Only six stages, yet for the 11 teams here, every stage is vital, an ITT, a TTT and 2 mountain stages mean that there will be decisive moments,, and the winner will be the rider who capitalises on them.

Lets go through the talent

Sprints

There are 4 top quality sprinters in the field this year: Förster, Chicchi, Brea and Vaitkus. All 4 have decent lead out men so the battles for the flat stages should be fierce, although the rolling terrain on stgae 2 will probably give the advantage to Vaitkus.

ITT

Larsson is the best Time trialist here, followed by Abal, Lloret and Spanish Champion, Gutiérrez Palacios. However the short nature of the time trial means that it is unlikely to be a decisive factor.

Mountains

Alarcon is comfortably the best climber here, with Abal and Perez Sanchez the best of the rest. Beyond those three the field gets crowded and there are 20 or so riders who could take the step up to challenge for a top place.


Team Time Trial

The 30km team time trial comes at stage 4 and may well determine the outcome of this race. Here I would say, Telenor are favourites, followed by IKEA and Petronas.

Overall

For the overall competition,I feel that Alarcon's strong team will help him stay close enough in the time trials to take top spot overall.
After that it's a question of comparative time gaps between the mountains and the Time trials, which gives me a predicted final result as follows

Top 10:
1.Alarcon
2.Kessiakoff
3.Perez Sanchez
4.Abal
5.Lloret
6.Stetina
7.Siutsou
8.Rohregger
9.Larsson
10.Raisin

Points:
Alarcon

Mountain:
Parra Pinto

Young Rider:
Alarcon