The team most likely to upset the expected duopoly here is Ineos Grenadiers, who came so close to winning a third successive Giro with a third different rider last May. It never does, and cycling history is sprinkled with anticipated duels that never quite materialised in practice last Sunday’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège was simply the most recent example. Yet while all signs point to a two-way tussle for the maglia rosa, the Evenepoel-Roglič contest will not take place in a vacuum. (Image credit: Getty) Beyond the expected duel Tao Geoghegan Hart will be the only past Giro d'Italia in the field this year. But something like 3,451km of racing in all conditions from Abruzzo to Rome ought to do it. It’s hard to separate Roglič and Evenpoel, in other words. Roglič’s Jumbo-Visma team has the greater Grand Tour experience, of course, with Sepp Kuss likely to play a key role, but Evenepoel’s Soudal-QuickStep guard has the feel of a coming force. As the Volta a Catalunya showed, Roglič tends to have Evenepoel’s number when it comes to sprinting on mountaintops for bonus seconds, but at last year’s Vuelta, his time trialling was no match at all for the younger man’s. In hindsight, it was too much even for a young man of his gifts to process, but for ten days, he convinced himself that he was in the fight for pink before fading as the race drew on.īoth men return to Italy having since proven themselves over three weeks on the Vuelta, and they line up in Pescara on May 6 seemingly on another level to everybody else in the gruppo. Something to ponder ahead of this anticipated duel.Įvenepoel learned lessons of a different kind when he made his Grand Tour debut at the 2021 Giro, which was also his first race after breaking his pelvis eight months previously. No race, least of all the Giro, is ever solely a contest between two riders. The Ecuadorian gratefully seized the pink jersey and Roglič, restricted by illness in the third week, was never able to win it back, reaching Verona in third overall. In 2019, Roglič dominated the opening fortnight but then his Jumbo-Visma team made the questionable tactical decision to allow Richard Carapaz significant leeway, distracted by their focus on Vincenzo Nibali.
QUAY HINDSIGHT TRIAL
There is also plenty in this Giro route for Roglič, not least the mountain time trial on the Italo-Slovenian border on the penultimate day.īoth Evenepoel and Roglič are united, too, by some unfinished business with the Giro. The doubts were quickly assuaged when Roglič won three stages and the overall title in a surprise appearance at Tirreno-Adriatico, and further reassurance came when he withstood Evenepoel’s repeated onslaughts in Catalunya to take the decision there too. The crash that ended the Slovenian’s putative Vuelta fightback in Tomares forced him to undergo shoulder surgery that delayed his pre-season training and raised questions about his planned 2023 programme. Lest there were any doubts, the 23-year-old is on schedule for the Grande Partenza.īut then so too is Roglič, despite rumours to the contrary last winter. Last summer, Evenepoel took time out of his altitude training to send an ominous pre-Vuelta message at the Clásica San Sebastián, a warning echoed at Liège-Bastogne-Liège on Sunday. Evenepoel, those close to him say, relishes the methodical steps of a long-term project, and this, his second tilt at the Giro, has been planned along strikingly similar lines to his successful Vuelta a España build-of up last year. The Belgian didn’t take long to heed the call, formally confirming the open secret of his Giro participation in November, by which point he was already busily reconnoitering parts of the route. In other words, it was a route that seemed to double as a come-and-get-me plea to the newly minted world champion Evenepoel. When the Giro d'Italia route was unveiled in Milan in October, the map showed some 70km of time trialling, including two flat tests in the opening week. Giro d’Italia makes play for Remco Evenepoel with time trial-heavy routeĮvenepoel and Roglic expected to go 'mano a mano' at Giro d'Italia
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