Cycling’s new generation ready to deliver
BRUSSELS — No matter who wins, this year’s Tour de France will see a changing of the guard.
And if the names of Wout Van Aert, Kasper Asgreen, Enric Mas or Caleb Ewan don’t ring a bell for now, they might soon be on every cycling fan’s lips.
In the absence of many stalwart riders who have stamped their mark on cycling’s marquee event in recent years, new faces will emerge this summer.
There is a long list of top riders missing the Tour, which was set to begin Saturday from Brussels with a 120.8mile stage through Flanders and back to the Belgian capital.
The roster of those absent includes fourtime champion Chris Froome, who is missing out for the first time since 2011; 2018 runnerup Tom Dumoulin; Primoz Roglic, a fourthplace finisher last year; former world champion Philippe Gilbert; and ace sprinters Mark Cavendish, Marcel Kittel and Fernando Gaviria.
The generational change is likely to be the most visible in the fight for the race leader’s yellow jersey, as 22yearold Egan Bernal seems ready to take over from his leader at Team Ineos, defending champion Geraint Thomas.
In the wake of an already successful season during which he won the ParisNice and Tour de Suisse weeklong races, Bernal has been elevated to a coleader status after Froome, who also rides for Ineos, was ruled out after crashing last month.
Despite his lack of experience — he will start his second Grand Tour — Bernal is showing maturity.
“I think you have a physical age and a mental age, but when you’re ready, you’re ready,” Ineos team boss Dave Brailsford said on Friday. “He’s ready.”
Many former Tour winners including Eddy Merckx and Alberto Contador have picked Bernal as their favorite to win a race that features several grueling mountainous stages this year. They expect the diminutive Colombian climber to grab the spotlight when the Tour reaches the highaltitude summits in the last 10 days of racing.
Before that, there will be many opportunities for the 33 riders making their first Tour appearance to show off their skills and challenge the supremacy of their elders.
The 24yearold Ewan, who rides for Belgian outfit LottoSoudal, is among an exciting group of competitors who will try to derail threetime world champion Peter Sagan’s ambition to claim a record seventh green jersey, which is awarded to the best sprinter.
A colorful character with a spectacular style of racing, Sagan has been the fastest in the Tour peloton in recent years. Since 2012, he has failed to win the green jersey just once, when he was disqualified after a crash with Cavendish two years ago.
But Sagan has been struggling with form this season, boosting the hopes of younger rivals including Ewan, who already posted stage wins at the Giro and Spanish Vuelta.
“It’s a massive motivation for me that it’s in Brussels,” Ewan said. “Obviously it’s never going to start in Australia so the next best thing would be to start in the home country of your team, and it’s pretty special my first stage is this one. If there was any stage I would pick to win this year, it would be this one, because it means the yellow jersey too.”
Among other riders ready to surge to the fore, Van Aert is the most promising. A threetime cyclocross world champion, the 24yearold from Belgium is riding his first Grand Tour this summer after claiming two stage wins — a sprint and a time trial — at the prestigious Criterium du Dauphine in June.
His versatility and physical skills make him dangerous on all grounds, although his lack of experience should limit his ambitions to a secondfiddle role in support of JumboVisma team leader Dylan Groenewegen.
The DeceuninckQuickStep team is also bringing a pair of 24yearold newcomers to the Tour — Mas and Asgreen. In his first full professional season, Asgreen won the time trial at the Danish championships and finished runnerup at the Ronde van Vlaanderen. He will ride in a domestique role for Mas, the runnerup at last year’s Vuelta. Samuel Petrequin is an Associated Press writer.