A taste of the Tour in May?

Anthony Tan analyses the highlights and lowlights of what has been an absorbing opening week to the Giro d’Italia, and what this may mean come July.

How dramatic and intriguing the first four stages of the 2010 Giro d'Italia have been.

These are some of the salient points that I took – and extrapolated – out of an absorbing opening week so far.

- Liquigas-Doimo, despite the loss of Franco Pellizotti before the race begun, found an ideal – perhaps better – replacement in the newest maglia rosa, Vincenzo Nibali.

Along with team-mate Ivan Basso who sits second overall, the strongest team in the race also has two cards to play when the Giro hits the mountains.

- The status of outright leadership has not affected the performances of Team Sky's Bradley Wiggins.

I was unsure of how he would fare in such a role, but this gutsy Brit with the rock-star sideburns has proven a change of teams and a little extra fame and responsibility has not fazed him.

However, the unavoidable spill he and a number of his team-mates took on the third stage and how they recovered from that left me thinking: 'If this was the Tour de France how would they have coped; would they have chased harder (remember, their deficit to the stage winner was a massive 3:59 by the day's end), and if so, how much time would they have lost; and if this was the Tour, how would their strategy change to claw back the lost time?'

- If anyone needed reminding, Cadel Evans is a fighter with a heart as big as his engine.

But again, despite a solid though unspectacular performance against the TTT clock Wednesday, I find myself questioning the strength of his team against heavyweights Liquigas, Katusha and Astana over the next two-and-a-half weeks.

And don't forget: come the Tour de France, BMC's opposing teams will be stronger still.

Given the number of risks Wiggins took in the Giro's opening time trial ("I never touched the brakes. I said bollocks to it," he later confessed), for Evans to finish within two seconds of the Beijing Olympic pursuit champion over 8.4 kilometres was a fabulous performance.

Yet on that wind-exposed, unnecessarily technical and crash-marred third stage to Middleburg, he was isolated when Wiggins et al. hit the deck, was forced to chase back to the group containing Carlos Sastre – then barely recovered, led the chase to the group containing Alexandre Vinokourov, David Millar and Richie Porte. Sastre was hurt and was unable to take a turn.

It felt like it was Cadel versus the rest of the world.

My belief is that if Evans or Sastre lose out in this Giro, it will be through lack of team strength and support, rather than through any weakness of their own.

And with similarly tricky and potentially dangerous stages on offer in the opening week at the Tour de France, I don't see this situation changing, either.

- André Greipel will not be going to the Tour de France.

Armed with the best lead-out train of any team at the Giro by far, Greipel nevertheless met his match both on Stages 2 and 3. If he is to stand any chance of making HTC-Columbia's Tour team, the Gorilla needs to rack up as many stages as Mark Cavendish did at last year's TdF (that's six if you needed reminding, André), which doesn't look like happening.

Grand Tour and ProTour wins are where it's at and where it counts, not the Tour of Turkey. Technical finishes are also a snaggletooth for Greipel, as evidenced in the third stage of the Giro.

- In terms of GC, Vinokourov, Nibali and Vladimir Karpets are the guys to watch out for.

The good news for Evans is that Vino, in the past, was prone to a bad day; Nibali's best Grand Tour result is seventh (2009 TdF) and best Giro performance is 11th (2008); and Karpets best Giro was five years ago, when he finished seventh in 2005.

And Cadel can climb and time trial as well or better than all of them; the amount of time he's lost so far, he'll damn well need to!

- Solid (though slightly outside) bets for the podium would go to Sastre, Linus Gerdemann, Michele Scarponi and Ivan Basso.

Given the returns, nothing wrong with placing a few Euros on these blokes. Not that I'm condoning betting… or am I?

All I have left to say is: Go Well, Go Cadel!