The Giro d'Italia ended as the big loser when the corona crisis turned the 2020 season upside down, but that is certainly not how it went in 2021. An extremely mountainous route has made climbers all over the world lick their mouths, and they have made a pilgrimage to Italy in such great style that the 104th edition of the Giro appears to be one of the most anticipated in recent years. In a series of five articles, Feltet.dk provides an analysis of the 15 biggest favorites and finds out what weaknesses and strengths they each have on the way to realizing the dream of entering history as winner number 104 of the sport's second biggest race.
In recent years, the Giro's race organizer Mauro Vegni has made a virtue out of doing the opposite of Tour de France boss Christian Prudhomme. In recent years, where Prudhomme has reduced the single-start scope to pure nothingness, Vegni has approached 70 km individual fight against the clock, and when the Frenchman this year broke the trend with a sudden single-start heavy route, the Italian again responded by designing the most climb-friendly route in years.
The goal, of course, was to appeal to all the stars who ran screaming away when Prudhomme unveiled the Tour route in November, and that strategy has been so successful. Most notably, Egan Bernal has been given permission by the Ineos management to drop the team's most important race, the Tour de France, to finally embark on the race at his European home ground, but also relatively slow-paced people such as Simon Yates, Aleksandr Vlasov , Emanuel Buchmann, Mikel Landa, Jai Hindley, Domenico Pozzovivo, Clement Champoussin, Davide Formolo, George Bennett and Romain Bardet were lightning fast to make the Italian race the overriding goal of the season. Despite his improvements on the single-start bike, Hugh Carthy also loved the mountainous route, and Dan Martin was even so in love,that in April he suddenly changed plans and switched grand tour horse at a normally far, far too late time.
It does not even stop here. The most hype is about Remco Evenepoel, who has not been tempted by the Tour's many single start kilometers, but has stuck to the decision to ride one of the smaller grand tours before the debut in the world's biggest cycling race. Due to the uncertainty about his level after the long injury, he is even joined by another comet, Joao Almeida, and last year's No. 9, Fausto Masnada, on a frighteningly strong Deceuninck crew that may only be matched by the star ensemble that with Pavel Sivakov, Daniel Martinez and Ivan Ramiro Sosa will support Bernal at Ineos. Marc Soler finally gets his big chance as grand tour captain, and after the distinguished Giro last year, Pello Bilbao will act as shadow captain for Landa.Despite a stupid crash in the prelude, Vincenzo Nibali still starts with Bauke Mollema in the role of stage hunter and now perhaps in support of Giulio Ciccone, who in light of Hajen's unfortunate prelude can suddenly see a possible personal chance.
No, Vegni certainly has no reason to be unhappy with the starting list for the 104th edition of the world's second largest stage race. Perhaps he wished that the route's small excursion to Slovenia had caused the two Slovenian monsters to give the Giro a consideration, but that, of course, was never realistic. With all the hype that Evenepoel's first grand toue creates, and the attention that Bernal always creates, Vegni can confidently look forward to a guaranteed two-wheeled supershow over the next three weeks!
In a series of five preludes, Feltet.dk takes a look at the 15 biggest favorites, of which one has received five stars, two have received four, three have received three, four have received two, and five have to settle for a single star. In this article, we provide an in-depth analysis of the race's biggest favorite, which as the only one has received five stars.
Remco Evenepoel (*)
It is generally a good idea to be a little wary of using results in the youth ranks as a surefire indication that a given rider will become one of the big stars of cycling. Thus, one does not have to think long to come up with examples of riders who in the early years were exclaimed as Tour King and that which is better, but who ended up becoming relatively anonymous figures in the professional field. This is especially true of the basic rule for the junior class, where the riders have reached very different stages in their physical development, and therefore the balance of power often changes enormously when "the slow" catches up with "the fast".
That lesson one should actually think that the Belgians as perhaps the most bicycle-interested people were embarrassingly aware of. In any case, it is not difficult in Belgian cycling history to find examples of riders who have been named the man who was to break the almost unimaginable grand tour drought that Eddy Merckx's homeland has experienced since Johan De Muynck won the Giro in 1978. Time and time again, the cycling-mad crowd has been left disappointed, and in that light one would think that the horse was patted a few extra times when a young Belgian showed talent.
That's just not the case with Remco Evenepoel. The phenomenon, which was heading towards a promising football career, but which fortunately for cycling changed tracks, should not spend much time creating such a violent hype that even before his professional debut in January 2019 he was actually considered a of Belgium's biggest sports stars. Although he had made the unconventional and risky choice to skip the U23 class altogether and become a professional immediately after junior time, the Belgian press even sent a delegation across the country to cover an 18-year-old boy's first professional pedal wire in Argentina.
On the one hand, it seems completely absurd that a guy in a professional context, completely untested, could make an entire country's sports press go into collective self-swing, but when you know the history, you understand it well. After all, not everyone in the junior class drives so fast that races had to be shortened because the prodigy was picking up the field with a lap in one of the countless solo rides that made him an unstoppable victory machine among the young boys. Of course, in 2018 he became both Belgian, European and world champion - in the latter two cases both in line races and in the singles - and especially his European Championship title, which was won by a margin of 9.44 down to No. 2 despite a distance of just 118.8 km, says it all that the hype was not entirely unfounded.
Still, Evenepoel has exceeded all expectations as a professional. The first year, according to the Deceuninck team, who had actually preferred to see him take a year in the U23 class, but who, under pressure from Sky's huge wallet, felt compelled to act earlier than planned, was all about learning. Still, after a somewhat hesitant start, which probably made many skeptics feel confirmed in their assumption that he had come out on a little too deep water a little too early, he ended up winning his very first one-day race on the World Tour, Clasica San. Sebastian, who is almost always won by riders with the Tour de France in his legs, to become a supreme European champion in singles and to win World Cup silver in the same discipline after a performance where he was probably beaten clearly by Rohan Dennis, but in return enough once the rest of the field ran across the middle.
That kind of results most people will give their right arm to achieve, but they stood on Evenepoel's resume before he turned 20. And in 2020 he was just even wilder, because here he answered the question he never gave a sure answer to in 2019, namely whether he could climb with the best. He did so in a very short but completely wild season, where he ran four races, namely the stage races in San Juan, Algarve, Burgos and Poland, and won them all in quite superb style! There were many indications that the first monumental victory was just around the corner when he sat with the best over Muro di Sormano in his monumental debut in Lombardy, but as most people know, the race had a very dramatic and sad ending for Evenepoel.
In fact, it's precisely this episode that makes no one really know what to expect from Evenepoel when, from on Saturday, he makes his long-awaited grand tour debut in the Giro with a one-year delay. The Belgian has not run a single race since he sent the hearts of cyclists all over the world by riding over the edge of the madness descent from Sormano. Everything else was on the right track when he got back on the bike after his hip fracture already before Christmas, but not entirely unexpectedly, the ambitious Evenepoel was a little too impatient in his quest to get ready for the Italian grand tour, and his training zeal with great pain unfortunately led to a new push of the pause button and a race stop that lasted longer than it could have possibly been.
Fortunately, Evenepoel has been training without pain for a long time, and for weeks he has been able to train exactly as he wanted. Still, it rolls around with questions before he gets on the competition bike in Turin for the first time in about nine months on Saturday. One is, in fact, the general uncertainty as to whether a grand tour debutant at all has the abilities and recovery to win a grand tour. Something else, of course, is the obvious doubt about the form that his long running break creates.
It does not get any better that the Deceuninck camp and Evenepoel themselves are very eager to lower expectations. According to the prodigy himself, he is coming to Italy alone to help Joao Almeida, who was called in as Plan B when it became clear in the spring that the Belgian might not have time to find his top form. No, the season is all about the Olympics and the World Cup as well as maybe the Vuelta, and the next three weeks are supposed to be used alone to find the race rhythm before the big events later in the year.
Now, unfortunately, I am not a psychologist - and even if I were, it is probably also difficult to analyze in depth a personality on the basis of TV interviews and the short meeting I myself had with the Belgian at the World Cup in Austria - but it is now not difficult to sense that it would be against his whole mindset to ride three weeks in Italy as an assistant rider with a free role. Imagine if Almeida - shudder! - had to go and win the race, and the whole world might want to equate the Portuguese's talent with the Belgian's. It would undoubtedly spawn bitter tweets and self-conscious statements from the team’s chief prodigy and hurt him far into the soul if people were to believe it was not him who is the best.
There is also much to suggest that it is pure smokescreen. Evenepoel interrupted his altitude training to reconnoiter the gravel road stage, and it was probably a decision that was rather unnecessary if the ambition alone was to chase stages and act as a helper. And perhaps team-mate Fausto Masnada has also come to talk about himself when he came to La Gazzetta dello Sport in April with some words that fit Evenepoel's winning mentality far better than his modest statements about auxiliary efforts. "He wants to win. It's nice to help him. He has recovered 100% and he is more trim and motivated than ever. He can't wait to run again, and Remco is super-focused, "the Italian said to the Italian sports newspaper.
If that statement can be used to call the Deceuninck camp bluff, however, there is still a long way to go to see Evenepoel in pink in Milan on May 30, because can he win a grand tour at all? Is he recovering well enough? And are the climbing skills we have seen only to a modest extent really enough for a reputation that more than long appeals to mountaineers with a penchant for steep percentages?
We do not know, and neither do Evenepoel or Deceuninck themselves, but there are many indications that we can say yes to both. A basic characteristic of the Belgian is his enormous engine, which points in the direction of an excellent recovery ability. It is no coincidence that he delivered a great solo ride in his first long classic, that he is the best on the longest of the longest single starts, that he has generally performed best when the distance has rounded the 200 km, and that his characteristics already are giant solo rides that require a very special endurance. As Jakob Fuglsang can attest, a large engine in a one-day race is not a guarantee of good recovery ability, but it is usually an excellent indicator that could indicate that Evenepoel may even be the type who just wants to get better and better over three weeks.
Does he climb well enough? His experience in the mountains is limited, and in fact it was here that he had the hardest time in the beginning of his career, where, among other things, it turned into a flop on the king stage in an Adriatica Ionica Race, where he was to start as a big favorite. But when he beat a whole series of superclimbers and superpuncheurs last year on the Foia climb in the Algarve, and not least when he drove the whole field in the middle of the steep Picon Blanco climb in Burgos, it looked at least promising. It did so, too, when he delivered his mad ride in Poland, where, however, in slightly easier terrain, he sabotaged the later Lombardy winner Fuglsang, or when, in Lombardy in particular, he sat stone-safe with the best of Muro di Sormano's inhuman percentages.
If it is an expression of Evenepoel's climbing abilities, there is no reason to believe that he should not be able to participate in the Giro's mountains, even though from the 14th stage onwards, much harder and steeper finish mountains are offered than usual. There is also no reason to believe that his huge engine will not love the royal stage's gigantic mountain marathon with almost 6000 altitude meters over 212 km. And there is also no reason to believe that the man who took his first individual professional on a cobblestone stage in the Belgium Tour should have a hard time coping with some gravel roads in Tuscany.
At the same time, he has a luxury no one else has. When he can become European champion over 22 km of toner terrain by beating Kasper Asgreen, Stefan Küng and Filippo Ganna by 20-25 seconds, one does not dare to think at all how much time he gains on the climbers over the almost 40 km pancake flat single start that awaits . It may be that this year's route is significantly worse for pace specialists like Evenepoel, but he wants to secure a buffer that allows him to attack the mountains completely defensively.
He can do that with one of the strongest teams in the race. Deep in the mountains, he can count on the support of last year's No. 4, Almeida, last year's No. 9, Fausto Masnada, who most recently became No. 3 in Romandiet, and James Knox, who has returned to the track this spring with quite compelling driving. The rest of the team is also frighteningly strong, and it will therefore not be the collective that costs.
It will be Evenepoel himself who will lose the race. He must show that he can climb with the best. He needs to show that he can last for three weeks, where there might be some concern to be found in Burgos and the Algarve, where he was stronger on the first mountain tape and human on the second. He must show that he has fully recovered from his fall. He has to show that he quickly recovers the running rhythm, but here he is fortunately helped by a very heavy route, which probably only really shows teeth from the gravel road tape onwards. And finally, he must avoid losing his head with some impatient madness ride in the first and ultimately not particularly decisive part of the race, for he is probably wise enough to make sure that he has all the strength left for the brutal finish, which undoubtedly determines the winner of the race.
But why should not the answer be yes to all of them? There is probably no expectation that Evenepoel has not exceeded in his first time as a professional, and therefore it is wise to automatically add 25% to what you expect to see from Evenepoel in the next three weeks. Maybe he's right that he comes alone as a helper, but it now seems most nice to have the excuse ready, if it still fails. It just never does it right for the field's prodigy # 1, so why should he not show on Sunday, May 30, that for once it was fully justified that the Belgian media created so much fuss and for the 117th time found The Muyncks successor? So far, he has at least fully lived up to all the hype!