Honoré on Giro stage 20: ‘We had to blow it up on the Finestre, it was the only way to win’

"That was basically the plan," Honoré said on the Domestique Hotseatregarding the team's aggressive strategy at the bottom of the Colle delle Finestre. 

Honoré's team leader, Richard Carapaz, sat in 2nd place at 0:43 behind Isaac del Toro heading into the crucial penultimate stage. With the inexperience of the then 21-year-old Mexican, who had never been in this position at the climax of a three-week race, combined with the fact that the wily Ecuadorian had been increasing in form and confidence, there was a real possibility that EF could still win the pink jersey.

"If we didn’t make the move at the foot of the climb, it would become controlled. They could ride a hard but steady pace, maybe let Carapaz go alone, and Del Toro could sit there with his super-strong team-mates, most of them were in the top 10 on GC. We had to change the script."

With the finish not atop the Finestre but after a lengthy valley to Sestriere, EF reasoned that a sustained acceleration from kilometre zero of the climb was the only way to unpick rival plans. ‘We decided to go all in from the bottom. It doesn’t make the climb comfortable; you go into the red zone immediately, but at least you put the race into pieces, make it unorganised, open everything up,’ Honoré said.

The move duly fractured the favourites’ group, but the day will be remembered just as much for the stalemate between Carapaz and Del Toro. The pair crested together yet appeared to stall on the valley floor, allowing the chase behind to re-form and drive clear time. 

"Watching it back, I think everything Richard did was more or less correct,’ Honoré reflected, with the 2019 Giro champion seemingly willing to lose the race in order to win it.

"He had already won the Giro on GC and showed he was racing for the win. In cycling, second or third doesn’t change anything, especially for someone who has already won the Giro and is an Olympic champion."

Honoré suggested Carapaz’s message to his young rival was implicit. "I guess he said to Isaac: the Giro is yours to lose if you don’t ride as hard as possible. But by then it was probably too late. Already on the Finestre, they were doing the same, watching each other. It was for sure one of the most bizarre moments of cycling this year to watch."

As Wout van Aert and Simon Yates surged through the valley, the fixation on a single rival proved costly. "You can’t just let a class rider like Van Aert or a guy like Yates go up the road. There was too much focus on one rider instead of focusing on winning the race in the moment," Honoré said.

Despite the near miss, the Dane was unequivocal about EF’s approach. "It was amazing teamwork. It would have been nicer to win, but I don’t look back and think we should have done something different. It was the best and only opportunity we had. We could have won, and Del Toro could also have won; he was super strong, but that’s racing."

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