After going into the road race as pre-race favourite at London 2012, Mark Cavendish and his Team GB team-mates were given few, if any, favours from rival nations. Just minutes after crossing the line and having seen the former doper Alexandre Vinokourov win the race Cavendish was asked by our man from the BBC: "Was Tour de France tiredness a factor?"

Cavendish, understandably, barked back: "No. Stop asking stupid questions. Do you know anything about cycling?". Ouch!

Put simply, and as Dan Martin, one of the two Irish riders who starts today alongside the 1987 Triple Crown winner's son Nicholas, said earlier this week: "the winner will be a rider that rode at the Tour de France."

But which one? Good question and if I'm being honest, I'm not entirely sure. I could probably select 10 or even 20 riders who could win today. One thing, though, that could be a determining factor today is team sizes. Unlike in WorldTour races – the top tier of men's professional bike racing – the maximum number of riders each team can field is just five and so controlling a race by one team as Chris Froome's trade team did so dominantly during the recent Tour de France is much more difficult.

Just five countries – Belgium (Laurens De Plus, Philippe Gilbert, Serge Pauwels, Greg Van Avermaet and Tim Wellens), Colombia (Esteban Chaves, Sergio Henao, Miguel Ángel López, Jarlinson Pantano and Rigoberto Urán), Great Britain (Steve Cummings, Chris Froome, Ian Stannard, Geraint Thomas and Adam Yates), Italy (Fabio Aru, Damiano Caruso, Alessandro De Marchi, Vincenzo Nibali and Diego Rosa) and Spain (Jonathan Castroviejo, Imanol Erviti, Jon Izagirre, Joaquim Rodríguez and Alejandro Valverde) – will start with the full compliment of riders.

Meanwhile 22 nations – Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Mexico, Namibia, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Romania, Rwanda, Serbia, Slovakia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates – start the race with one-man teams.

Another factor to consider today is the issue of on-road alliances. These can forged along geographical, political and, of course, financial lines. It will be interesting, for example, to see how Belarusia's Vasil Kiryienka and Kanstantsin Siutsou decide to ride today. Both have strong connections to Team Sky who provide the backbone to the British team and so could, potentially, ride with a certain degree of sympathy towards their team-mates or, in Siutso's case, former team-mates. I'm not saying that those individuals will sacrifice their own ambitions in favour of Team GB, but just that it has been known.

Right, if you have made it this far down the page, well done. As seeing as I'm not expecting anybody to have made it to this point, I reckon I can slip in my cheeky pick for today's race without having to worry. The 27 year-old Colombian rider Jarlinson Pantano. There, I've said it!