In a season as attritional as this one, Giro d’Italia plans carefully drawn up at winter training camps were never likely to survive intact until May. Visma-Lease a Bike’s squad has been recast several times in recent weeks, with a litany of misfortunes ruling out Wout van Aert, Wilco Kelderman and Koen Bouwman.
Like-for-like replacements are hard to come by, even on a roster as deep as theirs. When Bouwman was forced out by illness this week, the former Giro king of the mountains was replaced in the lineup by Tim van Dijke, a man better suited to serving as part of sprinter Olav Kooij’s lead-out train.
On paper, it means that the team’s GC leader Cian Uijtdebroeks will tackle his debut Giro with a diminished supporting cast in the mountains. In practice, however, the Belgian maintained that it would make little difference to his task across the next three weeks.
“We will try to get the maximum out of it, and I’ll try to be as high as possible on GC,” Uijtdebroeks told reporters in Turin on Thursday. “I think we have a good team, we have Attila [Valter] and Robert [Gesink], so for sure we have for sure guys who can be there in the mountains if it’s necessary. It’s not a problem from that side. And on the final climbs, the race will go by itself.”
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Uijtdebroeks is in his first season at Visma-Lease a Bike after a troubled and premature exit from Bora-Hansgrohe during the winter. He started his campaign with two races in the service of Jonas Vingegaard, but he still had the wherewithal to help himself to fifth at O Gran Camiño and seventh at Tirreno-Adriatico.
His last outing at the Volta a Catalunya was rather less felicitous, with illness forcing the 21-year-old out of the race on the final day, but he declared himself content with how his Giro build-up had progressed since.
At Bora-Hansgrohe last year, Uijtdebroeks placed eighth overall on his Grand Tour debut at the Vuelta a España, though he is aware there are limitations to comparing his condition on the eve of the Giro.
“For the moment, I’m really feeling good,” he said. “I had a good rest after Catalunya and started the build-up again. I like to prepare for a Grand Tour without much racing. That’s what I did last year for the Vuelta, but it’s always difficult to compare the level with last year.
"We’ll see over three weeks and we’ll see how fresh I am in the third week, but I think our preparation was good. Now with the team, we’ll learn how my body reacts and we’ll fine-tune it for the future.”
Uijtdebroeks will hope to see progress against the watch on this Giro, which features 70km of time trialling, split between stage 7 to Perugia and stage 14 to Desenzano del Garda. His very public misgivings about his time trial equipment at Bora-Hansgrohe, after all, was an indication of his deteriorating relationship with the team. His time trials in Visma colours so far this season, however, were rather subdued.
“You cannot fix it in three or four months. It will take one or two years to get perfect on the bike, but we’ve worked a lot in the last months on my flexibility and on the position itself, trying to find a good fit. In the time we had, I think we did a really good job and I hope we can take a step forward compared to last year," he said.
"It’s good to have these time trials at the Giro to see where we are, because we don’t have a lot of data yet. But it’s going to be a step forward already from last year.”
After underlining his Grand Tour potential at last year’s Vuelta, Uijtdebroeks will aim to take another stride forward here. While Tadej Pogačar is the overwhelming favourite for overall victory, the contest for the podium spots is an open one. Uijtdebroeks is among the contenders, even if he was careful to keep his ambitions in check before the race gets underway.
“For sure, I’ll try to get the highest result possible, and we’ll see what it is in the end,” he said. “The white jersey would be a dream, but we’ll start easy and keep the top 10 as an ambition.”
The brisk opening weekend of this Giro, with a punchy stage in the hinterland of Turin and a summit finish atop Oropa, will give an early indication of what Uijtdebroeks might achieve between here and Rome.
“It’s a pretty explosive start, let’s say,” he said. “In my case, it will be about not losing time and the second day is already a very hard day.
"I suspect UAE will make it hard and try to get pink there. If that’s the case, it will be a really hard final, and I’ll try to be there.”
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