Tour de France: Betting Odds/Free Bets

The world’s most arduous bike race, Le Tour de France, starts on Saturday and this year marks the 100th anniversary of this cycling mega marathon. Although the first Tour was won by Frenchman Maurice Garin in 1903, it didn’t run during both World Wars, so 2013 is the official 100th birthday of the Tour de France.

It's a big anniversary, with bookies offering some really big free bets to get the Tour off to a spoke-spinning start.

Tour De France Betting 2013

The 2013 Tour de France will take place from 29 June to 21 July and will cover 2088 miles with only two rest days. With last year’s winner, Sir Bradley Wiggins, out of the race through illness, it's time to look to the bookies to see who they think will be wearing the Yellow Jersey and sprint home along the Champs-Elysees to thunderous applause in 2013...

Chris Froome, Sir Bradley’s colleague and last year’s second, is currently out in front and Betfred offers punters the best odds at 8/11. As part of Team SKY, he'll be relying on help from Australia’s Richie Porte (25/1 at SportingBet) and both are worth a look - especially if you're using the bookies own money and betting with free bets!

Tour De France Riders

Other riders to consider when using free bet offers are Alberto Contador (Betfred offer best odds at 3/1), who’s back in the running after a drugs ban and has a strong team in Joaquim Rodriguez and Nairo Quintana, who have also been climbing the list of Tour de France favourites.

bet365 offer the best odds on both riders at 20/1. Also worth a look are Cadel Evans (33/1 at Betfair), fresh from an impressive show in Italy; and Andy Schleck who's back on his bike after injury and a decent outsider at odds of 40/1 at William Hill.

Tour De France Route

The 2013 Tour de France starts in Corsica, included for the first time, with the 21 gruelling stages offering punters plenty of online betting opportunities.

With the race divided into 7 flat stages, 5 hilly stages, 6 mountain stages (with 4 high-altitude finishes - including a double summit of Alpe d’Huez), 2 individual time-trial stages and 1 team time-trial stage there’s plenty of Tour de France betting odds to use free bets on.

Ways to take advantage of all of those bookie betting offers include; predicting the top 3, 6 and 10 finishers or even the number of finishers in total. You might even fancy a flutter on the winning nationality of the 2013 Tour de France or how many riders will wear the yellow jersey.

With all that going on, and 198 competing cyclists, there’s no shortage of ways to use the Tour de France free bets that bookies are offering on the cycling event of the year!

Watching the Tour De France

The Tour de France is also one of the biggest spectator sporting events in the world. Only the Olympics and FIFA World Cup's offer spectators more opportunities to live bet on sport.

All over France, around ten million people will turn out to see the Tour de France pass by and many of then will have used bookies betting offers to add to their fun.

This year’s prize money is €22,500 per stage (€475,000 in total) and €25,000 for the team time-trial stage, so there’s plenty to ride for and betting odds to consider when TDF betting.