A quick glimpse of the stage profile and everyone makes the same appraisal: a bunch sprint for the finish! And that brings us to the ritual question of recent years: who will be able to beat Mark Cavendish? Dressed in the world champion's colours, the Manxman will be keen to do the rainbow jersey justice and also uphold his status and reputation as the fastest man in cycling. But the early stages of the Tour de France haven't always gone the way he would like.
Once he starts winning, he's hard to beat but in recent years his first successes haven't come early. This brings us to the point where we consider who his rivals could be and there is a batch of sprint specialist who have yet to win a stage of the Tour – take, for example, Marcel Kittel, Matt Goss, José Joaquin Rojas and Juan José Haedo. All are candidates for the win but going on what we've seen already this year so too is the young star Peter Sagan. These are going to be the riders to watch in the final of the stage to Tournai.