05/31/2021 at 5:51 PM CEST
The Giro and the Tour have been traveling on opposite routes for years. Those who fight for the victory in Italy hardly commit to fight a month later to win in Paris. In fact, since 1998, no one has scored the double again. The last was Marco Pantani, which he won in Italy and then in France, in a Tour to forget, with hotel raids, arrests and the squad identified for doping.
Alberto counterIn 2015, he tried again, although without success, after winning in Milan and he did not succeed in 2011, although the results were later annulled. For this reason, in recent years, who has faced the transalpine route then has given up fighting firmly for the yellow jersey. Therefore, Egan bernal It will not be the exception after deciding that this year he renounces the French round to prepare for the Vuelta. Chris Froome won the Giro in 2018 but from the first stage of the Tour, which finished third, it was already seen that Geraint thomas, final winner, was the strongest of his team.
With the Giro dead, the cyclists’ eyes are already turning to a Tour that is in the last phase of the sports pregnancy to give birth as a race on Saturday June 26. None of the runners who have fought for the ‘pink jersey’ is on the list of favorites for the yellow jersey, in a season where many of those who will fight for victory in Paris are preferring to hide their cards.
It was tradition that the main applicants polished their physical form at the Critérium del Dauphiné, which started on Sunday, or at the Tour of Switzerland, which starts on the 6th. However, Primoz Roglic he is concentrating on Tignes (the end of the great alpine stage of the Tour) and will not put a number on his back until the Grande Boucle in Brest. He closed the competition in April, after finishing second in the Walloon Arrow and 13th in Liège-Bastoña-Liège, which he had won in 2020. And nothing more until the Tour.
Tadej pogacar He has not run again since the victory in Liège and after resigning from Dauphiné he has preferred to finalize the form for the Tour by contesting a minor race, in this case the Tour of Slovenia, in his country, from June 9 to 13.
The Slovenian duo will set out as the pair to beat. The Tour has chosen a very complicated orographic profile, avoiding much of the French plain; It has been inspired, as always by the Alps and the Pyrenees, but it has once again given more character to the time trials with two stages that cover a total of 58 kilometers.
