Team EF at the Tour: Carapaz GC is the big thing but stage success looms large

Team EF Education-Easypost is coming into the 2023 Tour de France ready to climb. With 14 stages having over 3,000 metres of climbing, their line-up of capable climbers is built to, hopefully, propel Richard Carapaz back onto the Tour podium after he finished third in 2021 behind Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard.

“I have a great responsibility to my team to do the best I can,” Carapaz told the media Friday. “I know I have done my absolute best to prepare and I am looking forward to finding good legs and to have a great result in Paris.”

While Carapaz has big ambitions and the obvious potential to be in the fight for the podium, his 2023 season so far has been a roller coaster. In the off-season Carapaz had elective surgery to rectify a recurring tonsil issue which sidelined him for the first races of the year. Carapaz returned to racing with a win at the Ecuador national championships in February, before returning to European racing in March.

The spring block, however, was an anonymous one for the Ecuadorian champ. At the Volta a Catalunya Carapaz finished a distant 51st on GC, which was followed by a DNF at the next month's Itzulia Basque Country. Carapaz returned to winning ways after a break from racing at the UCI 1.1 Mercan' Tour Classic Alpes-Maritimes, but was once again off the mark at the Critérium du Dauphiné where a strong start was followed by a disastrous TT and poor performances in the mountain stages in the back half of the race.

“I have been working the best I can to be good at the Tour since May. I have had to deal with some health issues and I haven't always had my best legs. However, I am putting in great effort and the overall preparation has been good. I am also here with a good mental state so I hope I can find good legs.”

Carapaz’s main support will come from the Colombian duo of Rigoberto Urán and Esteban Chavez.

“It is no secret that we have a really great team here,” Chavez said. “We have a big goal with Richard. We will try to do our best for him to go for the general classification. If the race presents opportunities to look for our own result we will have individual opportunities, but the priority is [the GC].”

Urán was a bit more emphatic about how he saw his role: “The Tour de France is long and hard. The big idea is Richard. We will support him in the long climbs, the short climbs, the flat, the downhill, the bus, everything.”

The stage hunters

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EF at the Tour de France team presentation Thursday

Joining the South American contingent in Bilbao is the stage hunting duo of Neilson Powless and Magnus Court, both riders who were the main animators of EF-Eduacation’s 2022 Tour de France, with Court taking a stage win in Megéve and Powless coming up just short numerous times, before ultimately finishing 12th overall. While Powless and Court will certainly be on protection duties during the flat stages and the high mountains, they will have slightly more freedom to chase individual goals during the more intermediate days.

“I think with the team we are going with this year we will be ready to race for stage wins,” “I would say at the minimum we want at least one, but hopefully we can have two stage wins.

“I feel like I got out of the Giro well and had two relatively easy weeks before some harder training. I am excited to see where the shape is now after having success the last two years doing two Grand Tours and having good shape in the second one.

While Court is coming into the Tour de France off of a strong Giro d’Italia that saw him win a stage, Powless is coming off of a spring where he saw his stock rise, starting with a commanding win at Le Marseilles and ending with a fifth place at the Tour of Flanders in his debut. While Powless will not have the same free roll as he did in last year’s Tour, he might not need that freedom to secure the stage win that he worked so hard for.

“I am doing a better job of keeping myself under control,” Powless said of his development over the last year. “ I never want to miss out on a racing opportunity so I am attacking all the time and probably using too much energy. I have been trying to hold myself back more in the last year or two, and this year especially it has been paying off to pick just one moment instead of letting myself go crazy as soon as the flag drops.”

Rounding out the team will be Italian powerhouse Alberto Bettiol, British debutant James Shaw and the experienced Costa Rican Andrey Amador.