The RealPeloton podcast (Boulting and Rendell) this week was just an unedited recording of the press conference Cav gave in London. He sounded even more confident than he usually does and is in a lot better shape than last year.
I've not seen any details of the route this year. Could someone give me a quick summary? #TTs? # flat sprinters stages? Many big mountain finishes?
According to Cav : 6 probable bunch sprint finishes, but only 2 'pan flat'. The other 4 have varying degrees of non-flatness in the last few kilometres but nothing to worry him too much. He probably wasn't counting Stage 4 as a sprint stage because he said Gilbert was a nailed on cert for that one.
No prologue this year but a TTT as Stage 2. (Cav says that, unlike Garmin and Sky, HTC do no specific TTT training. All it needs is for him to 'take control'. In his 5 grand tour TTTs, HTC have won the 3 that Cav has taken control of, and not the two that he hasn't!) The long (40km) TT, the penultimate stage, is in Grenoble and is exactly the same as the Dauphine one this year where Wiggins rode well to come second to Tony Martin.
Two mountain top finishes in the Pyrenees and two in the Alps. And a lot of other mountains as well (100th anniversary of the the Tour visiting the Alps this year).