Eneco Tour stage 1

A flat stage to start with a hefty crosswind likely.

With a crosswind basically all day it's hard to imagine some of the teams won't try and break the field up a bit and eliminate some guys from GC from the get go.

Teams which are good in echelons and have the team for it here are; OPQS, Belkin, Lotto, BMC.

This could well be a really hard day of constant need to be positioned near the front to avoid the risk of being caught out by an echelon attack and wet conditions.

This means I want to avoid riders coming back from long lay off's (Bouhanni), who are suspect in the wet (Greipel) and back form or an outsider from an echelon team, but keeping stage winner bets small.

0.75pts on Guardini win at 10/1 various

0.3pts ew on Breschel 100/1 various.

H2H's

Guardini v modolo 2.13 Pinnacle 1.5pts, Guardini is coming off a double stage win and Modolo doesn't have a lot of form.

Breschel v porsev 1.75 Pinnacle 1pt, not sure Porsev will be sprinting for Katusha with Tsatevich here.

**Results**

Hugely messy sprint with crashes but my man Guardini keeps himself out of mischief and sprints for the win. A 10/1 winner and the H2H v the crashed modolo obviously wins too. The other H2H is a loss as it seems Porsev is Katusha's man this week.

Eneco Tour GC

The Eneco Tour this year looks to be a cracker with a great field and an exciting course.

First up is 2 sprint stages in a row. If the wind gets up these could also influence GC.

Then we have a 9.6km TT which will give good TT riders an advantage but I don't expect the TT to ruin any riders GC hopes too much.

Next another sprint stage and then the friday, saturday, sunday of three hilly stages with aspects of the Ardennes classics in all three.

I'll look at the stages in more detail when they come up but for GC riders we need someone who packs a punch on multiple short climbs and who can TT reasonably. But I'm placing more of an emphasis on the climbing over TT as for someone like Dumoulin to win this I would say the TT would need to be double the length but he may surprise.

Riders who I like for this; Stybar, Dillier, Terpstra, Boom, Mollema, Vanmarcke, J Vanendert, GVA, Cancellara, Thomas, Dumoulin, Navardauskas, Breschel

Boylesports have come out with a 4 place GC market for this so I'm looking towards some of the longer odds to start with;

J Vanendert 80/1 0.5pts ew Boyles - Vanendert was solid in San Sebastian and I think the course suits

Breschel 250/1 0.3pts ew Boyles - Breschel retired from Denmark early, I'm taking a punt and saying this is to focus on Eneco rather than illness as he was already out of the Denmark GC, a big price.

Vanmarcke 125/1 0.3pts ew Boyles - Vanmarcke has been great this year and I would kick myself if he placed. I'm taking four places as I think it will be really tight but if you want 3 places 200s are around.

I'm not particularly keen on any of the GC H2H's at the moment but I might return to the GC for another pick once other books price up.