EF Education-EasyPost have confirmed their Tour de France lineup with Richard Carapaz making his return to the event where he claimed a podium finish in his last participation in 2021.
Last year Carapaz, 30, finished second overall in the Giro d’Italia prior to skipping the Tour de France. He later took part in the Vuelta a España, where he claimed the king of the mountains prize and three stage wins his final Grand Tour with Ineos Grenadiers.
The current Ecuadorian National Champion will be backed by a team with multiple former stage winners including Magnus Cort and Rigoberto Uran. A podium finisher back in 2017, Uran took part in the recent Giro before pulling out on stage 10 with COVID-19, but he subsequently showed strongly in the Tour de Suisse, finishing sixth overall.
American Neilson Powless, present in multiple Tour de France breakaways last year and fourth in both the 2022 Roubaix stage and at Alpe d’Huez, is another standout name, while Britain’s James Shaw makes his long-anticipated Tour debut.
Carapaz recently finished an unremarkable 36th in the Criterium du Dauphiné, his key preparation race for the Tour de France. But he remained upbeat for the race where he finished third in 2021 behind Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) and Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma), the two big favourites for this year-s edition.
“This race has been the primary goal that I set for myself in October of last year and I have been working towards it,” Carapaz said in a team press release.
“At the end of the day, I always want to do things in the best way and now that we are at the gates of the Tour, physically I feel good. I am very well prepared and above all I am eager to start.”
Carapaz will likely be on the lookout to complete his set of Grand Tour stage victories, with a second place behind former Ineos teammate Michal Kwiatkowski in the Alps in 2020 his closest opportunity so far.
“It is a very tough Tour route this year,” the Ecuadorian said. “From the first days in the Basque Country, it will be complicated but I also really like some of the stages. We are bringing a team that can get a nice result and that’s what we’re hoping for.”
Powless is one of several riders in the EF lineup who will have both options to try for a stage while working for the team leaders, and after an impressive early season and Spring Classics campaign, the American stated in a team press release that “I think that the prep that I have done has brought me to the right level of fitness at exactly the right time.”
“I am really confident that I got the peak right this year and hopefully I can show that in the Tour. Obviously if I could win a stage, that would be incredible. That would be my Tour made if that happens, but if we have Richie or Rigo up in GC and we can get someone on the podium that would be incredible as well.”
“I am going to have to be pretty fluid with it, with what my goals are going to be, because depending on what position we are going to be in with the team it is going to change.”
Shaw was notably delighted at the prospect of making his Tour debut, saying “the whole thing came about at the Dauphine when I was riding better than I have ever ridden and it obviously didn’t go unnoticed."
"Our DS Charly [Wegelius] pulled me over on the last day and he said, 'look, we’ll put you on the long list.' We’ll send you home to prepare. Don’t do Ventoux Challenge. Go home and get ready and prepare as if you are going to go and I thought, is he pulling my leg?”
“I have this attitude in life that there are two people that you have got to make proud and they are the eight-year-old version of yourself and the eighty-year-old version of yourself.”
“ As long as the eight-year-old version of you looks up to you at the minute and thinks yeah, that guy is who I want to be and the eighty-year-old version of you looks back at you and says yeah, that is the person that I wanted to be, then it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks or feels. I think the eight-year-old version of James would be blown away right now."
EF Education/EasyPost to the Tour de France: Andrey Amador (CoR), Alberto Bettiol (Ita), Richard Carapaz (Ecu), Esteban Chaves (Col), Magnus Cort (Den), Nielson Powless (USA), James Shaw (GB) and Rigoberto Uran (Col).
