Cycling predictions for 2018

  1. Nacer Bouhani will garner a lot of publicity for his team without actually winning anything.
  2. Romain Bardet will do well at the Tour but he won’t win. Neither will Nibali or Pinot or Richie Porte.
  3. Tom Dumoulin won’t ride the Tour although he should. He will win the Giro again.
  4. Peter Sagan will win a monument.
  5. Marcel Kittel will regret moving to Katusha. The year’s top sprinters will be Caleb Ewan, Dylan Groenewegen and Viviani.
  6. Some riders on Italian teams you’ve never heard of will fail drugs test.
  7. Teams will use disc brakes and lots of commentators will say they’re no better than rim brakes and it’s just because the bike companies want to sell more bikes.
  8. People will start to ask who Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen were.
  9. Ned Boulting and David Millar will lead ITV4’s coverage and do a good job.
  10. Chris Froome won’t win the Tour.
  11. Froome will get a 1 year ban, lose his Vuelta title and World Championship bronze medal and miss the Giro and the Tour.
  12. Somebody will have a career-ending injury.
  13. Podium girls will continue, at least for another year.
  14. Lots of people will ask whether Cav and Greipel are past it.
  15. Fernando Gaviria will win a monument – probably Milan San Remo.
  16. Alexandro Valverde will win Liege-Bastogne-Liege again.
  17. Sky won’t be as dominant as in previous years. There will be another scandal.
  18. Egan Bernal will win a Grand Tour but not yet.
  19. Mikel Landa will not be the force he was at Sky.
  20. Greg Van Avermaet won’t win Paris Roubaix. Neither will Philippe Gilbert.
  21. There will be a lot of talk about whether single-ring chain-sets, as used by Aqua Blue Sport on their 3T bikes, are the future. They’re not.
  22. This will be the last year that BMC are title sponsor for a team.
  23. One World Tour team will go broke.
  24. At least some of these predictions will come true.

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