Hugh Carthy has confirmed that he will once again be making the Giro d’Italia his main aim of the first half of the season in 2024, with the EF Education-EasyPost climber also riding the Volta a Catalunya and the Tour of the Alps this spring.
Carthy will again focus on the Giro d’Italia GC, after taking eighth in 2021 and ninth in 2022. In 2023 he had to abandon in the third week of the Italian Grand Tour because of illness.
The 2020 Vuelta a España podium finisher says he is not deterred by the Giro’s less mountainous course, when compared with 2023, arguing that in terms of racing, it will be as hard as ever in the second and third weeks.
“I’ll be doing Catalunya, Alps, and the Giro, it’s a similar program to other years so I’m happy with that,” Carthy told Cyclingnews at the stage 3 start of O Gran Camiño, his first race of 2024.
“If things go well and I’m strong then it could be a good calendar again. It has been in the past, maybe not so much last year, specially the Giro” – which he abandoned with stomach issues – “but I think there are options for it to be a good year.”
“The Giro is the big goal. It’s not so mountainous as other years but it’s always hard. It doesn’t take so much to make differences in the second and third weeks.”
“The course isn’t less hard than normal, there are less mountains, but it’s not less hard,” said Carthy as he heads toward his seventh Giro in eight years.
Just like the Giro tends to be, it may be cold and wet and windy through much of this year’s O Gran Camiño, but Carthy said he’s happier making his season debut in the four-day stage race in Spain than, say, the much warmer UAE Tour.
“It’s nice to be here with the fans and to be supporting the local races too, this is an area with a lot of cycling history,” Carthy told Cyclingnews, as he glanced round at the packed square at the stage start of Xinzo de Limia, where sheets hang from windows daubed with the name local rider Carlos Canal (Movistar), who could barely move for autograph hunters and wellwishers.
In terms of the handling the cold, in any case, Carthy said, “You do get more used to coping with it, it can get a little bit better, but a lot of it comes from experience, accepting that it’s going to be like this.”
“Making sure you keep as warm as possible, of course, but also staying motivated and trying to stay part of the race are all good ways to handle it.”
Carthy certainly seems to be enjoying being in the thick of the action at O Gran Camiño, where he took 13th on the difficult stage 2. As of stage 3 he is running twelfth overall at 1:57.
“I think I did ok [on stage 2], it wasn’t too bad, overall I wasn’t too far off [second and third placed Egan] Bernal and [Jefferson] Cepeda, not a million miles from them. Considering they’ve been racing a couple of weeks, I was quite happy with the start,” he said.
“Overall our team rode well, there were a couple of problems, one guy got a broken spoke and we lost a few numbers, but we were trying to keep ahead for Richard [Carapaz] on the last descent to see if he could get up there on the cimb.”
“It didn’t turn out like that, but that’s racing. We did our best, we took control of what we could control and limited our losses.”
As for stage 1’s time trial, with times not counting for GC “I wouldn’t say I took it easy, but no risks, either, I just tried to get as far as I could without pushing too hard.”
“The first race of the season is always a bit of an unknown, these days you never know what’s going to happen in February and who’s going to be going for the wins. But I had a good winter, I stayed healthy, I trained consistently and I’ve done the team camps, so I’m ready to go.”
Carthy was optimistic about his chances of trying to go for the victory at Monte Aloia on Sunday, too, saying, “Hopefully with a couple of extra days racing in my legs, I will be improving.”
May, though, will be the biggest target of his first half of the season.
