2023 Tour de France "the chance of a lifetime" for Mikel Landa

Mikel Landa and Pello Bilbao had confirmed to be targeting the Tour de France in 2023, but as Bahrain - Victorious had it's team presentation yesterday, the Basque climber has developed on his goals and ambitions for 2023.

“Riding the Tour in the Basque Country is a very big motivation for me,” Landa told the media. “It’s a historic occasion and I am going to enjoy it. Racing over home roads will be a factor in my favour for sure. On top of that, the race route in 2023 has very little time trialling and is very mountainous, so that is ideal for me.”

The 32-year old has finished in fourth place in both 2017 and 2020 but will be looking to finally crack the podium. 2022 was a superb season for the veteran who showed great form in the Italian races throughout the year, and proved that he is still within reach of podiums or even the wins in the Grand Tours.

Landa's main battle plan for the coming season is clear: “Close to the podium in the Tour, fight for a week-long stage race like Itzulia or the Volta a Catalunya and to win a stage somewhere. It’s been too long since I last won.” Simple in words, however harder to execute. Landa however finished third at Tirreno-Adriatico, Giro d'Italia and Il Lombardia this year, showing a lot of consistency and his best climbing legs.

“It meant a lot to me," he said of his third season with the team at the Corsa Rosa. "I’d been on the hunt for it since 2015. In 2021, I crashed and had to go home. So it was a really good moment, and it’s given me confidence that it’s possible again. Lombardia was good because it came against some of the biggest names out there. So it reminded me of what I can do," he said of the final monument of the season where he was only beaten by Tadej Pogacar and Enric Mas.

“It’s the chance of a lifetime and you can’t ask for greater motivation than that. I know the first two stages perfectly, it’s my training grounds and the first stage goes through Gernika, my home town," he admitted. The Basque Grand Depart is already enough of a reason to convince Landa, but the climbing-heavy route favours pure climbers such as him, whilst providing virtually no flat time-trialing kilometers.

He will be aiming high at the Tour alongside Pello Bilbao, compatriot with whom he regularly races alongside. “It’s hard to give up on the Giro, it’s a race where I’ve shone the best and which has given me the greatest confidence. But I know firsthand what doing a Giro and a Tour in the same year means and it would have been very hard to combine," he said.

He will begin his season at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana in early February, before eyeing a packed calendar in the spring. Landa is scheduled to race Tirreno-Adriatico, Volta a Catalunya, Itzulia Basque Country, Flèche Wallone and Liège-Bastogne-Liège as he looks to take his first win since the 2021 Vuelta a Burgos.

Of course, he will likely have to face the likes of Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard who were above the rest of the competition at this year's race. “It’s very hard to find a weak point in them, probably the most likely weak point would be if they had a bad day. We’re all human, after all, so maybe it could happen," he concluded.