EF Education-EasyPost team boss, Jonathan Vaughters, has backed Ben Healy for a stage win at the Tour de France, saying while the intense temperatures of France in July were not his preferred racing conditions, he had been doing a lot of work preparing for that heat.
Healy has excelled since turning pro and has perhaps done better than many would predicted, often besting Tom Pidcock, whom he worked for when they were U23 teams mates at Trinity Racing.
“Ben is the one rider we have who could win a high mountain stage,” said Vaughters, explaining Healy was among a very small group of riders in a modern era Tour who was outside the group of general classification favourites who could still win a high mountain stage.
Vaughters added though Healy “doesn’t necessarily like the heat” he had “done a ton of work to adapt” and believed he could follow the example of Richard Carapaz – ruled out of the Tour through illness – over coming weeks.
Healy’s plans to ride general classification earlier this year – at Tirreno Adriatico and Itzulia Basque Country – didn’t go according to plan, only to be followed by powerful performances, including a stage win in the Basque Country.
That bit of inconsistency was acknowledged by Vaughters, who said Healy’s success, or otherwise, at the Tour would depend on which version of the Irishman turned up to race.
But he believed he could excel on selected stages, adding Healy had learned a lot from Carapaz, which could prove very valuable over the next three weeks.
“Ben’s going to need to go for medium mountain stages at least. High mountain stages are going to be the stages that he can contest. It will depend which version of Ben we see,” Vaughters said in a nod to the fact Healy would need to be at his best to win at this Tour, it was so competitive.
“If we look at this year, Ben went from losing 20 minutes on stage two of the Tour of the Basque Country to being the strongest rider in the race by the last day of the race.
“Which version of Ben are we going to get on any given day of this Tour de France? On his day, he could be one of the very few riders who wins a high mountain stage who isn’t one of the GC contenders.
“There was only one mountain stage that was won by somebody other than a GC contender last year, and that was Richie. Ben learned a lot from Richie last year. Maybe he’ll do something similar.”
