After finally returning to the podium of a Grand Tour in 2022 at the Giro d’Italia, Mikel Landa (Bahrain Victorious) has confirmed that he will be heading back to the Tour de France in 2023.
Landa, 32, told reporters on Friday that the opportunity to take part in the Tour de France, which begins on his home soil in Bilbao, was too good to miss.
Third in the Giro d’Italia last May, seven years after he finished in the same position in 2015, Landa, 32, last rode the Tour in 2020, claiming fourth overall.
His Basque teammate Pello Bilbao, who has regularly ridden the Giro in recent years and who claimed fifth last May, is also slated to head for the Tour’s Grand Départ in Bilbao on July 1st. In addition, Bilbao will miss out on the Tour of the Alps next April, where he has consistently turned in top performances over the years, as he is set for a return to the Ardennes Classics.
“Riding the Tour in the Basque Country is a very big motivation for me,” Landa said. “It’s a historic occasion and I am going to enjoy it. Racing over home roads will be a factor in my favour for sure.
“On top of that, the race route in 2023 has very little time trialling and is very mountainous, so that is ideal for me.”
Twice fourth in the Tour de France and only a few seconds off the podium in 2017, Landa said that his overall goals for 2023 were to be “close to the podium in the Tour, fight for a weeklong stage race like Itzulia or the Volta a Catalunya and to win a stage somewhere. It’s been too long since I last won.”
Regrettably for Landa, bad luck has been a constant in his career, with injuries and crashes wrecking his chances at times. But he said that returning to a podium on a Grand Tour at 32 as he did this May in the Giro constituted a much-needed boost to his confidence.
“It meant a lot to me,” the Basque rider said, “I’d been on the hunt for it since 2015.
“In 2021, I crashed and had to go home. So it was a really good moment, and it’s given me confidence that it’s possible again.”
Third in Il Lombardia at the end of the 2022 season in the teeth of some very serious opposition raised Landa’s confidence even higher, he said, as it came after a miserable Vuelta a España and saw him back in the game after a series of injuries, too.
“Lombardia was good because it came against some of the biggest names out there,” he said. “So it reminded me of what I can do.”
Apart from the Tour, Landa said that he would be perhaps adding in…
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