'That void is going to be filled' – EF Education-EasyPost management reflect on adapting to top leader Richard Carapaz's exit from 2027 lineup

It goes without saying that every team that's ever existed, no matter the level or its speciality, has seen riders join and leave its lineup. But it's also true that in the specific case of Richard Carapaz and EF Education-EasyPost, when it was announced last Friday that the Ecuadorian star was quitting the team after four years and heading to NSN for 2027, the significance for the American squad can't be overstated.

Perhaps even more than results, what's made Carapaz so important in terms of the team's public image is his trademark 'nothing to lose, everything to gain' gung-ho attitude when it comes to attacking. These all-out moves have brought some spectacular success; witness his spectacular brace of Alpine wins in the Tour de France this year, as well as the race's mountains classification. That ultra-charismatic approach, as much as the results themselves, has helped maintain Carapaz as one of EF's most high-profile riders over the years.

It's true that others like Ben Healy, Neilson Powless, or Magnus Cort have had their spells of stage racing glory and/or leaders' jerseys during Carapaz's time in EF. But what makes Carapaz stand out is that along with his naturally impulsive racing style when it comes to stage wins, he's simultaneously carried the team's GC Grand Tour aspirations as well.

After a very tough 2023 when he crashed out on day 1 on the Tour de France, Carapaz has subsequently racked up a fourth place in the 2024 Vuelta a España and the same placing in 2026. There was also a podium finish (and a stage win) in the Giro d'Italia in 2025 when he was fighting for the overall victory right up to the last full mountains day, as well as an eighth place on GC in the 2026 Tour de France.

Put it all together, and it's clear that for any team, win or lose, Carapaz is one of the rare breed of racers who, in terms of media exposure, is worth far more than the sum total of his parts. Hence, when it was announced that he'd be leaving EF last Friday, the question of where that abrupt (at least to the public) departure leaves the American team for 2027 isn't a minor one.

Yet for all this is admittedly not a straightforward scenario, team management points out that any rider's exit may change a squad's overall physiognomy, but that doesn't mean it suddenly has to lose momentum, either.

For one thing, as EF sports director Tom Southam tells Cyclingnews, it wasn't as if Carapaz did it all under his own steam. To get what he achieved, he had a lot of back-up, and that support network is now ideally placed to step up its own game now he's gone.

"If you have a case where you have someone like Richie who's succeeding on a really high level and he's making, you know, lots and lots of points, it can also look like he's doing it and he's just Richie," Southam said shortly after news had broken of the Ecuadorian rider's departure and prior to the announcement of the signing of 2020 Giro d'Italia winner Tao Geoghegan Hart.

"But you have to remember also how many resources we've diverted towards that success as a team, too.

"We had Ben Healy pulling for him in a mountain stage this year [in the Tour], that second one that he won [at Alpe d'Huez]. And we've had the guys who've ridden the Giro or the Vuelta for him as well.

"So we've put a lot of resources behind Richard for him to be able to have the success he's had. And when you take that person out of the equation, naturally it gives more opportunity to the other people that have been making those sacrifices, even without sitting here and doing a lot of sums and maths and working out different things."

That process rarely implies a radical overhaul, Southam says, and you'd imagine it's particularly true in a team like EF Education, where if Carapaz was famous for being a non-conformist by definition, EF's refusal to take the status quo of any race for granted is seemingly part of the team's DNA as well. So it was a very good match.

'It's like in the E Street Band when they replaced Clarence Clemons'

"It's just natural that that void is going to be filled, even if it's with a different style of rider," Southam said, arguing that even if multiple people will be needed to take on that extra duty, "It's like in the E Street Band.

"They didn't replace Clarence Clemons" – Bruce Springsteen's legendary saxophone player in his backing band – "with one person. They replaced him with five.

"So it's an opportunity for other people to move forward and you're always going to find more riders, younger riders, and change.

"It doesn't necessarily mean we're going to be the same team with the same ambitions to win the Mountains jersey at the Tour de France and a mountain on stage at the Tour de France. Because the team's makeup is going to be different.

"But teams always change. People are always going to leave when they leave; it's not ever laid out very clearly before you. But I think the adaptation will go fine, to be honest with you."

That said, Southam also readily agrees that in the case of Carapaz, as a rider and as a person, he's going to be seriously missed inside EF. For one thing, as he puts it, Carapaz's instinct as a racer and the team's philosophy combined to make for a "natural coming together."

"The way we went about winning stages really suited his sort of style of racing, and it fell in well with how we wanted to tackle the race," he said.

"One side of Richie loves to do GC, as well, like he did at the Giro and at the Vuelta and then there is like the more sort of raw Richie, who wants to go and race and win.

"I worked with him personally at the Tour, where we were doing stages, and I know that in that sense it aligned with us really nicely, and it was fun to be a part of as well. Especially in those big mountain stages, the level now is so high, you effectively need a Grand Tour-level winner to win a stage of the Tour de France."

To reinforce his point, Southam cites the case of the 2026 Tour de France Alpe d'Huez stage where Carapaz, Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) were all in the thick of the battle for victory, and all three have been Grand Tour winners. With Carapaz, as he puts it, "you were going in with the right weaponry for those mega, mega mountain stages, and he was great for that."

Then there was the GC side of affairs, where Carapaz's great strength, as Southam sees it, was a refusal to "roll over and accept things" – something very easy to do in the time of Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard era.

"He very much had the mindset that he could win races by attacking. He always wanted to go on the offensive, and it's difficult now in this Pogačar era to have riders who actually have the balls to want to go and do that, because a lot of people are looking around thinking about how am I going to beat the other people that are behind Pogačar," said Southam.

"Whereas Richie… sometimes you'd be like, well, it's a bit much, it's probably not gonna work, but he really wanted to, you know, give it a go.

"That's how he races, and that's how he has to do it for him, so I think it was great to take things on like that and give it a go. In the Vuelta this year" – where Carapaz finally finished fourth – "he was still believing in winning it overall deep into the race this year when it would have been easy to give up and roll over.

"So you know, he really feels it, and he believes it."

The way ahead

That chapter with Carapaz at EF is now closed, though, and EF will have to move on. But as Southam puts it, even if it was so successful, the reality is that in order to survive, teams have to know how to keep altering their strategies depending on which riders are available.

"I feel like we made it really work with Richie, especially this year," he said. "It was exceptional, two stage wins and the polka dot jersey in the Tour, which also leaves us in a position of - what would we do if, you know, if he [had] stayed here, do we do that again? Is it as exciting?

"It's not to downplay the sporting achievement, but you need to keep reinventing and keep moving forward, and that" – with Carapaz leaving anyway – "is going to be what it is, I'm afraid."

On the plus side, Southam argues, when it comes to redefining and realigning a squad for a new season, the arrival of a major rider in a team often tends to create more complications and changes amidst the rest of his teammates, compared to the other way round.

The process of riders having to raise their ambitions rather than dampen them down is always going to be a more straightforward process, for one thing. Plus there's the extra freedom that the lack of a big-name GC rider or stage winner in a team line-up – and Carapaz was both, let's not forget – can provide.

"It's probably easier adapting this way with existing riders than it is when a big leader comes in from another team and then has to find his feet in your team," Southam concludes.

"Because this way round, we're talking about riders stepping up who've been here for, you know, many years. And now" – with Carapaz gone – "they are going to find they have more space." Exactly where that takes them, and what they can achieve, though, we'll only know by this time next year. But the process of change is already just about to get started.

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