Rating our 2020 Tour de France Ones to Watch

At the start of the Tour, we picked seven riders who’d play a part in the overall story of the race. Here’s our retrospective look at their performances. Hey, how did Nairo get on this list?

Egan Bernal

A flash in the pan? Well, that might be harsh. Still, INEOS banked on the Colombian being the future of grand tours for a generation, but the rider that actually showed up never looked fully on pace. Eventually he began to drop time. Soon he was hemorrhaging it. After losing seven minutes to Roglic to end his Tour hopes, and then almost 30 minutes a day later, Bernal dropped out of the race.

Rating: 3/10 – A passable attempt at disguising his inadequacies… for a while.

Julian Alaphilippe

He was never going to repeat last year’s success, but Alaphilippe had a solid Tour for the most part. He won a stage, wore the yellow jersey, and played his part in several other breaks and attacks. The manner in which he lost the race lead was silly, and likely demoralizing, but this was overall a successful Tour for QuickStep and Alaphilippe when isolated from the unexpectedly magnificent high of last year.

Rating: 6/10 – A success tarnished only by a ridiculous mistake.

Primoz Roglic

It was almost a perfect Tour for Roglic, who rarely put a foot wrong. But for un jour sans–though it was one of the most iconic jours sans for decades–he rode a smart, controlled race and looked an undoubtedly worthy winner. He should have used his team’s domination to isolate Pogacar, something we called out going into the last week of the race, and he ultimately paid the price for not removing the threat.

Rating: 9/10 – An uncharacteristically off-form day in the final time-trial cost him the entire race, but otherwise it was a confident, strong ride from beginning to end.

Thibaut Pinot

He fell off the pace almost immediately, but the undisputed master of the DNF resolutely remained in the race with the intent of supporting his team and winning stages. Neither of which he achieved. A Tour to forget.

Rating: 2/10

Nairo Quintana

A just-about passable Tour from a rider who spent most of it invisible. Any possible hopes of a strong General Classification performance evaporated on the Grand Colombier, and he finished 17th.

Rating: 4/10

Tadej Pogacar

All the things we said about him–that he’s tactically smart, strong, and aggressive on steep summits, that he’d cement his position among the sport’s elite at the 2020 Tour, that he’d win stages, and that with no team support he’d want to keep the yellow jersey in touching distance until the final time trial where he could inflict damage–came true. But we’re not rating our prediction here. Pogacar won three stages, the overall, the white jersey, and the mountains jersey. A magnificent winner of a historic edition of the Tour.

Rating: 10/10 – Simply flawless. A victory that will go down in the record books and a rider who could define his generation.

Tom Dumoulin

A strong, selfless supporting performance from a rider whose Tour will nevertheless be remembered for the image of him watching live on television as Pogacar undid three weeks of the Jumbo Visma team’s work.

Rating: 7/10