THE WILDCARDS

The best of the rest at the Tour currently look to be Sonny Colbrelli, Dylan Groenewegen and Dan

McLay. McLay came close on one occasion in last year’s Tour, while Groenewegen has been picking up small wins left right and centre. Colbrelli is more of a hilly Classics sprinter, but he picked up a sprint win at Paris-Nice this year. “These three will be dreaming of stage wins, but are a little way o f. I expect them to go in the top ive a few times,” says McEwen. “McLay has a good amount of speed, and more importantly he has the balls to mix it at the front. His level of success in the Tour might be dependent on staying on the bike – having balls means you can sometimes get caught out in a big crash, like Sam Bennett last year. “Groenewegen is good at lat sprints and has a lot of speed. I haven’t got the con idence that LottoNL can get him where he needs to be, and if he has to do that himself, it’ll cost him too much energy. But he’s going to win a lot of races in the future. “Colbrelli will be taking on Sagan in the stages he specialises in, and even in tougher medium mountain stages. Colbrelli can get through those stages when all of the other sprinters are a long way back in the gruppetto, a bit like Óscar Freire. The day he won in Paris-Nice, he led out from a long way, on a tough, hard stage where all the other guys were rooted. He probably won’t win a bunch sprint, but he’ll be there when there’s a group of 90 guys left at the front.”