Two-time Tour de France defending champion Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) secured the yellow jersey from Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma), who held on to it during the previous four stages. After six stages, Slovenia’s Pogacar is the clear betting favorite at -400 odds to win the 2022 Tour de France, but can any other GC contenders — like Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma), Alexander Vlasov (Bora-Hansgrohe), or Geraint Thomas (Ineos) — pick him off in the last two weeks of Le Tour?
Last year, Pogacar waited until Stage 8 in the Alps to seize the yellow jersey, and then it became a race for second place while he locked up back-to-back victories in the Tour de France.
| 2022 Tour de France Odds Update |
- Tadej Pogacar -400
- Jonas Vingegaard +300
- Alexander Vlasov +1400
- Geraint Thomas +2000
- Primoz Roglic +2200
- Adam Yates +3500
- Daniel Martinez +3500
- Nairo Quintana +4000
- Romain Bardet +4000
- Enric Mas +5000
- David Gaudu +6500
- Tom Pidcock +6500
- Wout van Aert +10000
- Jakob Fugslang +13000
- Rigoberto Uran +15000
- Ben O’Connor +2000
- Thibout Pinot +25000
- Alexey Lutsenko +25000
- Guillaume Martin +30000
- Sepp Kuss +30000
- Chris Froome +50000
- Brandon McNulty +50000
- Quinn Simmons +100000
This year, Pogacar snatched the yellow jersey with a victory in Stage 6, which occurred one day before the peloton makes its way to the first mountain stage at La Super Planche des Belles Filles in the Vosges Mountains.
Pogacar -400
After Stage 4, you could back Pogacar at -150 odds to win the Tour de France, which seems like an amazing discount at this point. Pogacar saw his odds move to -360 after surviving the cobblestones in Stage 5. After winning Stage 6 – the longest stage on the schedule this year – and securing the yellow jersey for the first time this year, the bookies made a slight adjustment for Pogacar to win at -400 odds.
Just six stages in, Pogacar looks like his usual dominant self during the first week of action. It would take a serious injury or a crash to derail his mission to win the yellow jersey three years in a row.
Betting chalk isn’t fun, especially if you’re an action bettor. Yet sometimes, when someone or some team is so dominant, you want to jump on the bandwagon and keep backing them until their hot streak ends. Pogacar is red hot and showing no signs of cooling off. We fired away on a Tour de France futures bet on Pogacar before Stage 1 at -160 odds, and then backed him again after Stage 4 at -150.
Vingegaard +300
Jumbo-Visma had an awful Stage 5 on the cobblestones, including crashes for Wout van Aert and Primoz Roglic. Vingegaard also had a bit of bad luck when he ran into equipment problems and had to swap bikes twice inside a two-minute stretch. It was funny to watch Jumbo-Visma riders swap gear when Vingegaard had an issue and the tiny Dane had to ride the bike of Jumbo-Visma’s tallest teammate. After a few hundred feet, Vingegaard gave up and tried to swap a second bike from another teammate. He scrapped that idea with the team car finally arriving to provide a spare. The hilarious exchange looked like a sketch from a Benny Hill episode, and even the announcer described the scene as “utter chaos.”
Despite all the craziness and misfortune in Stage 5, Vingegaard bounced back in Stage 6 and moved up the GC standings from seventh to third place. He’s still within striking distance of Pogacar and 31 seconds behind the leader. The stoic Dane will have to attack sooner than later if he expects to trim the deficit, so maybe Vingegaard could prevail during the first mountain stage in Stage 7 at La Super Planche des Belles Filles?
We took a flier on Vingegaard at +400 odds to win the Tour de France before the Grand Depart in Copenhagen because teammate Primoz Roglic (now +2200 odds) seems to be hexed in Le Tour. Yes, it’s not too sexy to back both favorites at the start of the most grueling Grand Tour race on the cycling circuit, but if anyone could dethrone Pogacar, we figured Vingegaard could be the one who slays the Slovenian Wunderkind in the mountains this year.
Ineos: Thomas +2000, Yates +3500, Pidcock +6500
Geraint Thomas won the Tour de France for Ineos back in 2018. He failed to defend the yellow jersey in 2019 when teammate Egan Bernal became the first Colombian rider to win Le Tour. Thomas looks strong after the first six stages and he’s in sixth place at just 46 seconds off the lead. You can back a veteran like Thomas as +2000 odds because he has an extremely gifted squad at Ineos to help him out. Thomas is fourth on the futures board at DraftKings at +2000.
Teammate Adam Yates is currently in fourth place in the GC at 39 seconds behind Pogacar, and just eight seconds behind Vingegaard. Yates is +3500 odds and sixth on the betting board.
Tom Pidcock is the third member of Ineos in the top six after the first six stages. The 22-year-old from Leeds most recently won a gold medal for England in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in Cross-Country cycling. Pidcock is in fifth place after Stage 6 and just 40 seconds behind Pogacar. Ineos expects big things from Pidcock in the future, but for now, he’s getting much-needed experience in Le Tour that will pay off in future Grand Tour races.
Pidcock is +6500 odds to win the 2022 Tour de France, but don’t forget that Bernal was another Ineos young rider who was supposed to be a super domestique for Thomas, but who ended up winning the yellow jersey three summers ago.
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