For 20 stages out of 21 of the 2026 Giro d'Italia, US racer Will Barta's top priority will be as a GC support rider for Tudor overall contenders Michael Storer and Mathys Rondel. However, on at least one day of this year's Grand Tour, the American will be able to fight for his own chances to shine as well.
On stage 10 from Viareggio to Massa, a 42-kilometre time trial, the 30-year-old has got the green light to see if he can make a bid for a top result on his own account.
A former National TT Championships runner-up, up to now Barta's best stage performance in a Grand Tour - and he's now onto his seventh and fourth in the Giro d'Italia - remains in a time trial, when back in the 2020 Vuelta a España in the third week TT, he was narrowly beaten into second place by Primož Roglič, who went on to win the race overall.
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While Barta's biggest goal will be helping out the GC options for Tudor, then, a team he joined at the start of 2026 after a long spell in Movistar, for that one Giro TT stage, he'll have his own chance to shine.
"The main thing is to be helping Mathys and Michael in the mountains," Barta, currently running 56th overall, told Cyclingnews during the race's three-day spell in Bulgaria. "That's part of the reason why the team wanted me, so that's the big goal for the Giro."
"Obviously, if an occasion arises that I can try something, I'd like to. I'll do the TT full, and it has been a while since I've done that in the Grand Tour. So I'm looking forward to that, and yeah, I'll just see what happens."
Stage 10's very flat time trial course in Tuscany is not ideal for him, he says, even if his silver medal in the 2023 US Nationals came on a fairly gently undulating 32-kilometre run in Oak Ridge, so he has got some previous TT success on similar terrain.
"I would like it to have a bit more climbing, that's always what I'm better at, because I'm just a small guy, " he said, with the 2020 near-miss in the Vuelta coming on a course that finished with an agonisingly steep uphill drag near the Galician town of Ezaro. "To really compete with these big, big guys is hard on a [flat] TT like this, I think. But it's worth a shot."
For now, in any case, Barta's main goal is to provide support but also to stay out of trouble, meaning he was well away from the mass pile-up that blighted the start of stage 1. That said, Barta concurred with plenty of other riders that the accident was one waiting to happen.
"The first day is always nervous on a sprint day like this, and for me, I have no business to be there, so I was already back," he explained.
"But when we went through the finish the first time [on a local lap], you kind of just knew there was going to be something that would happen with the narrowing of the race."
"The route went left and then it just narrowed there and obviously everybody wants to win and have the pink jersey. So it's all added stress."
Coming into the Giro, Barta needed no reminding about staying out of trouble as much as he can in crashes. He had a pretty bad fall in the Tour of the Alps, taking a bad knock on one shoulder. Fortunately, nothing was broken.
"Last week was a little bit busy with getting that all set for the race, but it's just tendon stuff, not too bad. Other than that, it's all about the legs. We did altitude camp and I'm feeling good."
The lengthy - by Giro standards - wait for the race's first major mountain stage, often present in the middle of the first week but this time on stage 7, is a welcome one, Barta said, as it'll give him some more time to recover from that Tour of the Alps crash. But when the Blockhaus comes up on May 15, in any case, it'll definitely be a major challenge, regardless of how he approaches it.
"You never know until you get there how it's going to play out, and we kind of all look after both of them, they're two guys who complement each other. But on paper, it is the first real GC test, and the first day I really need to be good for Michael and Mathys," he said.
A few days later, though, on stage 10, Barta will be concentrating on his own chances in the TT, the kind of opportunities he's making the most of at Tudor after four years at Movistar. "It was a nice change for me to go to Tudor," he concluded. "Every team is different, but I'm enjoying it here."
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