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Let's look at the last 5 years, top 2 favorites each year:
2018 - Froome overwhelming favorite, Porte 2nd, Thomas wins (14/1)
2019 - Bernal and Thomas favorites, Bernal wins (2/1)
2020 - Roglic and Bernal favorites, Pogacar wins (12/1)
2021 - Pogacar and Bernal favorites, Pogacar wins (3/2)
2022 - Pogacar overwhelming favorite, Roglic/Vingegaard very close for 2nd, Vingegaard wins (4/1)
So someone who was not a top 2 favorite won twice out of 5 chances, and it depends how you rate the 2022 odds, Vingegaard may have been 3rd favorite going in. But for sure three times out of 5 the winner was not the #1 top favorite before the race started.
I think 17% is too low still.
@PelotonEliza Was it a surprise that Froome won in 2015, 2016 and 2017?
2014 is a case in point for you though: apparently Froome and Contador were the favorites but Nibali won.
I think we need a larger sample than the last five years to get meaningful base rates.
@NicoDelon Personally I'm not convinced the odds from the Sky-dominated era or the several years before that are quite as relevant to today. But of course we can do this!
2017: Froome was the favorite
2016: Froome was the favorite
2015: Froome was the favorite
2014: Froome and Contador were favorites, Nibali won
2013: Froome was the favorite
2012: Wiggins was the favorite
2011: Contador and Schleck were favorites, Evans won
2010: Contador and Schleck were favorites, one of them won
2009: Contador was the favorite
If we just go back that far, then 9 out of 14 times the absolute favorite won, and 4 or 5 times out of 14 a 3rd or worse favorite won. So I still think 20% is low!
@PelotonEliza Yeah you might be right! It’s just that JV and TP seem so dominating and invincible that it’s hard to imagine how anyone could beat them, barring accident. But of course that’s probably what people were saying about the favorites at those times too!
@NicoDelon @PelotonEliza It's also hard to know what "favorites" mean and how heavily that was weighted from the past.
I agree that 20% numerically seems low but also it just....feels right with two arguably equal favorites? I know this is weird math but if you take any hypothetical podium in any order that includes Jonas and Pojacar, you get a 66% chance they win and 33% it's someone else. And if you know that Jonas and Pogi have dominated over anyone else they're racing against it feels fine to me downgrade that to 20%. (I get that just assuming they're on the podium doesn't make sense -- should probably factor in crashes, etc.)
Can also look at the TDF GC market, where #3 is Jai Hindley at 4% (who wasn't even on the podium at Dauphine after O'Connor and Adam Yates - who probably have lower odds than they should). Take the odds of that and you get 15% on this market, so we're decently calibrated there.
what "favorites" mean and how heavily that was weighted from the past.
This is really easy, we just look at what the betting odds were. In many editions, the top favorite is given a line somewhere in the region of 2/1 or a 33% chance of winning. You can look up what the exact ones were and I included several of these in the above post. For example, both Thomas and Pogacar were at 14/1 and 12/1, respectively. There are several riders this year who have better betting odds than those!