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The Tour de France is coming up and lots of lists of favorites are popping up. Off course, the two main favorites are Tadej Pogačar and last years winner Jonas Vingegaard. But who comes after that? 

To put numbers on the favorites we have to take a closer look at the race itself. The Tour de France is unlike most other races and the 2023 Tour de France is different from previous editions. 

This years Tour has the least time trial kilometres since 1934. On the other side, there are 13 stages with a profileScore above 100, where a sprinter typically competes for stages with a profileScore below 50. When defining the formula, we assign a bigger weight on climbing than time trial skills. 

Furthermore, the Tour de France is where the best riders compete against the best. We want this to be resembled in the formula. Therefore we assign a bigger weight to the races with a high startlist quality. Also, more recent results are valued higher than older results. 

The two mainstream favorites appear indeed at the top of our chart. Third is for Enric Mas and on the fourth line we find Mattias Skjelmose, who is making his debut in the Tour.