While points jerseys are often seen as something sprinters may pick up along the way without really targeting them, one such jersey is different. The green jersey of the Tour de France is the ultimate achievement of a sprinter - besides the win on the Champs-Elysees - and all sprinters would love to wear it in Paris. This year, however, a more mixed route suiting the more versatile riders may make it a pretty one-sided affair and going into the race, most of the fast finishers have already admitted defeat to last year’s winner Peter Sagan.

While the yellow jersey is the ultimate symbol for a stage race rider, the green jersey of the Tour de France is the most prestigious tunic for a sprinter. While the points jerseys in the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana have very often been won by GC riders, a points system that clearly favours sprinters and the flatter French terrain have all contributed to making the points classification in the Tour an affair for the fast finishers. At the same time, the fact that the Tour usually attracts all the biggest sprinters makes the green jersey the ultimate symbol of sprinting prowess.

However, the green jersey is rarely won by the fastest rider. What counts in this very specific competition are not only great sprinting skills, recovery, consistency, luck and even climbing come into play as well. First and foremost, you have to be able to get through three weeks of very tough racing and still maintain your top end speed in the final part of the race. Secondly, you need to be up there in every sprint which requires great positioning skills. Finally, the importance of luck cannot be underestimated as a missed due to a crash or mechanical may cause you to fall out of contention.

Unlike the Giro and Vuelta which have a lot of mixed stages, the French geography traditionally means that there are fewer moderately hilly stages in the medium mountains. In the French grand tours, stages are usually pretty flat, take place in the high mountains or are held as time trials while in the smaller grand tours there are usually a lot of stages that can be won by riders who are not real specialists in any discipline. Combined with a points system that offers more points for the flat stages, this has traditionally meant that the jersey has been won by a pure sprinter.

Peter Sagan’s emergence on the big scene, however, has changed this trend. Even though the Slovakian is definitely a fast rider, he is much more than a sprinter. He doesn’t have the top speed to compete with the likes of Marcel Kittel, André Greipel and Mark Cavendish but his great positioning skills mean that he usually finishes in the top 5 in every bunch sprint he contests. Furthermore, his versatility and great climbing skills mean that he can score points in stages where his rivals have no chance.

Those attributes have earned him two consecutive green jerseys and while the Tour will be seen as a failure if he doesn’t win a stage along the way, a third one is the main goal for his participation in the race. And while he went into his first two participations in the race as one of several contenders, a pretty unusual course means that he lines up in the 2014 edition as the overwhelming favourite to ride into Paris with the coveted jersey on his shoulders.

As said, the Tour de France has often been made up of stages that are either too tough for a rider like Sagan or so easy that the pure sprinters will be able to beat him but this year’s route is loaded with “Sagan stages”. Stages 1, 3, 4, 6, 15, 19 and 21 all seem to be destined to end in bunch kicks for the pure sprinters and most of them should also be there at the end of stages 7 and 12. If his team can keep control of a very aggressive bunch, however, stages 2 and 11 have Sagan written all over the place while the Slovakian is also an obvious favourite to win on the Paris-Roubaix cobbles. Sagan could score some of the remaining points in stage 9 where a break is likely to stay away and he could even be in the mix for the victory in the uphill finish on stage 8. On those days, none of his main rivals are expected to score any points, meaning that the course offers Sagan a clear advantage.

Furthermore, the new points system which was introduced for the 2011 edition, clearly favours a rider like Sagan. Each stage now only has one sprint along the way but the winner will add no less than 20 points to his tally - compared to the 30 at stake at the finish line in a hilly stage - and there will be points to the first 15 riders across the line. That means that there will be points up for grabs for the peloton in most stages and the sprints will add an extra element of tactics to the races.

Last year the sprints were usually located pretty early in the stages at points when most of the sprinters were still in the peloton but this year a couple of them come after some hard climbing where Sagan may score some points where his rivals can’t. If one adds the fact that stage 4 even offers an intermediate sprint on the top of the Casselberg which is known from Gent-Wevelgem, Sagan has a lot of options to add to his tally even before the finish.

Finally, the emergence of three top sprinters is a clear advantage for Sagan. If one sprinter had been a class of his own and could win most of the bunch sprints, he may have had a chance to challenge Sagan. With Marcel Kittel, Mark Cavendish and André Greipel being faily equal, none of them can expect to dominate the bunch sprints completely. With the points set to be spread across more riders, Sagan doesn’t need to score as many to win the competition.

In fact, Sagan’s status as favourite is so overwhelming that most of his rivals have admitted defeat even before the race has started. Even Mark Cavendish who has traditionally made the green jersey a very big target, has said that the Slovakian is virtually unbeatable and he will be more focused on stage wins, especially in England. Only Sagan has made the points competition a real target and this may have a self-perpetuating effect. It remains to be seen how many riders will even contest the intermediate sprints and how many riders prefer to save energy for the finale where they can reach their real goal: a stage victory.

Sagan is very unlikely to win any of the real bunch sprints but his positioning and consistency mean that he is equally unlikely to miss the top 5. This year it seems that the Slovakian needs to be set back by bad luck at least on a couple of stages for his rivals to have any realistic chance of beating him. However, Sagan’s exceptional bike-handling skills mean that he often avoids the crashes. Very early, this year’s points competition could end up as a pretty one-sided Sagan affair.

For Sagan to get beaten, one of the pure sprinters needs to make it almost a clean sweep in the sprint stages and the rider most likely to do so is Marcel Kittel. For a couple of year, the German has seemed to be the fastest sprinter in the peloton but bad luck prevented him from showing it on the biggest scene until he lined up in Corsica for the 2013 Tour de France. By winning four stages and beating both Cavendish and Greipel in direct battles on several occasions, he clearly underlined his status and nothing suggests that the hierarchy has changed.

While Cavendish doesn’t seem to be sprinting at his previous level, Kittel seems to only have become faster. Already in the Dubai Tour, he beat Cavendish three times in a row and even though setbacks prevented him from shining in the subsequent sprints, he proved his superiority when he crushed the opposition in the Scheldeprijs which is known as the world championships for the sprinters. What really underlined his status, however, was his dominant performance in the Giro where his lead-out train completely failed but where he used an almost superhuman speed to win two stages despite being forced to start his sprint from very far back.

In the Tour, he is supported by one of the strongest trains in the business and the combination De Kort-Degenkolb-Veelers-Kittel is definitely a winning one. They may not be fully able to match the formidable Lotto Belisol train but as Kittel is definitely the fastest rider, he doesn’t need to be delivered right on the front. Kittel should add several stages to his growing tally and this presents the biggest threat for Sagan.

Furthermore, Kittel has improved his climbing a lot and this year he has been climbing better than ever. He is now able to survive a lot harder challenges than he has done in the past and last year he showed that he is still fresh after three weeks of hard racing.

For Kittel, however, the green jersey is not a genuine objective. In fact, he is set to share sprinting duties with Degenkolb who will get his chance on the harder days. In certain stages, Kittel may even be able to survive the climbing but the team may still be riding for Degenkolb. This will make it a lot harder for Kittel to challenge for the green jersey. On the other hand, a good start for Kittel and a stint in green could prompt the team to make the green jersey more of a priority.

Already in the first stages, we will get a chance to see if Kittel will give the points competition a shot. If he chooses not to contest the intermediate sprints, he will be out of the game. Nonetheless, he is the rider most likely to dominate the bunch sprints and so he is the rider who has the greatest chance to beat Sagan.

For Mark Cavendish, the green jersey has usually been a big objective but this year the Manxman is going into the race with a different mindset. Knowing that Sagan is probably going to have some kind of bad luck to get beaten, Cavendish is motivated by a different challenge in the French race which is only real goal in 2014.

First of all, he still hasn’t worn the yellow jersey – the only major tunic that is still missing from his palmares (except of course mountains jerseys) – and after missing out 12 months ago, he will try to make use of what could be his final ever chance to take it. Furthermore, the first stage literally ends in the front of his mother’s house in Harrogate and he has done nothing to hide that Saturday’s expected sprint battle is his big objective for the entire season.

Secondly, he wants to reclaim his position as the best sprinter in the world from Marcel Kittel. Spurred on by the German’s dominant performance in 2013, he has done more specific training to improve his sprint which may have cost him a bit of the versatility that is needed to win the green jersey. This year he will be more motivated by the battle against Kittel for stage wins than by the fight for the green jersey and it would be no surprise to see him skip the intermediate sprints pretty early in the race.

Furthermore, Cavendish is no longer the sprinter he once was. In the Tour of Turkey he was convincingly beaten by Elia Viviani twice and in the Tour of California, John Degenkolb seemed to be faster than him. It is hard to imagine that he will be able to dominate the sprints in the way he needs to if he wants to be Sagan in the points competition.

His main asset is his lead-out train which can make the difference compared to last year. When it comes to pure firepower, nothing can match the combination Martin-Trentin- Petacchi-Renshaw-Cavendish but apart from in the Tours of Turkey and California where the main sprint trains weren’t present, things haven’t really worked too well yet. They have now had more time to work on their automatisms though and if they can make things work, Cavendish may be able to beat Kittel. On paper, he is a better climber than Kittel and could potentially score points where the German can’t. He is unlikely to dominate the sprints like Kittel did last year and like he did in the past but if Sagan is set back by bad luck and his train starts to fire on cylinders he has a chance of taking a second green jersey.

The final rider that can realistically challenge for the green jersey is the third super sprinter, André Greipel. On paper, the German is not as fast as Kittel and Cavendish – even though the gap to the latter seems to have narrowed – but the Lotto sprinter has two assets that could make him a serious contender.

First of all, he has the best lead-out train in the world at this disposal. The formation Hansen-Sieberg-Roelandts-Henderson-Greipel rarely fails and when they are firing on all cylinders, they usually dominate the final kilometres of the sprints. That was the case last year too but Kittel’s superiority meant that Greipel was only able to win a single stage. Greipel knows that he is not fast enough to beat Kittel in a head-to-head battle but by using his strong team he may win a few sprints along the way.

Furthermore, Greipel is much more than just a sprinter. In fact, the German climbs pretty well and has won some pretty tough races in the past. Just two years ago, he won stage 13 after having survived the very steep Mont Saint-Clair and with the more mixed route with late climbs, he may get a few sprint opportunities that Kittel and Cavendish don’t.

As it is the case for Cavendish and Kittel, however, Greipel’s main focus is stage wins. There is no doubt that he will try to stay in green jersey contention in the early stages but like his rivals he is likely to skip the intermediate sprints if he realizes that Sagan is without reach. For Greipel to win the jersey, the Slovakian needs to have a setback, his train has to be at 100% and he needs to have turned on his very best climbing legs.

CyclingQuotes’ winner pick: Peter Sagan

The main rival: Marcel Kittel

Other potential winners: Mark Cavendish, André Greipel