Yesterday, coinciding with my first week on the road.cc payroll, I made a video.
The idea was to capture your attention without resorting to clickbait-y short form nonsense that wasn’t worth your time and just added to your daily dose of ‘doomscrolling’. Short form ‘hot takes’ are particularly fashionable at the moment, and we don’t like it!
So, Medium-length Mild Takes was born! A couple of minutes where I will try and offer a considered opinion on something in the world of cycling. I can’t quite guarantee when you can expect to see my face on your screen (lucky you) but the aim of this piece is not just banal content creation, but also something that informs and just maybe entertains.
And because my job title is still that of a news writer, I’ll be laying out my journalistic ‘wisdom’ (note the sceptical quotation marks) in written form as well… here in fact:
Afonso Eulálio could win this Giro d’Italia.
He probably won’t. He almost definitely won’t. In fact, after recording my ‘take’ I listened to one esteemed podcast that said any suggestion that Eulálio could win this Giro d’Italia was “Fake News”! They’re probably right. But only probably.
Most breakaways that result in a leader’s jersey changing hands are agreed with the peloton. A big team doesn’t want to waste their domestiques riding on the front day after day so they’re fatigued by the time the final week comes around. But that wasn’t the plan on Wednesday. Giulio Ciccone, an Italian, was in the maglia rosa, and his Lidl-Trek team were without a result in the race, having built their squad around a so-far misfiring Jonathan Milan. Their big general classification hope, Derek Gee-West had also crashed in Bulgaria and lost around a minute on most of the favourites on Stage 2. They wanted to keep the break on a short leash, but they couldn’t.
Then Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe tried to close the gap by setting a hard pace on the day’s toughest climb. But the plan backfired, shedding too many domestiques from their rivals to help to pull the peloton back afterwards. The only team with multiple domestiques, Visma-Lease a Bike, chose not to ride hard, unwilling to take risks on the very wet descent. It’s an understandable tactic, particularly in light of the farcical finish between Eulálio and eventual stage winner Igor Arrieta. But their conservatism has now added risk for the rest of the race, with Eulálio more than six minutes ahead of his general classification rivals.
Afonso Eulálio is a very good climber. He was ninth at the World Championships in Rwanda last year, on a course widely deemed the hardest for a worlds in modern history. He’s also been the perfect lieutenant for Damiano Caruso and Antonio Tiberi in Grand Tours, one of the last domestiques standing when the going gets tough. Today’s Blockhaus stage might produce fireworks, there is an expectation that Jonas Vingegaard will light it up and try to gain time over all his rivals. But it’s not going to be six minutes over Felix Gall and the like. And I don’t think it’ll be six minutes over Eulálio. And that’s significant because of the expectations coming into this race on Vingegaard.
The Dane is bidding to become the eighth male rider to win all three Grand Tours. At this point an honourable mention should go to Annemiek van Vleuten, who won the five equivalent Grand Tours in a row in 2022 and 2023, as well as the World Championships. But for the scale of Vingegaard’s prospective achievement, his primary objective for the season remains the Tour de France in July. His team has said as much, explaining they decided to race the Giro as they felt it would not negatively impact the Tour de France. It certainly won’t if after Tuesday’s time trial Vingegaard has a secure GC lead and can manage his efforts and stay upright for the second half of the race.
But with six minutes to make up on a talented young climber, the onus might be on the Dane to keep attacking into the third week. That’s what makes the Giro-Tour double so difficult. It’s why only a certain Slovenian has managed to do it since Pantani. Contador twice ran out of steam in July, so too did Chris Froome in 2018, his all-conquering third week in the Giro biting back weeks later when he was beaten into third by Geraint Thomas and Tom Dumoulin.
If Vingegaard is to have any hope of besting both Tadej Pogačar and Paul Seixas, he needs to arrive in France in perfect shape. One thing he’ll be hoping for in this Giro, is a weak time trial from Eulálio.
This is not an unreasonable thing to expect, Eulálio has never finished a time trial inside the top-50 places outside his native Portugal. For all the power of a Grand Tour leader’s jersey, a thumb in the wind estimates he could lose at least two minutes, but possibly more. There’s a reason I chose to include photos of Andy Schleck and Joaquim Rodriguez in the video after all. But when you have six minutes to play with, if Eulálio can stay with favourites on the climbs, his headstart is strong enough to contend for the final podium, or at least a top-5 on GC.
Potentially. Speculation can only go so far. This is, after all, Eulálio’s first attempt at riding for the overall in a Grand Tour, a very different beast from top-10s in the AlUla Tour, or even the Tumble in the Tour of Britain.
Regardless, Eulálio will join the long line of riders who have parachuted themselves into a Grand Tour lead. But I think we’re much more likely to be looking at Ben O’Connor than Odd Christian Eiking, David Arroyo than Bruno Armirail, 2011 Thomas Voeckler than 2004 Thomas Voeckler. He may not be Roger Walkowiak, as I suggested with chutzpah on camera, but Eulálio has the potential to majorly disrupt the hopes and ambitions of the overall contenders. And to cause Jonas Vingegaard quite a bit more bother than originally intended.
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