There is no denying that EF Education-EasyPost rode stage 20 of the Giro d’Italia with one single mission: victory. With this, they had to be prepared to take the risk of losing it all. Credit should be given to the American team for the way they took the race on, shredding the peloton in the approach to the Colle de Finestre in order to set up their leader, Richard Carapaz for what they hoped would be a detonating attack. The team in white and pink executed a full-throttle lead-out to the base of the climb, and the moment came with just over 40.1 kilometres of the stage remaining.
We all knew that Carapaz was going to have to go early on stage 20 – it was the Ecuadorian rider’s last chance to crack pink jersey wearer Del Toro on long climbs that the young rider is generally less suited to. Going long was the play for EF Education, and they committed in full. It took cojones. At first, it looked like it might have worked; Carapaz got an initial gap after one of his trademark out-of-the-saddle punches, but it didn’t last long. Behind, Del Toro and Simon Yates clawed their way back to the 32-year-old, and the games could begin again. After much back and forth between the trio, Yates made the attack which would eventually stick with 38.6 kilometres to go, and Carapaz would never see the Visma-Lease a Bike rider again. In the end, the EF man finished over five minutes behind Yates and four seconds behind Del Toro. For so much work from himself and his team, the result amounted to very little.
"To win you need to play like this. The risk is that you can also lose," EF sports director Juanma Gárate told media at the finish. “No regrets, not at all. Zero. We tried as a team to do what we hoped. We rode hard at the start of the Colle delle Finestre to try to hurt Del Toro.”
Gárate’s statement is true enough, his team did their best to drop the Mexican race leader, but this is not where it went wrong for Carapaz. Where the problems with the former Giro winner’s performances lie are in how he raced on the later slopes of the Finestre climb. Instead of trying to force Del Toro to work with him on the climb, Carapaz took to the front and paced, despite Yates being in the virtual maglia rosa up ahead. If Del Toro wanted to keep the race lead, then he needed to close the gap as much as Carapaz did, and if Carapaz is true to his mission of racing solely to win, he didn’t need to ride in order to protect his podium place. For a rider who has won the Giro before, whether he finishes in second or third in Rome this year is of little consequence.
Gárate blamed Del Toro for the stalemate, but didn’t acknowledge the fact that Carapaz didn’t try to force Del Toro to work until the very end of the Finestre climb: “We just didn't drop him, he was strong and always closed down Richie's attacks. He seemed obsessed about staying on his wheel.”
Del Toro, on the other hand, refused to take any responsibility after the stage: "Everyone was playing games. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Simon [Yates] came up and I know he has experience and that he'd ride steady and smart. I think I could have stayed with him but I knew I had to mark Carapaz because he was the closest to me in GC. Yates was third and Richie was second, so Richie needed to follow him. I had 1:20 on Simon and so I could let him go a bit. I told Richard that I wouldn't work so that he could attack and drop me on the last climb. He told me he wouldn't ride and I said 'Okay'. Everyone then saw what happened."
Indeed we did see it, and we questioned the choices of both Del Toro and Carapaz on the Finestre. The new pink jersey wearer Yates was the smartest rider of the bunch and he took the spoils at the end of the stage. While EF Education and their leader might have lit up the stage early, grabbing the bull by the horns (pardon the pun), there are no prizes for bravery in this sport. Carapaz came to this Giro d’Italia to win, but got drawn into mind games that fundamentally took him out of the race for victory.
