tour stage and should target the climber’s jersey. Martin’s an accomplished classics racer, with two of cycling’s Monuments in his trophy case. What if he forgot about the overall and took that one-day mentality to the Tour? That’s must-see TV.

AG2R-La MONDIALE

Going for: Yellow jersey

Marquee riders: Romain Bardet

Notable results (TdF riders): Paris-Camembert (Benoit Cosnefroy).

If there’s ever a window for Romain Bardet to become the Tour’s first home-country winner in 34 years, this year is it. He’s the right age (28), he has the track record (two podium finishes), a strong and devoted team, improving form, and a course that’s light on time trials, his weakness.

Working against him is that he’s, well, French. After 34 years of crushed French pride, there’s no greater pressure than being a Frenchman in (or near) the yellow jersey. And if the French en masse want a Frenchman, any Frenchman, to win, French riders don’t necessarily see it that way. Some of the most negative racing you’ll see in the Tour is French riders essentially denying other French riders a shot at glory. That dynamic could definitely cost Bardet a win.

GROUPAMA-FDJ

Going for: Yellow jersey

Marquee riders: Thibaut Pinot

Notable results (TdF riders): Tour de l’Ain and Tour du Haut Var (Pinot).

Speaking of French riders and pressure, man, we feel ya, Thibaut Pinot. Once the great hope of French stage racing, Pinot got a case of descending yips in 2013 and spent a couple of years getting his confidence back. He’s no longer a liability going downhill, and the dude’s got some seriously promising form at the moment.

But: Pinot has always had a troubled relationship with the Tour, borne partly out of those long-denied French dreams of a Tour champion that dog Bardet. He seems to ride more relaxed in the Giro and Vuelta where he’s free of those patriotic expectations. What’s more, his team is adding to that pressure with a climber-heavy support squad and leaving (also French) sprinter Arnaud Demare at home even after Demare won a Giro stage and two more at a Tour tune-up race, Route d’Occitanie. Bad move. Not only is Demare an insurance policy of sorts, his presence might reassure Pinot that the team’s success doesn’t rest only on his results.

JUMBO-VISMA

Going for: Yellow jersey, green jersey

Marquee riders: Dylan Groenewegen, Steven Kruiswijk, Wout van Aert

Notable results (TdF riders): 10 sprint wins by Groenewegen.

Don’t tell Ineos, but the most well-rounded team in pro cycling is none other than this long-running Dutch outfit, which was rebuilt from the ashes of dope-soaked Rabobank and then again when its first sponsor-savior, Belkin, discovered that pro team sponsorship wasn’t actually in line with its marketing goals. Who among us hasn’t spent $15 million by mistake, right?

Anyways, the team: it’s deep. Dylan Groenewegen is the best pure field sprinter in cycling right now and claimed 10 wins this season. Stephen Kruiswijk is an outside shot at a podium finish and he’s not even the best stage racer on the team. But the guy to really keep your eye on? Wout van Aert, a three-time World Cyclocross Champion who’s one of those unlimited fuoriclasse talents. At the recent Dauphine, he won a time trial and then a sprint stage. He wins classics, he can climb, he can time trial, and he’s only 24. He’s like a younger, more Belgian Peter Sagan. Because he’s Belgian. And Sagan’s not. Did you people even TAKE geography?

DECEUNINCK-QUICK STEP

Going for: Green jersey, stages

Marquee riders: Elia Viviani, Julian Alaphilippe, and many more

Notable results (TdF riders): 46 wins this year, 10 by Alaphilippe

Let’s play “What’s that team’s name this year?” The outfit formerly known as OmegaPharma, then Quick Step, then Etixx, is on its fourth name in six years. Maybe just call them the Wolf Pack, because that’s what they call themselves. They win everything and everywhere: sprints (Viviani), breakaways (Alaphilippe), classics (Alaphilippe, Zdenek Stybar, and Yves Lampaert).

Hell, even though they’ve historically ignored the GC, this year they have one of the next great talents of stage racing in Enric Mas, who was second at last year’s Vuelta Espana. Count us totally unsurprised if, come Paris, Viviani wins the green points jersey, Alaphilippe is in polka-dots as best climber, and Mas is in white as best young rider, and they’ve won fully a quarter of the total stages in the race.

EF EDUCATION FIRST

Going for: Yellow jersey

Marquee riders: Tejay van Garderen, Rigoberto Uran

Notable results (TdF riders): Tour of Flanders (Alberto Bettiol).

Oh, those plucky underdogs in their Pepto-pink helmets! Fans have an undying love for EF (formerly Cannondale, formerly Garmin), except for the people who have an undying enmity for manager Jonathan Vaughters and his own undying love of plaid pants and turtlenecks under sportscoats.

EF is trying for the rebound. Rigoberto Uran Uran is hungry like the wolf (sorry not sorry) after he got second overall in 2017 and then crashed out last year. There may also be a good American storyline from one of the few teams that actually employs American racers anymore. Unfortunately, Lawson Craddock, whose fight to finish with a busted collarbone was one of the most riveting sagas of the 2018 edition, won’t start.

So the best American storyline? Keep an eye on Tejay van Garderen, one-time Tour hopeful whose career took a hard detour after 2015 when he suffered a devastating DNF due to illness while sitting third overall late in that year’s Tour. He was second at the recent Dauphine, and while he will likely work for Uran, he could be the sweetheart of the whole thing if he’s in contention for a podium himself.

WANTY-GROUPE GOBERT

Going for: TV time, stages

Marquee riders: Guillaume Martin, maybe you’ve heard of him. No? Oh, never mind.

Notable results (TdF riders): 3rd at Tour de Luxembourg (Andrea Pasqualon), then literally nothing else worth reporting.

Ah, wildcard teams, those second-division hopefuls whose goal is just not to get stomped. The only non-French wildcard in the race, Wanty is nonetheless led by a French rider: 26-year-old Guillaume Martin, a serviceable stage racer who will consider a top-10 overall here a damn fine result. If he’s really smart, he’ll focus on stage wins and maybe the climbers jersey.

Wanty has just a single victory this year. Expect their strategy to be similar to other wildcards: Get in every early break, get as much time as you can flying the sponsor logo on TV, and hope you get lucky at some point. It’s not that it’s a bad strategy; it’s just that it’s the only one they or the other wildcard teams really have here.

COFIDIS

Going for: Green jersey, stages, TV time

Marquee riders: Jesus Herrada, Christophe Laporte

Notable results (TdF riders): Dominated the Tour de Luxembourg with four stages (LaPorte, Herrada) and the overall (Herrada).

There are few guarantees in life: death, taxes, and a Tour de France wildcard berth for Cofidis. Now in its 22nd season, Cofidis has been in every Tour since its founding, often on a discretionary selection. But it hasn’t won a stage since 2008. If that changes this year, it won’t be thanks to Nacer Bouhanni, the punchy (literally) sprinter who was left off the Tour squad for the second year in a row.

Instead, look to young French sprinter Christophe Laporte for a possible breakthrough, or maybe climber Jesus Herrada, who’s on a run of good form right now that included beating Romain Bardet in the Mont Ventoux Denivele Challenges, a new one-day race in June that finished atop the legendary climb.

TOTAL DIRECT ENERGIE

Going for: TV time, stages

Marquee riders: Niki Terpstra, Lilian Calmejane

Notable results (TdF riders): Minor race wins, like GP Cycliste la Marseillaise (Anthony Turgis), which you’ve definitely heard of.

If Total Direct Energie is not in every breakaway in the first week, they’re in trouble. They don’t really have a top-tier rider for much of anything outside of Niki Terpstra, a former Roubaix and Flanders winner who used to ride for the powerhouse Quick Step team.

Elsewhere, TDE is a kind of refuge for riders who maybe were unfairly overhyped earlier in their careers, like Lilian Calmejane and Romain Sicard. These are good racers, don’t get us wrong. And it would warm the cockles of our heart to see Sicard get a stage win (it’d be his first big win since 2009’s U23 Road World Champs). But at the Tour, where every team is hungry every day and at least some teams will have to shift their focus to stage wins when their bids for the overall go feet up in a ditch, the wildcard entries have a rough ride.

ARKEA-SAMSIC

Going for: Green jersey, stages, TV time

Marquee riders: Andre Greipel, Warren Barguil

Notable results (TdF riders): French Road National Championships (Barguil).

We’ll confess to a soft spot for Andre “The Gorilla” Greipel. Not only does the stocky German sprinter have a rad nickname, but for 12 Grand Tours over eight seasons, he was as reliable as they come, with at least one stage win in every race. That streak ended at the 2017 Giro d’Italia and, we fear that, since Greipel is 36 years old, it’s not likely to re-start. Still, going out with a 12th career Tour stage win would certainly qualify as a Hallmark moment.

The team’s other main talent is Warren Barguil, who is more erratic than Elon Musk’s Twitter. Moments of sheer brilliance (two stage wins, 10th overall in 2017) punctuate long stretches of truly abysmal form. He’s had a forgettable spring, but showed some signs of life at the Dauphine (4th on the mountainous final stage), and then won the French national road championships the last weekend in June. It’s anyone’s guess, including probably Warren’s, which rider shows up at the Tour.

This article originally appeared on bicycling.com.

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