EF Education-EasyPost go stage hunting with young team at Vuelta a España

Although marquee leader Richard Carapaz has run out of time in his battle to regain fitness ahead of the Vuelta a España his EF Education-EasyPost team will send an in-form set of young riders to Spain as they look to close out the season in style.

The American squad has already more than doubled their tally of wins from 2022, with 22 victories already in the bank, and with Marijn van den Berg set to make his Grand Tour debut at the Vuelta the squad have a rider capable of making a huge impression on the race. The full roster for the Spanish Grand Tour has yet to be confirmed but GCN can reveal that Tour de Pologne stage winner Van den Berg will be joined by Hugh Carthy and Sean Quinn. The final spots are set to be announced in the next few days.

Read more: Marijn van den Berg takes the biggest win of his career

“It’s going to be an exciting young team. We’ve got Sean Quinn. He's young and has shown potential. He's done well in smaller calibre races and the Vuelta will be their chance to show himself at a higher level. Sean can get over some pretty good hills, so should be a really effective lead-out rider for Marijn, who will be a massive focus for us,” team boss Jonathan Vaughters exclusively told GCN.

“We’ll have Hugh Carthy there and the team has a lot of faith in the selection. For Marijn, he can hang on to a small group of riders, and he’s real quick, so he adds a real focus for us. He’s had three race wins so far this year but he’s also shown that he can climb really well and he’s a unique rider in that regard. The focus of the team is going to be about chasing stage wins, and primarily through Marijn.”

With Carapaz still finding his fitness following a serious crash on stage 1 of the Tour de France that left him with a cracked patella and ligament damage, the EF-Education EasyPost squad will shy away from targeting the overall standings. Carthy does have a history of Grand Tour GC riding and was third at the Vuelta back in 2020, but the initial focus will be stage hunting.

It’s been a strong season for the squad overall though, with two stages at the Giro d’Italia and a run of victories spread throughout the campaign. Several riders have stood up to fill the void left by Carapaz’s absence with Ben Healy one of the revelations of the early season and over a third of the team chipping in with at least one victory each.

At the Tour de France in July the team missed out on a win but several of their riders were competitive throughout the three weeks having rallied after Carapaz’s untimely departure. Vaughters has been impressed with the level and depth within the squad, even if the first year of Carapaz’s tenure on the team hasn’t worked out just yet.

“The team has ridden really well, all year long, but it’s a bit weird because we’ve not had our marque rider at a high level all year,” Vaughters said.

“That’s tough when it comes to the bigger objectives. So for example, we always wanted to chase the polka-dot jersey at the Tour de France but the first plan was to do that with Richard and it almost worked with Neilson Powless. Overall, the team has performed at a high level, from all the staff and right through to the riders, and that’s the result of moving on from the COVID cutbacks. That’s all really positive but we’ve just missed those high performances from Richard. I feel like we’ve had a pretty exceptional year considering our best rider has been sidelined for most of it. To me, that’s a tribute to the rest of the team and organisation.”

Carapaz came into the team in the hope of bringing the squad to the next level in stage races. The former Giro d’Italia has settled into his new surroundings and luck has been a major factor in his campaign. He will likely race again this year but will target one-day races towards the final few weeks of the European calendar.

“Richard has shown heart in battling back from a number of setbacks. He had a tonsillectomy in December and there were some severe complications from the surgery, so he was in hospital for a while and wasn’t able to train for a while. In fact, he wasn’t able to start training until mid-January. He got himself to a good level in the time that he had but he didn’t have the foundation for some of the tougher stage races. He won the Mercan'Tour Classic Alpes-Maritimes before the Dauphiné but you could see at the Dauphiné that one day he’d be really good and then the next day he’d struggle,” Vaughters added.

Away from the Vuelta a España, the team will be focussing their efforts on a string of one-day races in Europe and North America. Powless and Alberto Bettiol will be pivotal in those races, and Vaughters believes that their former Tour of Flanders winner is hungrier than ever to take his first win since January.

“Alberto is back to his best now. He had to do the Giro and the Tour to find that level but he’s there, and he’s pretty ambitious too. He’s told the team that he has to win a big race before the end of the year,” he said.