Cannondale-Drapac gear up for the Giro

Cannondale-Drapac is rolling into the 100th Giro with a squad that’s poised to attack the race and look for opportunity along Italy’s fabled roads

Formolo. Dombrowski. Rolland. Villella. Woods. Slagter. Koren. Howes. Carthy.  The team is not beholden to a single leader at the Giro, and head director Charly Wegelius hopes the riders make the most of such freedom.

“My hope is that they can enjoy that and try things, and experiment with things, and just push their limits without fear of losing anything or having to do any sort of defensive decision making,” Wegelius said. “They can just see how it works out on the road and grow from it. I think that’s pretty precious in the development of a rider.”

The lineup, however youthful and opportunistic, isn’t a stranger to the Giro. Formolo won a stage in 2015. Rolland finished fourth overall in 2014. Dombrowski lit up the final week of the race last season. Howes is a steady hand wherever he goes. Slagter has performed well on varied terrain his entire career. Woods showed in the Ardennes he’s got bite. Koren knows Italian roads and Italian racing, same as Villella. Carthy just rode a gritty Tour of the Alps.

The season’s first grand tour has been affectionately dubbed the “connoisseur’s grand tour.” It lacks the absolute control of the Tour de France and its fans — tifosi — are among the sport’s most vibrant. The roads are spectacular. The weather is unpredictable. The Giro can feel like a three-week one-day race.

“It’s a big event, but it’s still real enough to have a genuine character. The Tour de France is a massive global event, but the Giro has still got its quirks, and it basically represents everything that’s great about Italy and the Italian culture. It’s effervescent and it’s bubbly, and it’s unpredictable, colorful,” Wegelius said.

The Giro begins on Friday in Sardinia. It ends on the 28th of May in Milano.

DAVIDE FORMOLO

The Giro for me as Italian is something you cannot explain with words. It’s just a dream. It’s the race an Italian kid dreams of growing up; it’s the race we learn from. This parcours is something special, too. We start from one of the nicer places in the word, and then we head toward some of the most famous climbs in the sport. My ambition for the race is to let the Italian fans enjoy this amazing race and this amazing sport.

MIKE WOODS

From a state-of-mind perspective, I am pumped to be doing this race.  Last year I managed, through some bad decisions on my part and bad luck, to not start any grand tour on the calendar.  This has made the significance of this one, to me, that much greater.  Aside from the excitement, there is definitely some respect that I am storing up for that final week of racing and the process of getting there.  I know crashes, illness and just a few off-days can derail even the best riders in the peloton, so I am making sure not to get too far ahead of myself.

KRISTIJAN KOREN

This is my first Giro d’Italia, so I am really looking forward to it. I expect three hard weeks in a beautiful landscape surrounded with very friendly fans.

ALEX HOWES

This is my first Giro. I’ve done a couple of Vueltas and a couple of Tours but I have this funny giddy feeling like this is my first “real” grand tour. Growing up, the Giro always had this special — almost romantic — charm and appeal that no other race had. It was always the “real” race. A race of not just legs but a competition of heart and spirit.

HUGH CARTHY

I’ve never ridden the Giro before but in the past few years as a professional it is the one grand tour that I have wanted to ride more than others. People who have ridden it describe it as the most beautiful, brutal yet enjoyable race. Having spent a lot of the season so far in the company of my Italian teammates, the significance and specialness of the centenary edition is clear to see.

JOE DOMBROWSKI

I like the feel of the Giro. I like Italian food and I like Italian culture. The start villages are cool. The country is beautiful. The traditional format with big mountain stages, some transitional stages, and some truly flat pure sprint stages, are a good thing, in my opinion. The racing is less scripted. It’s more interesting to watch.

TOM-JELTE SLAGTER

Racing in Italy is special, and the Giro is the absolute top. Everything is pink and all the people who come to start and finish makes a great atmosphere. The parcours is always special, with famous climbs and typically Italian roads, nothing else is like that… I want to try to win a stage and help the guys for the GC. I like to race with those two goals because then you don’t focus for three weeks on just one thing.

PIERRE ROLLAND

When I think of the Giro, I think of course that this racing is mythic, that the history of cycling is written on its roads on these climb like the Mortitolo, the Stelvio and others. There will be a lot of difficult days, and the last week will be by far the most difficult. My goal will be above all to win a stage. Maybe be a side classification can be interesting depending on the circumstances of racing. The sprinter jersey suits me this season (laughs).

DS CHARLY WEGELIUS ON EACH RIDER'S SELECTION TO THE #GREENARGYLE GIRO TEAM

HUGH CARTHY

Hugh’s coming to the Giro on the back of his first three-week race of the end of last year in the Vuelta. He’s going to discover the Giro, and I hope he’s going to find out what I suspect, which is that he’s a prototype Giro rider. He’s very resilient despite his young age. He’s robust. I think he can give his best on steep climbs, which the Giro offers in a way the Tour doesn’t. He’s another one of the guys who, despite the fact that he’s very talented and performing well, still needs space and time to find himself and to develop.I think that this is his first real rendezvous on that journey.

JOE DOMBROWSKI

I think Joe got a glimpse last year of what he can do at the Giro, and for someone like Joe who has very high quality capabilities, but in very specific types of races, the Giro is always going to be attractive to him. When we get to the high altitude in the last week, he can do his best, so we need to wait for him until the last week.

DAVIDE FORMOLO

He’s really going to benefit from what he did at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. It’s been something I’ve been pushing him on for a bit, to really commit, and really open up, and I think that's what he did at Liège. I hope it’s convinced him that he’s on the right track, and that he’s got the legs, and that he’s competitive. I think he can do well, but Giro is a long, long way. He’s going to have to be patient, but I’m sure we’ll see something great from him in the three weeks.

ALEX HOWES

Despite the fact Howes isn’t that old for our team, which is still the youngest WorldTour team by quite a long way, he is developing into one of our road captains. He’s smart, he knows how to position in the races, and this is a role that we’ve asked him to do a few times this year, starting in Australia, and I think it’s a role that he can really grow into and give a lot of value in over the next years. In the context of that younger group that we have in the Giro, he’s the perfect senior figure to have in that race, and call the shots, and kind of set the tone also off the bike.

KRISTIJAN KOREN

He’s ultra-reliable, very solid, knows the Giro, knows Italian races. He’s been riding well all year, and he’s just one of those plug-and-play riders who you know is going to deliver what we ask of him time in, time out. He’s going to be super steady for the flat and the medium stages.

PIERRE ROLLAND

Pierre’s got one of the heavier racing programs of the riders, because he’s doing the Giro and the Tour double, but he’s so resilient and so solid that I think he’s one of the few riders in cycling who genuinely expect to pull off the Giro/Tour double successfully. That’s a lot of the reason why he’s had a relatively quiet spring, but in the Tour of the Alps we saw him really starting to ramp it up, and I think we will see something good from Pierre in the race.

TOM-JELTE SLAGTER

I hear there’s a few stages in the race that suit him, with punchy finishes, and he’s going to have to take those chance when they come along. The Giro’s a race that’s going to give a lot of opportunities. It offers stages all different types in a way that the Tour doesn’t.

DAVIDE VILLELLA

He’s developing nicely. Took a win in the Japan Cup last year, and is another rider who, despite the fact he’s not that old, manages a heavy block of racing well. Similarly to Formolo, I think he took a confidence boost from Liège. With his potential, he could perform like that much more regularly if he just believes in himself a bit more. I think if he can do a nice ride in a couple of stages in the Giro, and I think he can take another step in basically self-belief.

MIKE WOODS

First grand tour. He’s put out there for everybody over the spring that he’s completing this sort of transformation from top-level athlete to top-level bike racer, and that’s not an easy task, learning to race in a European peloton and fight for position, and the whole technical aspect. He’s really learning very, very fast, and racing a three-week race will be another step on that level, because all riders when they first ride a three-week race make a jump in progress.

Cannondale-Drapac for the 2017 Giro d’Italia

Davide Formolo (ITA)
Joe Dombrowski (USA)
Pierre Rolland (FRA)
Daivde Villella (ITA)
Mike Woods (CAN)
Tom-Jelte Slagter (NLD)
Kristijan Koren (SVN)
Alex Howes (USA)
Hugh Carthy (GBR)