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Four Headed Hydra?

This interview with Hincapie is the latest evidence that at least in the press, people are viewing Discovery Channel as having as many as four legitimate options for the Tour: Hincapie, Popovich, Savoldelli and Azevedo. Hincapie, gentleman that he is, said that they were going into the race with two or three leaders but would sort it out.

I'm not sure I buy the premise. The route contains two monster ITTs, 52km at stage 7 and 57km at stage 18, both rolling, bumpy parcourses. Jose Azevedo is a competent time trialer, but he has no history of winning on such a course. By stage 8 he should be settling into his accustomed climber workhorse role.

Savoldelli, meanwhile, could do well on these time trial courses, but how much energy he has after the Giro is a huge question, and there's no reason to expect him to stay with the leaders on the few major climbing stages in the race, like Alpe d'Huez.

I really like both these guys, but Disco need to have clearly defined roles, and no more than two leaders if they expect to have any kind of support.