Pinot v Péraud v Valverde in the time-trial

Forget Vinenzo Nibali. He's won the Tour now. Nothing shy of serious mechanical trouble or a crash is going to stop him and so with the points, king of the mountains, and team competitions all settled, attention turns to the rest of the podium; the battle for 2nd and 3rd, separated between three men by just 15 seconds and with a 54km time-trial set to decide it.

Here is the current General Classification between the three protagonists of Valverde looking for his first Tour de France podium in six attempts, and Péraud and Pinot looking to become the first Frenchmen since Richard Virenque in 1997 to finish in the top 3:

Pinot
Péraud +13"
Valverde +15"

So who is going to make the most of this time-trial and grab second, or at least third? It's extremely hard to say. None of the three are time-trial specialists, but all of them have shown an ability to do well against the clock when required. In particular Valverde and Péraud who have won their national time-trial champions, with Valverde doing just that this year.

It's difficult to say who will be feeling the best on the day, who the course will suit the best and who has come out of the mountains with the most in their legs. The Pyrenees would suggest Pinot is going the best and Valverde the worst but that rarely stacks up in an individual time-trial.

The only evidence we can really look at is their past head-to-head action, and even that is circumstantial at best. It turns out they've done three time-trials in the Tour de France against one another before; two in 2012, one in 2013. There was a second time-trial in 2013 but Pinot had abandoned by then and Péraud crashed out during the warm-up for it.

Here's how the three time-trials stacked up:

2012 TOUR, STAGE 9, 41.5KM
29. Péraud in 55'03"
34. Valverde +22"
59. Pinot +1'33"

2012 TOUR, STAGE 19, 53.5KM
41. Pinot in 1h09'44"
76. Péraud +1'07"
113. Valverde +3'05"

2013 TOUR, STAGE 11, 33KM
13. Valverde in 38'41"
19. Péraud +10"
55. Pinot +1'16"

Each one of them going the fastest in one of the three. But you have to factor in what was happening at that moment in the Tour. Was one of them a GC contender, was any of them saving energy for a potential stage win instead, were they all feeling at their best? It's unlikely they done any of those three time-trials with the same mentality that they'll do this one tomorrow.

Yet it does give an interesting look and it is clear that they're all pretty close...exactly what we want given how close they also are on GC in this Tour.

There is one other benchmark with which to draw it again. A race far from the prestige of the Tour and a time-trial in which none of them stood to win a podium place but which all three competed as recently as this season: The Tour of the Basque country. It sorted itself as follows:

2014 TOUR OF BASQUE COUNTRY, 25.9KM
5. Péraud in 39'08"
8. Valverde +27"
10. Pinot +50"

Once again, there wasn't much between them.

It really is up for grabs, though if I had to come down off the fence for just a moment I'd stick my neck out and say Péraud will do enough to grab second and Valverde might do enough to take the third overall place. Or maybe they'll all finish on the exact same time and we'll wonder what a scenario that might have been had Nibali not been there!