After Richard Carapaz’s second place in the Giro d’Italia and Geraint Thomas’ third in the Tour de France, Ineos Grenadiers will be aiming for another Grand Tour podium at the Vuelta a España, and perhaps even the missing step, with Carapaz heading the team’s line-up again.
But just as it was at the Tour, where Ineos Grenadiers pushed for stage wins as well as the overall, the Vuelta will see other riders in the British team lineup exploring their own goals as well as backing the team leader’s GC bid.
Or as Tao Geoghegan Hart, down to race his first Grand Tour this season at the Vuelta, put it in the team’s pre-race press conference, “we definitely have a few good cards to play.”
That goes beyond what the 2020 Giro d’Italia winner can contribute, of course, with the squad fielding both the Spanish National Champion Carlos Rodríguez and recent Vuelta a Burgos winner Pavel Sivakov. Geoghegan Hart certainly relates to that collective philosophy.
“The best races I’ve been part of is always when every rider has a valued role to play in the team,” said the 27-year-old. “And here we have an exciting team, and we’re looking forward to trying to make the most of the last Grand Tour of the year.”
“Everyone is in a different place, but we definitely have a few good cards to play,” he said. “The biggest favourites are outside our team, we have a really strong squad, too.”
The Vuelta isn’t exactly a plan B for the Briton, but having been sick with three viruses in two months after Itzulia Basque Country, Geoghegan Hart was never in a position to go for a return to the Giro d’Italia this May less than two years after his victory there. It was “unrealistic,” he stated categorically on Wednesday.
And while his plans to perform well in lower profile events in top shape in the early summer were also scuppered by an upset stomach, he did well in Norway, taking fifth, and had a solid Critérium du Dauphiné, taking eighth.
However, it was hard to ignore the fact that the rider he vanquished in the 2020 Giro d’Italia, Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe) finally stood tallest in pink at the end of the final day of racing in Italy. It turns out that although Geoghegan Hart regretted Ineos Grenadiers’ defeat by the Australian this May, he found himself also in the slightly contradictory position of being pleased that Hindley had won.
“It was really nice to see Jai win although of course if it was, of course, disappointing for our team. He rode a brilliant race from what I saw on TV,”…
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