Since most of the eventual contenders have yet to show themselves, and since there's little value in continuing to try to guess who they may be, I'll keep this round of the poll brief.
1. Sylvain Chavanel ↑
To the victor... hey, maybe the two-time defending jersey winner deserves the spot til someone knocks him off, but I'm rallying behind Chavanel. The ~:> is boring, while Chavanel is a GC hopeful who hasn't made the leap. Going after the KOM jersey is a perfectly acceptable fallback plan, and one that will excite the home crowd.
2. Michael ~:> Rasmussen ↓
Sitting back, licking his chops? Whatever. He's won twice now with barely any challenge. Let's see Chavanel and a few million screaming French fans make him sweat. Remember the last time he was nervous about a ride? They're still looking for one of his brake levers.
3. The Field ↑
Clearly the darkhorse favorite in this competition is ---. While ---- may not have been expected to challenge, his attack in the Alps for a stage win happened to garner enough points to put him in the jersey, and his climbing prowess meant he never had to look back. Fill in the blank, and you have a nice story.
4. Frank Schleck ↓
Several magazines have mentioned him as a challenger. Has anyone from CSC said this? Or is this pure conjecture? Either way, he hasn't shown any interest in doing something besides being a good CSC teammate, so with the emergence of Chavanel to smack down ~:>, Schleck's interest probably went down a notch.
5. Stephane Auge ↓
OJ had his moment. It was kinda cute. I'm just filling out the poll at this point. You can stop reading. In fact, you really should.
Update [2007-7-13 17:6:22 by chris]: I forgot to mention Christophe Moreau... think he might have designs on the jersey. We'll know one way or the other before the next poll.