Someone’s gotta win the 2022 Tour de France, right? But that means 175 guys, and 21 teams, won’t. It turns out the Tour is really hard to win. You’ve gotta get everything right for 21 days: no major crashes or injuries; no bonks or bad days; and of course no badly timed mechanical failures except inside three kilometers to go on flat stages, where mechanicals and mishaps do get mulligans.
And not every team in the Tour is here to win it. They understand that the math of ultimate victory just kind of sucks. So they have other objectives: stage wins, other jersey competitions, or just getting in the break. That doesn’t make for a boring race. In fact, it can make it even crazier as some overall contender’s best laid plans get put on their ear by a team that doesn’t even give a damn about Paris. Here are all 22 teams in this year’s race, what they’re here for, and why despite months of training and prep, they’re still gonna manage to ball it up.
Wild Cards and Stage Hunters | Surefire Stage Winners | Outside GC Contenders | Favorites
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Ineos Grenadiers
Top Riders: Dani Martinez, Geraint Thomas, Adam Yates
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Why They’re Here: To bring back the glory days
What To Watch For: Triple threat! Start with Thomas, the 2018 Tour winner who’s freshly back on good form; Yates, fourth at last year’s Tour of Spain; and Martinez, who had his best spring ever, capped by a win at Itzulia Basque Country. Bench? Super deep: from young talents Tom Pidcock and Ethan Hayter to rouleurs like Filippo Ganna and Dylan van Baarle. With the biggest budget in the WorldTour, these guys come to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and they’re all outta bubblegum.
Why They’ll Lose: Unfortunately they may be all outta kick ass too. Ineos is bike racing’s equivalent of an ‘80s super group: went triple platinum, had its own display at Tower Records, sold-out stadium shows everywhere. Now they’re opening for Winger at HairNation in Cleveland. A triple threat GC strategy is what you do when you don’t have a true leader, and they pretty much never work. Thomas is 36, that 2018 Tour win a golden, glorious outlier. Yates? No one is afraid of a Yates. Martinez is intriguing but has exactly one high overall finish in a Grand Tour to his name. Super group? Maybe a really good cover band.
Jumbo-Visma
Top Riders: Primož Roglič, Jonas Vingegaard, Wout van Aert
Why They’re Here: Revenge for Omi and Opi
What To Watch For: With all the hype around Rog v. Pog, it’s a little astounding that the two top stage racers in the sport have only ever faced off to the finish in two multi-day events, the first being Pog’s come-from-behind stunner in the 2020 Tour. Last year, of course, Roglič was all primed to avenge that crazy loss until he ran into (literally) the infamous fan holding the Opi-Omi sign on Stage One and abandoned later with injuries. That, of course, did open the door for Vingegaard’s debutante ball and van Aert’s Ventoux heroics. More recently, Jumbo was looking good, Billy Ray, with a 1-2 finish by Rog and Jonas at the Criterium du Dauphiné and a pile of stage wins by van Aert.
Why They’ll Lose: Roglič has three straight Vuelta a España titles but Tour Troubles live rent-free in his head. Short of major trouble early, team brass will hold Vingegaard back, and he’s a Good Boy so he’ll comply. Elsewhere, van Aert picked up a mysterious knee injury in training camp, and the whole Tour de Suisse team had to bail with COVID. Just the kind of relaxing few weeks you want pre-Tour.
UAE Team Emirates
Top Riders: All about Tadej Pogačar
Why They’re Here: Win No. 3
What To Watch For: Pog’s first win was via surprise; in taking the lead only in the Stage 20 TT, his team was never tested. Last season it was and passed. Barely. But this offseason was like the scene from The Matrix Reloaded where Neo fights three Agents and stops for a moment to observe, “Hmm. Upgrades.” UAE picked up a bunch of new climber-support guys that significantly boosts team depth. They’re made, and paid, to defend.
Why They’ll Lose: I mean, probably not? But luck has a funny way of evening things out, and the first week of this year’s race holds plenty of chances for the bad kind. Stage 2’s crosswind potential recalls 2020, when Pog lost time on Stage 7 in a similar situation. Stage 5 has cobbles. Roubaix cobbles. Pog has never raced them. He’s a fine bike handler and had fun at the Ronde van Vlaanderen last spring. But Roubaix cobbles are…different.
Outside GC Contenders
Outside of the top three teams, there are several others that have a legitimate shot at a yellow jersey. All have flaws that the Big 3 don’t: they lack depth, or have unproved leaders, or some other issue. Everything has to go right for one of them to get the upset win. But never say never.
Ag2r-Citroën
Top Riders: Ben O’Connor
Why They’re Here: To get on the Tour podium
What To Watch For: A lot of observers wrote off O’Connor’s fourth-place finish last year as a fluke, since it was sparked by a winning break on Stage 9 that gave him big time on the chase. But that ignores the 26-year-old Aussie’s steady rise as a stage racer. He was the best not-Jumbo guy at the Dauphiné, for example. Not only can he climb, he’s durable, with just two DNFs in stage races the past two and a half seasons.
Why They’ll Lose: Three things hold O’Connor back. One: Ineos, Jumbo, and UAE would take Ag2r apart if O’Connor has to defend yellow. Second, almost zero experience on cobbles: his last race on them was six years ago, on Flanders cobbles, not the Roubaix kind. Sure, he reconned the stage, but with Ag2r leaving former Paris-Roubaix winner Greg van Avermaet home, O’Connor loses an incomparable cobbles pilot for a crucial stage where he’s openly praying for dry weather. Last, Rog and Pog don’t fear O’Connor in any TT, much less the 40km monster at the end of this race.
Bora-Hansgrohe
Top Riders: Aleksandr Vlasov
Why They’re Here: To add to that Grand Tour win streak
What To Watch For: Peter who? Bora has moved on from the Sagan era to become maybe the odds-on fave to challenge the UAE-Jumbo-Ineos triumvirate in stage racing (see: Jai Hindley, 2022 Giro d’Italia). Next up: Vlasov, who was scary good at the Tour de Suisse. With climbing support from Max Schachmann, Patrick Konrad, and Lennard Kämna, they could be a sleeper threat.
Why They’ll Lose: In Grand Tours, Vlasov’s either top 10 or a DNF, no in-betweens. After getting COVID at Suisse, his form is a question mark, bold, in 48-point type. And Vlasov—a Russian—in yellow would be a PR disaster for a sport that’s been almost capriciously inconsistent with its response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If he takes the lead, the press conferences could be more vicious than the road.
Bahrain Victorious
Top Riders: Jack Haig, Matej Mohorič, Damiano Caruso
Why They’re Here: A sneaky yellow jersey push?
What To Watch For: Bahrain’s my other pick for an outside challenge to Pogačar’s third title. Usually they’re stage hunters at the Tour, and damn good ones too: three last year alone. And they usually have not one, but two riders up high in the overall in Grand Tours. Here it’ll be the Caruso-Haig pair, backed by Dylan Teuns. And there’s always Mohorič for stages if things go pear-shaped early.
Why They’ll Lose: Bahrain can’t close the deal in a GT. Never has. “The road will decide” is a dumb strategy in week three of a Grand Tour, as each co-leader rides for himself. That dynamic could easily play out here, with 34-year-old Caruso, always the lieutenant, looking for that one breakthrough result to cap his career, and 28-year-old Haig looking to confirm that he’s the team’s immediate future. Add to that a pre-Tour police raid, and it’s worth wondering whether Bahrain cracks up well before Paris.
Groupama-FDJ
Top Riders: Thibaut Pinot, David Gaudu
Why They’re Here: A fresh strategy for success?
What To Watch For: Who doesn’t cheer for Pinot? One of France’s best stage racers in a generation, and a disarmingly honest, refreshingly down-to-earth human (his Instagram features pictures of him with his goats as much as racing). And just in time, he’s looking like a threat, with a stage win at the Tour de Suisse. Gaudu got another at the Dauphiné, and they have Valentin Madouas and Michael Storer for support. Could this be Thibaut’s year?
Why They’ll Lose: Nope, it could not. No one has a more complicated relationship with the Tour than Pinot, who’s had more than his fair share of heartache; who could forget that wrenching DNF in 2019 from a freak knee injury, just as he looked ready to rip the race apart? Pinot’s a pure climber, so week one and the final TT will be his undoing. This lineup would be far better off focusing on stage wins, and the team’s been cagey about whether its goals are GC or stages. Good plan.
DSM
Top Riders: Romain Bardet
Why They’re Here: A mulligan from the Giro
What To Watch For: Bardet, a serious Grand Tours rider by any measure, was sitting fourth overall at the Giro when illness knocked him out near the end of the second week. The Tour is a second chance, and the form he had at the Giro, combined with the break from not having to go deep in the arduous third week there, could make him a serious threat here.
Why They’ll Lose: Bardet’s best Grand Tour results are behind him. He sucks at flat time trials. DSM isn’t deep enough to support him, partly because they keep losing good riders due to their inflexible management style. To paraphrase Tolstoy, all dysfunctional teams are unhappy in their own way, and DSM—which is leaving Soren Kragh Andersen, one of its best stage hunters, home because he’s switching teams next year—is a particularly miserable outfit.
Surefire Stage Winners
Not every team is here to chase the podium in Paris. Many teams are hunting stage wins, the coin of the realm for non-GC relevance at the Tour. We’ve divided them into two groups. The first consists of the teams that are almost guaranteed to win a stage. In fact, their Tour will be a disappointment if they don’t.
BikeExchange-Jayco
Top Riders: Dylan Groenewegen, Michael Matthews
Why They’re Here: To knock off as many Ws as possible
What To Watch For: The Groenewegen-Matthews tandem has seven Tour stage wins between them, plus Matthews’ green jersey in 2017. They’re the best shots for a stage win, and both have shown encouraging form lately. Past that, Nick Schultz is an outside shot for a climbing stage.
Why They’ll Lose: Their best rider, Simon Yates, is staying home after a mixed Giro campaign. Groenewegen looked to be a breakout star after his 2019 Tour but hasn’t been the same rider since getting DQ’d at the 2020 Tour of Poland for his role in the crash that almost ended Fabio Jakobsen’s career. Matthews is, and remains, a kind of mercurial mess: great talent, constantly top 5 or top 10, but rarely a winner at the Tour, where his last stage win was in 2017.
Intermarché-Wanty
Top Riders: Alexander Kristoff
Why They’re Here: Arrgh! It’s a pirate’s life for us!
What To Watch For: The most recent addition to the WorldTour ranks, Intermarché was supposed to just take up some space in the pack: get in the early break, vie for top fives in sprints, but generally be wallpaper. They didn’t get the memo: 13 wins already this year, including two Giro stages and Gent-Wevelgem. The center is sprinter Kristoff, a four-time Tour stage winner who can Classics a bit too. And then there’s breakaway specialist Taco van der Hoorn, who we love for his never-say-die attitude and because, whenever he’s in the break, we get to think about tacos for hours on end.
Why They’ll Lose: It was a great spring, but reversion to the mean is a bitch. There is no race harsher and more sharp-elbowed than the Tour, and without top riders Biniam Girmay and Jan Hirt (both of whom did the Giro), they’re pretty thin for the biggest race in the world. What about Louis Meintjes? What about him, indeed: likely racing defensively for another 12th place overall.
Alpecin-Deceuninck
Top Riders: Mathieu van der Poel, Jasper Philipsen
Why They’re Here: Sprints, baby
What To Watch For: Alpecin will give Quick-Step a run for best sprint team this Tour. That starts with Mathieu van der Poel, one of the most phenomenal, unclassifiable riders racing today. Van der Poel can win sprints, can win hilly courses, can handle a bike so beautifully it makes Danny MacAskill cry. He’s here for stages, not the green jersey, so he’ll be aggressive. Philipsen is a pure field sprinter. Can’t climb so much as a ladder, but point him in a straight line and there are few who can beat him.
Why They’ll Lose: Two sprinters? That’s a recipe for a mess. If Alpecin is smart, they’ll back Philipsen in sprints and van der Poel will go for breakaways and the Roubaix stage. But for all his talents and the hype, van der Poel has weaknesses, especially tactics. Philipsen is still searching for that breakout win/season that establishes him as one of the premier speedsters in the pack.
Trek-Segafredo
Top Riders: Bauke Mollema, Mads Pedersen, Jasper Stuyven
Why They’re Here: To win on the hardest of days
What To Watch For: Trek is a deep, experienced team of vets, and has no illusions about going for GC. Mollema just missed stage wins several times at the Giro, but last year’s win on the Tour’s Stage 14 was a virtuoso performance of strength and tactics on a wickedly hard day. That’s Trek’s sweet spot. Whether it’s medium mountain stages for Mollema, bad weather and long grinds for 2019 World Champion Pedersen, or cobbles and crosswinds for classics specialist Stuyven, they’re made for days when other guys just want to get to the finish.
Why They’ll Lose: It’s unknown how well Mollema will go in his second full GT this season. Pedersen is at his best on very long days: 200km plus, lumpy profile, and there simply aren’t many of those at this year’s Tour. Stuyven has always seemed One Big Win from a breakout. But when he gets them, like last year’s Milano-Sanremo, the streak never comes. At 30, he is who he is: talented but not transformative.
Quick-Step-Alpha Vinyl
Top Riders: Fabio Jakobsen, Kasper Asgreen
Why They’re Here: Stage wins galore
What To Watch For: Quick-Step is that friend who always marches to her own beat. They haven’t mounted a real GC attempt at the Tour in years, and they’re not starting now. They’re built for stage wins, starting with sprinter Jakobsen and the best leadout in bike racing, Michael Mørkøv. They’ve won at least one stage every year since 2012, and it’s the surest bet in the Tour that streak continues.
Why They’ll Lose: They’re limping into the Tour, almost literally. Classics star Kasper Asgreen is banged up from a Tour de Suisse crash. World Champion Julian Alaphilippe isn’t here at all, thanks to crash injuries. Plus there’s weird vibes: Yves Lampaert was disqualified from the Tour of Belgium for physically blocking another rider racing for the overall win. And how do you not bring Mark Cavendish to the Tour? If there’s any karma for those two outrages, QS will get goose-egged this year.
Wild Cards and Stage Hunters
One of the unifying factors among these teams is they don’t win that much at the WorldTour. Another is they’re typically among the lower-budget teams, unable to sign the big-name riders who would give them those headline victories. A third: several of them are fighting possible relegation from the sport’s top level. A Tour stage is far from assured, but would also help a lot in that competition.
Movistar
Top Riders: Enric Mas, Carlos Verona
Why They’re Here: All about avoiding disaster
What To Watch For: As anyone who’s watched their Netflix documentary series The Most Unexpected Day can attest, no one does drama like Movistar. There’s always something going on and this year it’s relegation. New UCI rules will drop the two lowest-point teams out of the 2023 WorldTour, and Movistar—with a four-decade history in the sport—is on the bubble. So look for them to race with a certain desperation. Their best hope is Mas, a top climber. But Verona is in excellent form, and young American rider Matteo Jorgenson bears watching in his first Tour.
Why They’ll Lose: Mas was looking strong at the Dauphiné, but a bad crash knocked him out. Several of their top riders, like Alejandro Valverde, aren’t racing the Tour, which limits their potential. Movistar has never been a sprint team, so they’re mostly confined to breakaway hopes. Movistar has never been big on team cohesion, and if success doesn’t come in the first half of the race, the second could be a slog.
Arkea-Samsic
Top Riders: Nairo Quintana, Warren Barguil
Why They’re Here: To the mountains they must go
What To Watch For: Arkea needs to pick opportunities wisely. Its best shots will be with climbers Quintana and Barguil in the mountains. Both have a track record of success at the Grand Tours, and although Quintana is no longer the GC rider he was 5-10 years ago, he’s also not a guy you let build a big lead before a final climb.
Why They’ll Lose: As is his style the past few years, Quintana started the season hot and then fell off. Back through 2020, he hasn’t won a single race after May. The past 3-4 years Barguil has focused on GC at the Tour, which he really shouldn’t do, because it means he rides defensively when he should be attacking. There are a couple of other outside stage shots on Arkea, like the Classics rider Connor Swift. But they need to race smart, and instead, I expect to see them in every early break, no matter the chances.
Total Energies
Top Riders: Peter Sagan
Why They’re Here: Sagz and breaks
What To Watch For: Sagan’s move from Bora to Total Energies over the offseason basically re-made the team. Sagz doesn’t travel light, bringing three of his Bora teammates (including bestie Daniel Oss) and Specialized as a sponsor. For that, Sagan has given them a stage win at the recent Tour de Suisse, and hopes to add to his 12 Tour stages. Anthony Turgis, second at Milano-Sanremo, is maybe the most underrated Classics rider in the pack and could be a threat for the Roubaix stage.
Why They’ll Lose: If Sagan was supposed to raise TE’s game, it hasn’t worked out so far. Instead, he DNF’d out of Suisse with his third bout of COVID after reportedly fighting off long COVID from his second round with the disease. He hasn’t won a Tour stage in his last two outings. Turgis never seems to quite get over the hump with a big result. This is not a terribly deep team and if Sagan, their center, is not on good form they’ll struggle to adapt.
Lotto-Soudal
Top Riders: Caleb Ewan, Tim Wellens
Why They’re Here: Sprints and breaks
What To Watch For: Ewan, a five-time Tour stage winner, would like a mulligan for his unfortunate crash on Stage 1 of the Giro as he was fighting it out for the win. Wellens, a deeply experienced vet, was excellent at the Belgium Tour, losing the overall only due to foul play by Quick-Step. And in Florian Vermeersch and Philippe Gilbert they have two very good Classics riders, albeit at opposite ends of the age/experience spectrum.
Why They’ll Lose: Lotto’s leadout simply isn’t on par with Quick-Step or Alpecin. Ewan will be forced to freelance. He’s also usually an early DNF in Grand Tours. If he strikes out early, that might be it. For all of Wellens’ experience he attacks at weirdly inopportune moments (called “Wellensing”). Gilbert has a fabulous palmares but hasn’t added much to it the past few years. And Vermeersch, the breakout revelation of last year’s Paris-Roubaix, is almost anonymous this year, including a terrible Classics season.
B&B Hotels-KTM
Top Riders: Pierre Rolland
Why They’re Here: So you’re sayin’ there’s a chance!
What To Watch For: Among “wild cards,” Alpecin gets an automatic invite for leading the sport’s second division. TotalEnergies gets in because Sagan. That leaves B&B, which is in because they’re French. Their best shot is clearly Rolland, three times a top-10 finisher at the Tour and the team’s only Tour stage winner. Rolland, an old school race-by-feel guy, is definitely feeling it right now, barely missing a stage win at the Dauphiné and taking home the mountains jersey. He’s a solid pick for a win on one of those lumpy transitional courses, and there are several chances, including Stages 8 and 9, and 13 and 14.
Why They’ll Lose: Rolland is 35. In 16 seasons, he’s won 12 races, and just once in the last five seasons. Those GC campaigns were a long time ago now. And there’s a lot of pressure on him. This is a thin team, thanks to running on a meager budget compared to WorldTour teams. A stage win would be a fantastic triumph, but the team hasn’t won anything near this level in its six-year existence. Don’t bet on a breakthrough here.
Cofidis
Top Riders: Guillaume Martin, Bryan Coquard
Why They’re Here: To break a long winless streak
What To Watch For: After racing the full Giro d’Italia, Martin is likely at the Tour searching for stage wins rather than the overall. That’s a smart strategy for the peloton’s smartest rider (with a master’s in philosophy, he’s the only WorldTour rider we know of with an advanced degree). A number of medium mountain days are well-suited to him. Coquard, a kind of all-around sprinter/classics guy, could be one to watch for the first week.
Why They’ll Lose: Martin has a knack for getting in breaks that gain a lot of time. But he also sometimes uses his strength at odd, inopportune times. It shows in the results: just seven wins in seven seasons, none on the WorldTour. He’s a good climber, but a stage win will require luck, not just legs. Coquard is a conventionally successful racer with 47 wins, but also none on the WorldTour. Cofidis hasn’t won a Tour stage since 2008, despite being in the race every year. It’s the longest dry streak of any team here, and chances are it continues this Tour.
EF Education First-EasyPost
Top Riders: Rigoberto Uran
Why They’re Here: To get in the break almost every day
What To Watch For: There’s no harder team to puzzle out this year than EF. Uran, a former Grand Tour podium finisher, could be a GC threat. But more likely he's going for stage wins. The roster is built to compete on almost any day: Uran for the big mountains. Ruben Guerreiro for the medium ones. Magnus Cort and Alberto Bettiol for the lumpy transitional stuff. All of them could have success.
Why They’ll Lose: EF had an uneven lead-in to the Tour, with half its roster at Tour de Suisse going out with COVID (including Uran and Bettiol). Guerreiro won the recent Ventoux Challenge, a promising result, but against lesser competition than he'll face here. Cort, maybe the team’s best stage-win hope, hasn’t had the kind of season he hoped for so far. Watch American Neilson Powless, 4th overall at Suisse. With EF on the relegation bubble, they’ll race hard, but as we’ve said elsewhere, desperation often isn’t the best motivation for a victory.
Israel-Premier Tech
Top Riders: Michael Woods, Jakob Fuglsang
Why They’re Here: They got automatic entry. Somehow.
What To Watch For: Another WorldTour team on the relegation bubble, Israel-Premier Tech comes in search of results that will boost them to an assured spot in next year’s top tier of teams. Their best bets are Fuglsang, who turned in a strong Tour de Suisse performance (albeit against a COVID-decimated field) and Woods, who won a stage and the overall at the recent Route d’Occitanie.
Why They’ll Lose: There’s no team that’s mismanaged its roster and budget like IPT, sinking big money into riders whose best results are behind them. Just two riders here are under 30 and most of the rest are closer to 40. Four-time former Tour winner Chris Froome has never recovered from that awful 2019 crash that broke his femur. Woods and Fuglsang have both won lesser races this year, but it remains to be seen if they have what it takes against Tour-level competition.
Astana
Top Riders: Alexey Lutsenko
Why They’re Here: To rekindle past glories of Vino 4 Ever!
What To Watch For: Once upon a time, Astana was a feared GC team. Vincenzo Nibali at his mid-decade peak, or the heady Alberto Contador years, these guys were a badass bunch. These days they don’t merit much concern. Maybe Lutsenko get a mountain stage. Maybe Gianni Moscon makes news for something other than being a dick. Maybe I’ll wake up a billionaire tomorrow.
Why They’ll Lose: Because Astana is Team Hot Mess. Lutsenko? Wake me when he’s a legit top-5 threat. Moscon’s barely been seen since flatting out of the Paris-Roubaix lead last fall. And with near-constant issues paying staff and riders, and reported criminal investigations about fraud and money laundering, it’s honestly worth wondering how long this team survives, win or no.
