As Tadej Pogachar heads into one of the Tour de France's mountainous, Paris-Roubaix-style cobbled stages, the management of UAE Team Emirates is confident that the double defending champion knows what to do.
Even with the loss of an "important" player, Italian Matteo Trentin, they insist that he will have all the backup he needs this Wednesday.
Trentin, an experienced one-day racer who has raced Paris-Roubaix nine times and the Tour de Flanders 10 times, collapsed at COVID-19 and was unable to compete in this year's Tour de France.
Team principal Mauro Gianetti said that the collective strength of the other team members should be able to fill the gap.
Besides, Gianetti told Cycling News that Pogachar prepared as well as possible for Wednesday's 19 km pavé.
"He's done the Recon, he's done the Tour de Flanders, he's done the Pavé," he said.
"But you don't race alone, you race as a team.
Gianetti said that with Trentin's absence, the team has revised its support structure with the guiding principle of "regrouping and moving forward."
"We were going to bring Matteo Trentin in for the role of protecting Taddeji, but unfortunately he could not be here.
"But we have Marc Hirschi, who can do some work in the mountains that Trencin could not. Brandon McNulty, Mikkel Bjerg, Marc Soler, and Vegard Stijk Lengen will have to do their bit in this situation and in Trenčín's line."
Gianetti recognized that the Pavé stage would be very different from what the riders faced in April, as Wednesday's weather was set to be dry and sunny. In recent years, Paris-Roubaix has often been held in dry conditions, but the road surface and surrounding fields could be wetter and muddier.
"Dry pavé is totally different and above all dusty. But the important thing is to be in front anyway and know what the track is like in front of you: the curves, the roads, etc.," Gianetti said. [The only problem is that the other 180 riders also want to be in front.
"As is always the case in the Tour, you can't take any stage lightly. You never know which stage will be the key.
As a former professional himself, Gianetti himself can attest to how tough the Paris-Roubaix-style stages of the Tour de France can be, having had to ride them with very painful injuries. Since that time, he has recognized the importance of approaching these stages with a big long-term goal in mind.
"I didn't ride Paris-Roubaix, but in the 1989 Tour, my manager Paul Kekulis made me ride a cobbled stage. But I had broken my nose in a crash the day before, so in the last two sectors of the pavé I was in so much pain I almost walked."
[30"Coculli told me, 'If you get through this stage, you'll get through to Paris. With my nose broken.'"
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