'It hasn't quite clicked this year' – Ben Healy remains committed to attacking approach

The tumultuous World Championships in Montreal was perhaps a microcosm of Ben Healy’s season. With Tadej Pogacar absent, an unruly race unfolded and the Irishman was an aggressive presence throughout.

He spent the bulk of a lap chasing alone to bridge up to Mathieu van der Poel’s long-range move only to be brought back with a shade over two laps remaining. After Brandon McNulty launched his winning attack with 33km to go, Healy made repeated attempts to counter, but he was shut down by Matteo Jorgenson. He would roll across the line in 10th, scant reward for his efforts. So it goes.

“To be honest, I don’t have any regrets because I raced to win,” Healy told Domestique. “I really thought this group with Van der Poel was a super good move, because you could just see how negative the group behind was getting. 

“Instead, it was the move after that one that stuck to the line, but I don’t regret what I did. I race to win, and that’s bike racing. Sometimes you roll the dice, it works out, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

In 2025, Healy’s biggest gambles tended to come off. In spring, he collected a stage win at Itzulia Basque Country, fifth at Flèche Wallonne and third at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. In summer, his all-action Tour de France yielded a solo stage win, a stint in yellow, ninth overall and the Super Combatif prize in Paris. In autumn, he produced a typically brave showing to claim the bronze medal the World Championships in Rwanda.

In 2026, by contrast, Healy endured a run of misfortune. A fractured sacrum at Itzulia Basque Country ruled him out of the Ardennes Classics, while a bout of illness at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes compromised his Tour de France.

“It’s been a bit of an up and down season, to be honest,” Healy said. “All the preparations went right, but then, for one reason or another, it hasn’t quite clicked this year. It’s a bit disappointing, but I think every rider in their career has seasons like this.

“I think I was in really good shape, yeah, heading into the Ardennes. It was really just that injury that took me out of them, unfortunately. And then I got really sick at the end of the Dauphiné.

“I was still trying to be super optimistic that I’d be in the Tour in the best shape possible, but I really lacked that high-end race stuff. By the end of the Tour, you saw that it did start to come around, but the first two weeks were definitely suffering.”

Healy was an attacker on seven of the Tour’s last eight road stages, but his efforts didn’t result in any placings of note. That aggression, however, would continue in his one-day programme through the final weeks of the season.

The 26-year-old placed eight at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal after an offensive display, and he was sixth at the Giro dell’Emilia. 

At Il Lombardia, Healy was one of the organisers of the rider demonstration on the start line in Bergamo to protest the UCI’s inertia on tightening safety regulations. Later in the afternoon, Healy made a late attempt to counter-attack on San Fermo della Battaglia, but he had to settle for 12th in Como. It was that kind of season.

“It’s gone really smoothly since the Tour, I’ve put a lot of hard work in, and I think I’ve been showing that on the road the past few races,” said Healy, who will have one more tilt at notching up a win at the Japan Cup on Sunday. 

In the longer term, Healy doesn’t envisage any great changes to his approach in 2027. In January, he committed his future to EF Education-EasyPost by signing a four-year contract extension. That prompted some speculation that he might eventually be tempted to refashion himself as a GC rider, but neither he nor his team see any reason to change his modus operandi.

“I just want to keep on doing what I’ve been doing,” Healy said. “That’s what I enjoy. I still haven’t won a WorldTour one-day race, so that’s the big goal for me at the moment.”