'It's very unpredictable' - Neilson Powless hunts stage wins at Tour de France

EF Education-EasyPost are well known for their aggressive tactics in search of breakaway success, and the American team’s Tour de France strategy will remain undimmed, despite the loss of leader, Richard Carapaz.

Carapaz rampaged through the latter stages of the 2024 Tour, winning the king of the mountain's classification, and he was clearly in excellent form after finishing third at the Giro d’Italia in May. However, the Ecuadorian was a late withdrawal from the team’s Tour squad after suffering illness.

Despite this, the American team will continue with their disruptive tactics, looking for breakaways, with both Ben Healy and Neilson Powless leading the bid for stage glory on the race’s hillier days.

Powless was quick to respond when asked his ambitions for the coming three weeks. “Stage win, that’s the main objective,” he said at the team presentation on Thursday evening. “There’s a handful of stages in the first half but I can’t really put a pin on a single stage, there’s plenty of opportunities but it’s a long race and an unpredictable race, so you have to take a shot at a few different stages.

“Carcassonne [stage 15] is a huge opportunity as well for the breakaway. But honestly, it’s almost like each day we’re going to have to reassess whether it’s going to be a good day for the breakaway, because it’s going to be unpredictable with what the GC teams are going to do. You sort of have to make up your strategy for breakaways on the fly.”

While the team is full of riders capable of scoring when up the road, both Powless and Ben Healy have similar attributes, if differing styles, and it's highly likely we will see both on the attack as the race wears on and heads for the high ground. 

“I’m sure there’s going to be scenarios where we’re both going to go for the same breakaway and if we do both get in it’s just better odds for the team winning, so if we’re both in a breakaway then that would be super super fun," Powless said.

This season has been kind to Powless so far, the American took a remarkable, against-the-odds victory against the might of Visma | Lease a Bike at Dwars door Vlaanderen in the spring, before winning GP Gippinigen last month. He’s also had plenty of breakaway practice, going on the attack at Paris-Nice and twice at the Tour de Suisse. However, he acknowledges the difficulty in turning great escapes into wins in modern cycling.

“I think a lot of the breakaways that probably would have made it ten years ago aren’t going to make it nowadays,” Powless acknowledged. “The pace is just so high from the GC group in the mountains, they almost race it like a time trial, their teams, so it’s tough to beat that, but like I said, the Tour is very unpredictable, you still have to take those chances.”