Tour de France 2017 preview: Richie Porte wants to spoil Chris Froome’s three-peat

The 2017 Tour de France begins Saturday, kicking off 21 days of racing in service of cycling’s top honor. With a third straight victory, Britain’s Chris Froome can stamp his place as one of history’s greatest road racers.

Team Sky’s Froome, the titlist in 2013, 2015, and 2016, will have to hold off a field studded with the sport’s top athletes. Richie Porte, an Australian cyclist from BMC Racing known for elite endurance and flurrying finishes, is the pre-race favorite to wear the yellow jersey. Once a member of Froome’s team, his 2017 wins in the Tour Down Under and the Tour de Romandie give him plenty of momentum leading up to Saturday’s start.

If Porte can live up to expectations, it will be a breakthrough for the 32-year-old road racing vet. He’s never finished higher than fifth in a Grand Tour event.

Froome’s lead-up to the race has included some strenuous training and at least one close call. The Brit was bullied off the road by an impatient driver back in May, totaling his bike but fortunately leaving him without any major injuries. French police have been looking for a suspect, but so far have no leads in the road rage case. Surprisingly, it was the first time he made headlines leading up to the Tour de France — for the first time since 2012, he’s gone winless on the roads leading up to the big race.

Those two may be the biggest names in the field, but there are several other cyclists who will pose a threat. Movistar’s Nairo Quintana (two career Grand Tour victories) and AG2R de Mondiale’s Romain Bardet (second at the 2016 Tour de France) both appear to be at the tops of their game, while Astana’s Jakob Fuglsang’s first opportunity as team leader helped push him to his first major victory earlier this season at the Critérium du Dauphiné, which could lead to a breakout performance in the Alps.

And you can’t count out veteran Alberto Contador, who will make his 10th — and supposedly final — Tour de France start. Contador won the race in 2007, 2009, and 2010, but was stripped of the latter victory after failing a doping test. Drug allegations have chased him throughout the second half of his career, and he’s never quite recovered — he’s failed to finish two out of the last three Tours he’s entered.

Those five will be chased by — or wind up chasing — 193 riders from a total of 22 different teams. Only three are Americans; Taylor Phinney, Nathan Brown, and Andrew Talansky. All three will race for Cannondale-Drapac. The minimal presence ties a record low for the past 20 years, matched only in 2015.

This year’s course is one of the longest in event history. The race starts in Dusseldorf, Germany and cuts through Belgium and Luxembourg before traversing into the legendary unforgiving terrain of France to finish Stage 4. The first mountain stage takes place July 9 on a 113-mile ride from Nantua to Chambery that features more than 25 miles of climbing. A rest day and two flat stages provide some recovery time before Stages 12 and 13 dive back into the mountains for 196 grueling miles.

The group will come back toward sea level in Stage 14 before a moderate climb to Le Puy-en-Velay, which will afford them another rest day. From there, there’s only one more mountain stage before heading to Paris on July 23 for the finish of the 2,200-mile race. There are only two time trials in this year’s event, which will provide a huge advantage for whomever can master the mountains in the French countryside.

The 2017 Tour de France has set a challenging course for a wide-open field of the best cyclists in the world. Will the relative lack of time trials and emphasis on climbing prevent Froome from earning his fourth yellow jersey in five years? Will Porte finally break through and earn his spot among the sport’s elite? Or will an old veteran like Contador reclaim some of the glory he vacated — and raise eyebrows about potential doping along the way?

We’ve got 23 days to figure it all out.