Next up: The Tour de France

The final warm up races ahead of the Tour de France concluded this weekend with Miguel Ángel López winning the Tour de Suisse and Nairo Quintana the Route du Sud. The later was as expected, though López winning in Switzerland may have come as a bit of a surprise to those who expected the winner to come from the likes of Warren Barguil, Tejay Van Garderen, Rui Costa, Simon Spilak or Geraint Thomas.

Each of them except for Thomas finished in the top ten with Barguil on the lowest podium position behind Ion Izagirre. Thomas lost big time on the final day and dropped out of the top 10 finishing 17th, twelve and a half minutes down on López. What that means for the Sky riders form ahead of the Tour where he will be expected to be the right hand man of Chris Froome remains to be seen, though there's still time for that form to round into shape.

Nairo Quintana's performance at the Route Du Sud proves he's very much on form and he's my pick this year to win the Tour. Sure Froome is looking good after his win at the Dauphine, but there's something about Quintana's approach this year that gives off the impression that he's throwing everything at it and given how strong he was last year after a difficult first week, there's certainly reason to believe he'll have gotten better still twelve months on, especially with a first week that isn't as challenging than of that in 2015.

In other races this past week, Rein Taaramae won overall at the Tour de Slovenie, Sep Vanmarcke won the overall of the Toer GP Jan van Heeswijk and young American, Daniel Gregory, won the Tour de Beauce in Quebec, Canada.

So all attention now turns to the Tour and I cannot wait. I might have to pop into a shop later and pick myself up my annual collectors item magazine guide. I know the Giro was brilliant and its the cool thing to like it or the Vuelta more than the big-time Tour, but the Tour was always the big one when I was a kid, it was the one race a year I'd go out of my way to follow intently, and for all the fine racing we seen at the Giro and see at the Vuelta, the Tour is still my favourite annual race. And it's less than two weeks away now.

---

Rider of the week

Bryan Coquard won two stages at the Route du Sud where Quintana was excellent and Sep Vanmarcke picked up a victory and an overall win, but the Tour de Suisse was the big one of the week and while a number of guys picked up a win, I couldn't look past Miguel Ángel López who, though he didn't win a stage, was near the front throughout and sealed his GC win with an excellent time-trial.