EF Education-EasyPost "did not expect" Richard Carapaz to be this good at Tour Colombia: "But we'll take it"

Richard Carapaz took a stunning win atop Alto del Vino on stage 5 of the 2024 Tour Colombia on Saturday, powering his way into general classification consideration in the process.

“We didn’t have a lot of information and the TV was going in and out,” recapped EF Education-EasyPost's sports director, Tejay Van Garderen in a post-stage interview with Cycling News. “But at one point, I saw Richard was pulling with the yellow jersey on his wheel and I had to yell at him and say, ‘No, no, no, no.’”

Whilst the boss of EF Education-EasyPost, Jonathan Vaughters recently hailed Carapaz as the most talented rider he's ever seen at the team, given the Ecuadorian's rocky build-up to the 2024 campaign, Van Garderen admits they didn't expect him to be this good, this early in the season.

“He missed some training with some illness coming into this race, so we started with the idea he would help the team, but then we saw him on stage 2, and we said, ok, he’s very strong,” Van Garderen explains. “But we also had the sense that he was happy not taking the pressure, so we kind of said, ok, let’s shift the focus onto the other guys. Internally we knew how strong he was, but we didn’t want to say that to anybody, because we wanted to keep him happy, keep him low stress, low pressure.”

“He's a pretty tranquillo guy, I don’t think he feels external pressure. But I think the fact that we were putting the attention on other guys was making him happy, and in meetings, he started saying, ‘I could do this, I can work for you, I can try this.’ So I think having that mentality helped to loosen him up and really perform today,” the American sports director continues.

“We knew he’d be good today,” Van Garderen concludes. “This good, we did not expect, but we’ll take it.”