The first stage of the Tour de France is becoming a bad luck day for EF Education Easypost.
In last year’s Tour on the slick rainy roads of the opening time trial, the squad hoped for a win and the first maillot jaune. They’d spent months and months, having identified the opening stage as their best chance for yellow.
That’s months and plenty of money, as the team went into the wind tunnel with their best man against the clock, Stefan Bissegger. Sadly, his wheels slipped out from under him not once, but twice on the slick tarmac. The disappointment– and expletives — were quite audible in the EF Education car — captured by the Netflix’s series, The Tour, Unchained.
Well, once again on opening day, it was disaster for the boys in pink. Their big off-season signing and GC hope Richard Carapaz went down hard on a descent. He limped toward his bike but then sat down, examining his bloody knee with both hands.
In a testament to his toughness and desire to avoid abandoning the Tour, he remounted his bike but would crawl in over 15 minutes down. Later, x-rays revealed a slight fracture in the kneecap and Carapaz is out of the race.
The day one bad Tour juju continues. A pink curse. Some kinda voodoo doll black magic.
That wasn’t all the bad news either. The GC Plan B, Rigoberto Uran lost lost 5:36 and there is no Plan C. Day one and done for any shot at even a top 10.
However, all was not lost. The silver lining was supplied by young American Neilson Powless who rode an aggressive search in search of the first King of the Mountains jersey. Mission accomplished as Powless took the lead and swapped out his team pink for polka dots. He leads Georg Zimmermann (Intermarché – Circus – Wanty) by two points.
It’s now up to Esteban Chavez, Alberto Bettiol, Magnus Cort and Powless to fly the flag for EF Education. It was Chavez that summed up the mindset going forward. “Life is pretty tough. And cycling sometimes is hard and today it’s our turn. Richard went down and he was giving a really good performance. He’s sacrificed a lot. We had a lot of belief in him but it’s life. Bad luck and everything just went down but it’s just the beginning so characteristically we will keep riding, keep fighting. We will do good stuff in the Tour.
Let’s hope for that good stuff now that day one is behind everyone.
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