With nine days to go to the start of the Giro d'Italia in Albania, Wout Poels (XDS Astana) showed he is on good form as he hunts for a stage win to complete his Grand Tour trilogy, taking out the queen stage of the Presidential Tour of Turkey on Wednesday.
"It's a big goal of mine", Poels said of the Grand Tour goal after winning the hilltop finish of Akyaka (Kiran) - a climb local cycling enthusiasts rate as the Turkish l'Alpe d'Huez.
Poels is among five riders on the provisional Giro d'Italia start list are eligible for the Grand Tour trilogy – a trend that appeared in recent years to classify the winners of stages in all Giro d'Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta a España, which makes a club of 111 with the additions of Tadej Pogačar, Julian Alaphilippe, Remco Evenepoel, Richard Carapaz and Ben O'Connor last year.
Poels, together with Romain Bardet, Wout van Aert, Rafal Majka, Adam Yates, and Simon Clarke have the possibility to join that exclusive club at the Giro d'Italia next month.
Mostly a dedicated domestique at Team Sky and Ineos from 2015 to 2019, Poels has won his Grand Tour victories quite late in his career. He won stage 16 of the 2022 Tour de France at Saint-Gervais-Mont-Blanc and stage 20 of the 2023 Vuelta a España at Guadarrama while riding for Bahrain Victorious.
There might be one more, too: It's debatable whether or not he is the winner of stage 16 of the 2011 Vuelta a España on the Angliru where he finished in second place behind Juan José Cobo who was eventually stripped of the overall title and it fell to Chris Froome, but stage wins haven't been equally reassigned.
The secret to winning Grand Tour stages, Poels has learned, is to be patient. "At the Giro, I'll wait for my time to come, in the second or third week," he hinted. "But firstly, I have to win the Tour of Turkey overall. There are four stages remaining with one at an uphill finish [stage 6 to Meryemana in Selçuk, above the archaeological site of Ephesus]. Obviously, I'm a climber so I'm happy with that."
XDS-Astana comfortably sit in the first two positions overall with Ecuador's Harold Lopez second at 23 seconds. They're followed by another WorldTour duo also formed of a Dutchman and a South American with Picnic-PostNl's Colombian rider Guillermo Martinez at 28 seconds and defending champion Frank van den Broek at 39 seconds.
"We thought it was also a good race for me to score points for the team, get a good result and go with good feelings to the Giro," Poels concluded.
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