Esteban Chaves is two weeks into his first start in the Giro d’Italia. It is almost a year ago, and the Colombian, while exhausted like all in the peloton, is still chirpy and looking ahead to the final days in the mountains with optimism.
With his first Grand Tour being the 2014 Vuelta a Espana, and the 2015 Giro his second three-week race, Chaves is in phase two of his development into a Grand Tour rider, a journey that he openly declares while talking with Cyclingnews will hopefully lead to him one day winning the Tour de France.
“This is the dream, to stay three weeks at a really good level and win the Tour de France one day – why not?” Chaves says with his trademark smile. “When I started at 13 years this was my big dream, to win the Tour. It’s not impossible, no?”
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But first things first, Chaves, then 25, realises he has a long way to go. For starters, he knows he has to finish a Grand Tour strongly in the third week, unlike at the Vuelta where he was in the fray overall for the first two weeks but faded in the last. The week awaiting the Orica-GreenEdge rider as he talks in his first Giro is expected to be brutal, but full of opportunity.
“I’m really tired, but that’s normal,” says Chaves, adding that he is racing at the Giro “to learn, to make my body stronger.”
His goal for the last week is to try and get into a break in the mountains, rather than go with moves that include the overall contenders for the race leader’s maglia rosa like Spaniard Alberto Contador (Tinkoff) or Italian Fabio Aru (Astana).
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