Evenepoel, Roglic and a race of two halves - Giro d’Italia 2023 Preview
Remco Evenepoel with his eyes on the Trofeo Senza Fine
(Image credit: Getty Images)
https://www.cyclingnews.com/races/giro-d-italia-2023/preview/
By Barry Ryan
Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič must be well used to one another’s company by now. There was already precious little to separate them at the Volta a Catalunya last month and they continued to live in lockstep as they continued their Giro d’Italia preparations at altitude afterwards.
These days, the most exclusive lodging in professional cycling is to be found in the Hotel Parador in Tenerife. There are other options for altitude training, of course, but Mount Teide has long been the outpost of choice, and so the two Giro favourites found themselves taking up residence there at the same time earlier this month.
Every morning, the Soudal-QuickStep and Jumbo-Visma entourages would sit at opposite ends of the dining room before heading out for their day’s work under the volcano. The ritual would repeat itself each evening.
“In the breakfast and dinner room, I had to pass their table to go to my table, so every morning and every evening, it was ‘good morning’ and ‘goodnight,’” Evenepoel smiled last week. “In the day, we didn’t see them a lot, because the training was quite different.”
They will see plenty more of each other out on the road at the 2023 Giro, a race that at this remove has all the appearances of a prize fight between Roglič and Evenepoel, and a reprise of their interrupted contest from last year’s Vuelta a España.
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. 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.
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. 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 omens are encouraging. 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. Lest there were any doubts, the 23-year-old is on schedule for the Grande Partenza.
But then so too is Roglič, despite rumours to the contrary last winter. 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.
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. 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.
Both Evenepoel and Roglič are united, too, by some unfinished business with the Giro. 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. 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. No race, least of all the Giro, is ever solely a contest between two riders. Something to ponder ahead of this anticipated duel.
Evenepoel 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. 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.
Both 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. 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. 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.
It’s hard to separate Roglič and Evenpoel, in other words. But something like 3,451km of racing in all conditions from Abruzzo to Rome ought to do it.
Beyond the expected duel
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. 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.
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. For years during their Team Sky era, their default, defensive mode seemed too rigid for the anarchy of this race, but they’ve got the hang of it in recent seasons – most notably when they adapted to the chaos of the pandemic edition of 2020 better than anybody to help Tao Geoghegan Hart to the maglia rosa.
Geoghegan Hart subsequently seemed to labour under the tag of Giro winner, but the Briton looks to have rediscovered his vim of 2020 in recent months, claiming an assured victory at the Tour of the Alps. Geraint Thomas, meanwhile, is feeling his way into form after a trying start to 2023, and his podium finish at last July’s Tour showed that he can still go the distance over three weeks.
Neither individual has scaled the heights of Roglič or Evenepoel in recent years, but with a supporting cast that includes Pavel Sivakov, Filippo Ganna and Thymen Arensman, Ineos’ collective might will be an important factor on this Giro.
With 2022 winner Jai Hindley opting for the Tour de France, Aleksandr Vlasov leads the line for Bora-Hansgrohe and the Russian’s ability against the watch makes him a most dangerous outsider, while Lennard Kämna also starts with ambition. UAE Team Emirates, meanwhile, also deploy an intriguing double act in João Almeida and Jay Vine. Almeida, 4th in 2020, is ostensibly the leader, but Vine’s progress against the watch since joining the team is striking and the injury that ruined his Spring has not dampened his hopes.
Indeed, leadership tandems or triumvirates are a running theme in this Giro. Jack Haig, Damiano Caruso and Santiago Buitrago headline Bahrain Victorious, while Hugh Carthy and Rigoberto Urán share the reins at EF Education-EasyPost.
Giulio Ciccone (Trek-Segafredo), his recent COVID-19 diagnosis notwithstanding, carries Italian hopes, while Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) returns to his favourite Grand Tour in his final season as a professional. Contesting overall victory seems beyond the Frenchman at this point, but his very presence is one of the race’s most compelling narrative threads.
Every day at the Giro brings its own subplot, of course. Some, like the sprint battles of Mark Cavendish and Fernando Gaviria, or Ganna’s time trial mastery, can be predicted in advance. Others are surprises that will reveal themselves as the race unfolds. Such is the beauty of the Giro.
The primo uomo on the final day takes most of the plaudits, but the full story is always told by a chorus of voices.
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