Esteban Chaves (Orica-Scott)
After a sensational 2016 season yielded podium finishes at both the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a España, there was plenty of excitement when it was announced Esteban Chaves would make his Tour de France debut in 2017. Yet a knee injury picked up after the Australian summer has thrown the Colombian's season and Tour build-up way off-script.
Chaves told Cyclingnews in April that he was over the injury and was training his way back into shape, though there was still sufficient doubt for his team to pull Simon Yates from the Giro with two weeks' notice and parachute him in for the Tour. Yates has now been named as leader for the Critérium du Dauphiné.
"We are confident that Esteban has made a full recovery from his knee injury and is now back into his Tour de France preparation," said Orica DS Matt White in late April. "What we don't know at the moment is how that time off and lack of racing will affect his performance over the three weeks."
ADVERTISEMENT
It's difficult to know what to expect from Chaves at the Dauphiné, but we can expect to find out how big a blow has been dealt to his Tour de France ambitions.
Tony Martin (Katusha-Alpecin)
As Dane Cash and Cosmo Catalano pointed out in our pre-Dauphiné Recon Ride podcast, wasn't it comforting when an individual time trial cropped up and you automatically knew Tony Martin would win it?
Things haven't seemed so certain in the past couple of years and, despite a quite dominant fourth world TT title in Qatar last October, there's still a sense that the German has something to prove. In his first season at Katusha-Alpecin, and first season on a Canyon, he has raced two ITT's and finished second in both – the first to Jonathan Castroviejo over 18km at the Volta ao Algarve and the second to Mathias Brandle over 13km at the Belgium Tour last week.
Andrew Talansky (Cannondale-Drapac)
Edvald Boasson Hagen (Dimension Data)
Chris Froome (Team Sky)
Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis)
Fabio Aru (Astana)
Alejandro Valverde (Movistar)
Leopold König (Bora-Hansgrohe)
Richie Porte (BMC)
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://ift.tt/2smm3nQ
No comments:
Post a Comment