Ben Healy on stage during the Tour de France team presentation in Barcelona on Thursday (Photo: Morgan Bove)
Jonathan Vaughters, the team boss of Ben Healy's EF Education-EasyPost, has praised the Irishman as the best breakaway rider in the world, which he believed could be the team's key asset towards a stage win at the Tour de France.
Healy has had a stop-start season so far, with illness and injury, but he has insisted a couple of times in recent weeks he has enjoyed very solid preparation for the Tour despite the set backs.
His issues have included a crash at Itzulia Basque Country (2.UWT), hitting a spectator at 50kmph, resulting in missing two months of racing.
He then fell ill and abandoned his comeback race last month, Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (2.UWT), but says he has enjoyed a successful stint at altitude towards the Tour.
And now Vaughters, who signed Healy from Trinity Racing in 2021, says he is hopeful Healy can replicated his heroics of last year, when the Irishman claimed a Tour stage and wore the yellow jersey for two days.
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"If there's one stated goal that I'd love for this team, it is that every breakaway that makes it to the finish line, we have somebody in there competing for that stage," Vaughters said at the team's pre-Tour press conference in Barcelona.
"That's an obvious goal for us, I mean, and Ben, bluntly put, is the best breakaway rider in the world, so of course we're going to be going for that."
Healy has a habit of getting into the breakaways, especially on very hard stages after fatigue has set into the peloton, and then pouncing in solo attacks from those moves.
Though his tactics are more predictable now than before, he has spoken to the need to continue being unpredictable in the way he goes about his racing.
However, the solo move from the breakaway has always delivered his best results, and is expected to continue down that path, though trying to make his move at the most unexpected moments.
There are some climbs in the early stages of the Tour that could prove a springboard for attacks by riders like Healy - attacking climbers.
But the Irishman has tended to be most effective after Grand Tours have settled into something of a general classification pattern, rather than during the opening phase of the race.
