Peter Sagan (SVK) – Tinkoff

World champion Peter Sagan will start the Tour de France in the rainbow jersey but the chances are he won’t be wearing it for very long.

• Most TDF points classification wins

  6 – Erik Zabel
  4 – Sean Kelly, Peter Sagan
  3 – Jan Janssen, Eddy Merckx, Freddy Maertens, Djamolidine Abdoujaparov, Robbie McEwen

Sagan’s domination of the points classification has been so great in recent years, he has comfortably won the green jersey despite not winning a stage in either of the last two years.

Even that could change this year, however, with Sagan shaking off any notion of ‘the curse of the rainbow jersey’ with a superb spring campaign, which served as a springboard for a great season so far.

Wins at Gent-Wevelgem and the Tour of Flanders were followed by two stage wins apiece at the Tour of California and Tour de Suisse, and the 26-year-old will like the look of some of the Tour de France stages too.

In fact, a small climb to the finish on stage two could mean it’s not just the green jersey in Sagan’s sights this year but a potential shot at a few days in yellow too.

Marcel Kittel (GER) – Etixx-QuickStep

Marcel Kittel returns to the Tour de France after missing last year’s race, keen to make up for lost time and to add to his eight career stage wins.

He pulled on the yellow jersey after the first stage of both the 2013 and 2014 races, and is favourite to do so again this year, having already led the Giro d’Italia in 2016.

Kittel’s back-to-back stage wins at the Giro took his tally to ten victories since joining Etixx-QuickStep in the winter, but he missed the chance to add to that when Greipel outsprinted him in the German national road race.

Nevertheless, his compatriot showed that – under the new rules last year– sheer volume of stage wins can put you right in contention for the green jersey.

Kittel has never showed much interest in the points classification, preferring instead to rack up stage win after stage win, but that could change this year.

Mark Cavendish (GBR)/Edvald Boasson Hagen (NOR) – Dimension Data

Mark Cavendish, winner of the green jersey in 2011, is the only rider other than Sagan who will roll out from Mont-Saint-Michel as a former points classification champion at the Tour.

However, while the yellow jersey on the first stage remains a big target, Cavendish has spent large chunks of the season working on the track ahead of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

It has been suggested for much of the season that, as a result of his Olympics commitments, finishing the Tour will be out of the question, which rules him out of the running for the points classification.

Team-mate Edvald Boasson Hagen could be a beneficiary of that though – the versatile Norwegian champion has been back to winning ways in 2016 and claimed the green jersey at the Criterium du Dauphine.

Alexander Kristoff (NOR) – Katusha

Five stage wins by the end of February boded very well for Katusha’s Norwegian fastman Alexander Kristoff but things have slowed down a little since then.

Winner of two stages at the 2014 Tour de France, Kristoff had just a handful of top-five finishes to show for his efforts last year but on his day he remains a sprinter to be feared.

Kristoff is a faster finisher than Sagan, while his Tour of Flanders win last year shows he is not just a man for fair weather and flat stages.

The Norwegian was actually second in the points classification in 2014, the year of his two stage wins, but nobody remembers the runner-up in the secondary classifications.