Why not me? Mikel Astarloza

Mikel, not Miguel.  Why not?

Why he will win

Name a race that Mikel Astarloza has won… Can’t think of it?

Exactly.  If ever there’s a fellow who’ll slip under the radar, he’s your man.  Like Oscar Pereiro before him, he’s finished top ten in the Tour but never threatened to win.  And like Oscar, he might just benefit from a brain-fart from the then yellow jersey team that gives him and say, Jens, a half-hour break on the field.

The brain-fart in question will be because one half of the team is so busy chasing down the other half’s attacks, that they’ll just let the unthreatening looking Spaniard up the road without so much as a second thought.  Is there such a divided team in Tour this year?  Well, Dorothy, since you ask, there is.

Ah, you’re saying, surely that Bruyneel chap will step in before it gets out of hand.  You're forgetting something.  No radios!  Target a nice, flat, radio-free stage, Mikel, and the Tour is yours!  There will only be Frenchmen chasing, so you're home free.

Why he will not win

Name a race that Mikel Astarloza has won… Can’t think of it?

Exactly.  It’s the Tour Down Under.  Sure Luis-Leon Sanchez won that thing, and people rate him.  But so did Simon Gerrans, and he apparently isn’t fit to carry Hayden Roulston’s water bottles. [NB: For all you serious people out there, that was a dig at Cervélo, not at Gerrans.]

And he wears orange.  At the Tour, people in orange tend to either get drunk and shout in Dutch on mountain-sides, or fall into pitiful career-ending heaps on gravel corners.  Neither wins the Tour.

Oh, and he might just not be good enough, either.

Conclusion

Get on board, people.  He's due.