Established as a preparation race for Milan-San Remo, Tirreno-Adriatico seems to return to those roots in 2019. RCS Sport has, for now at least, eschewed its recent tradition of including a mountaintop finish in the Apennines, instead preferring to stitch together a series of finales that offer sprinters and puncheurs alike ample opportunity to shine.
The 2019 Tirreno-Adriatico still offers something to men with Grand Tour ambitions, mind, as the race is once again bookended by time trials: a 21km team test in Lido di Camaiore on Wednesday, and then a short individual finale in San Benedetto del Tronto on March 19. With some 9,000 metres of vertical elevation across the five road stages, there is plenty of rugged terrain on the agenda, but without a set-piece summit finish, the race seems open to a variety of interpretations.
In short, Tirreno-Adriatico sets off with its widest range of potential overall winners in almost a decade. And, as ever at this early point in the season, the riders bubbling below the surface are as interesting as the men winning races.
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Greg Van Avermaet (CCC Team)
The cancellation of the mountain stage to Monte San Vicino helped to smooth Greg Van Avermaet’s path to overall success at Tirreno-Adriatico in 2016, although the Belgian still had to go out and seize the jersey from Zdenek Stybar with a fine victory on the penultimate stage. This year’s route lends itself more obviously to Van Avermaet’s talents and so he will set out already among the favourites for the overall win, even if he insists that his primary objective in Italy is to prepare for the cobbled Classics.
In 2018, Van Avermaet was a consistent performer through the spring without ever quite reaching the 'Gouden Greg' pitch of the previous campaign, but he has started the current campaign – the first for the revamped CCC Team – on a sound footing. He was a stage winner at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, second at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and then a solid sixth at Strade Bianche this past weekend, and so could soon reattain that golden nickname from the Belgian press if things go his way.
Van Avermaet’s 2016 overall win at Tirreno was built on the foundation of a BMC victory in the opening team time trial, and while CCC have retained some strong rouleurs and Marco Pinotti’s expertise, they no longer have a locomotive of Rohan Dennis’ power to pull them through the opening stage in Lido di Camaiore. No matter, Van Avermaet can expect to be competitive on a range of stages across the week, from the explosive finale at Pomarance to the stiff muri of Recanati.
Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-QuickStep)
Jakob Fuglsang (Astana)
Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma)
Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe)
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/5-riders-to-watch-at-the-2019-tirreno-adriatico
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