EMANUEL BUCHMANN

Quietly going about his business, Buchmann broke through into the upper echelons of the cycling hierarchy in 2019 with a fourth place overall finish BORA–HANSGROHE

He may not grab the headlines, or ride with the panache that caught the eye of the Tour de France faithful. But Emanuel Buchmann’s 2019 Tour de France performance was methodical as it was impressive.

With a 12th place overall finish at the Vuelta a España the previous year being his best Grand Tour performance to date, Buchmann made the leap in 2019 to the top tier of general classification riders with relentless performances stage after stage.

This consistency was clear to see on all the big mountain stages, from the start where he finished eighth on Planche des Belles Filles, followed up by back-to-back fourth places on the summit finishes atop the Tourmalet and in Foix in the Pyrenees, before a seventh place on the penultimate stage of the entire Tour to Val Thorens in the Alps.

This all resulted with the German finishing just 25 seconds off the podium behind Jumbo-visma’s Steven Kruijswijk. When you consider he lost 46 seconds to the Dutchman on the stage two team time trial around Brussels alone, a podium is well within his reach this year with no TTT included in this year’s parcours.

Under the radar

The question you may be asking is why doesn’t Buchmann, get the plaudits he deserves and part of this is down to his team-mate – the imposing shape of Peter Sagan. The three-time world road race champion is a perennial stage winner and racked up his seventh green jersey win in 2019.

But this year Sagan has been packed off to the Giro handing Buchmann the chance to see if he can make a strong GC challenge with the full support of his Bora-hansgrohe team. They won’t have the strength in depth of Ineos Grenadiers or Jumbo-visma but there are some handy climbers in the team that’ll make good domestiques for the German. One thing is for sure, Buchmann won’t be seen as an underdog any more.