Giro & Tour: Mission Improbable

by Edward Pickering, Procycling, May 2017

The news that Nairo Quintana is racing the Giro and Tour to win both was greeted with a healthy dose of scepticism in the cycling world when it was announced. You only have to look at the recent history of this endeavour to understand why. Nobody has won both since Marco Pantani in 1998, complicated enough in itself because EPO abuse was rife at the time. Since then, nobody has achieved a podium in both events in the same year, let alone won them. In fact, only two riders have finished in the top 10 of both events in the same year (and not been disqualified for doping offences): Denis Menchov in 2008 and Alejandro Valverde in 2016. Alberto Contador came fifth in France on the back of a Giro win in 2011, but he was jaded in the later event, and it was all rendered moot by his subsequent disqualification.

These results say it all. The challenge flies in the face of modern coaching theory. Building a peak to win the Giro is simple, but having time to recover, and then building another peak to win the Tour is complicated enough that we might as well describe it as impossible.

And yet… I’m interested to see how close Quintana can get to solving this problem. Against him: all of the above, plus there’s a stellar field at the Giro and he’ll come up against his nemesis Chris Froome at the Tour. The Giro route couldn’t be much worse for him either – the serious climbing starts on stage four, so there’ll be no question of riding himself in. If anybody else except Chris Froome or Quintana was tackling this double, I’d write it off immediately. Even then, I think the odds against success are pretty big, and it’s not likely he’ll win both. But I think he’s the favourite at the Giro, and if he wins that, then how much would you be willing to bet against him at the Tour? The double is a huge challenge, but right now, going into the Giro, I’m seeing it as extremely improbable, but maybe not impossible.