Tour de France 2016: Chris Froome must be wary of rivals, both old and new

The Kenyan-born Briton will be competing for his third Tour de France victory

Chris Froome (Getty)

The Tour de France kicks off on Saturday in Normandy with a chance for Mark Cavendish simultaneously to take both his 27th Tour stage win and the first yellow jersey of his career - and it may well end on July 24th in Paris with another 31-year-old Briton, Chris Froome, capturing the maillot jaune of Tour winner for a third time.

For Froome, the defending champion and outstanding favourite, wearing yellow on the Champs Elysées in three weeks’ time would make him the first rider to take back-to-back Tours since Miguel Indurain in 1994 and 1995. Furthermore, just seven riders have ever managed to win the Tour more than twice, and Froome’s third win in four years would thus place the Sky leader amongst the greatest Tour riders in history.

However, Froome himself warned that this could be his toughest ever Tour to win. Problem number one is that rivals have multiplied in the last two years as a new, young generation of contenders moves towards the Tour’s centre-stage.

Nairo Quintana, the 25-year-old Colombian climber who had Froome against the ropes in the last Alpine stage of the 2015 Tour and already twice second overall, is one relatively new face but widely agreed to be Froome’s most dangerous opponent. Another rider Sky will not be letting gain too much ground in the mountains is France’s Thibaut Pinot, an impressively strong climber whose time trialling, previously a notable chink in his armour, has massively improved in the last six months. Yet another unpredictable young gun will be Italian Fabio Aru, a newcomer to the Tour but with a fearsome reputation for climbing. All three, in a course which is bursting at the seams with mountain stages, particularly in the third week, will do their utmost to trouble Froome.

At the other end of the age spectrum, Spain’s Alberto Contador, now a veteran 33-year-old but widely rated as the best stage racer of his generation, may have lost some of his climbing power in recent years. But with two Tour de France titles already in his saddlebag, the Tinkoff leader has a well-earned reputation as a fearless attacker. The recent Giro d’Italia winner and 2014 Tour de France champion Vincenzo Nibali, 31, is another hugely experienced opponent who Froome can ill afford to ignore. Others like former Sky team-mate Richie Porte, America’s top stage racer Tejay Van Garderen and France’s Romain Bardet may not have Contador’s or Nibali’s impressive back catalogue of Grand Tour victories, but will be equally quick to undermine Froome’s authority should they have an opportunity.

The set-piece battles for outright victory in the Tour will start in just under a week’s time, when the peloton tackles the first major Pyrenean climb, the Aspin, prior to a fast descent to Lac de Payolle. From then on, summit finishes and mountain stages in Andorra, on the Mont Ventoux, the Jura and four days in the Alps are all stages marked down in red for the overall contenders.

But if the mountain stages represent golden opportunities to win the Tour, the possibility of losing it comes as soon as this weekend’s opening brace of stages in rural Normandy. Run on largely flat and exposed terrain, the risk of crashes on narrow, twisting country lanes where nerves and energy levels is particularly high, and the rain showers forecast for Saturday will only heighten the tension. Factor in a stiff sea breeze or two and the chances are that a top contender could find themselves on the wrong side of a split in the peloton, as happened to Nairo Quintana and Vincenzo Nibali in last year’s Tour on the first stage across the flatlands and sea defences of western Holland. The time lost there by Quintana, 90 seconds, arguably cost him the Tour, which he lost to Froome by 62.

Sunday’s stage to Cherbourg has a serious sting in the tail, too, a short, but explosively steep little climb, the Cote de la Glacerie, in the final three kilometres. Gaps can open with un-nerving sudden-ness on such vicious challenges, and positioning in the closing part of the stage near the head of affairs will be crucial for all the contenders. Once again, the likelihood a major figure will find themselves in trouble are not low, and Froome’s performance, as the reference point for all the Tour contenders, will be under the closest scrutiny of all.

As for Cavendish, his opportunity to lead the Tour for the first time career will come in what could - those crosswinds and crashes permitting - be the race’s first bunch sprint finish on Saturday, at Utah Beach, scene of one of the D-Day landings in 1944. With much of his training currently focused towards his upcoming Olympic track challenges in August, the Dimension Data sprinter says he is uncertain of how this build-up for Rio will have affected his road-racing form and furthermore, the last time Cavendish won the first bunch sprint of the Tour was in 2012.

Froome will be leading Team Sky for the fourth consecutive year (Getty Images)

Unlike Froome, therefore, Cavendish is by no means the top favourite for Saturday's sprint. But given the Briton’s colossal win rate in past Tours - by far the Tour’s most successful sprinter, only Bernard Hinault and Eddy Merckx have more stage victories than Cavendish in the race’s 103-year-history - it would be more than unwise to rule Cavendish out, too.

British interest is far from limited to Froome and Cavendish, in any case. Whilst a question mark hovers over Geraint Thomas plans to act as Sky’s Plan ‘B’ for the overall classification after a difficult build-up to July, the Wirral’s Steve Cummings will be gunning for another breakaway win like the one he took in such superb style at Mende airfield in last year’s Tour. Meanwhile, Yorkshireman Adam Yates progress in the mountains continues to bode well for a breakthrough success in the Tour, and newcomer Daniel McLay is hoping to lay down a marker in the sprints.