Hugh Carthy using the Tour of the Alps "to prepare for the Giro"

With top 10 overall finishes at the Tour of the Alps in the last two years, Hugh Carthy will once again take to the start line as leader of EF Education-EasyPost and looking to prepare for the upcoming Giro d'Italia.

“I'm here for the finishing touches, for the things you can only achieve in the race," the 28-year-old Brit revealed pre-race. "You can't get that specific intensity during your workouts at home. The same goes for the feeling of riding in the peloton. You have to come to such a course for that.”

Carthy, who finished the 2020 Vuelta a Espana on the podium has yet to taste the same level of success at the Giro d'Italia, finishing in eighth and ninth at the last two editions of the premiere Italian stage race. Carthy hopes a positive Tour of the Alps will go some way to changing that fact in 2023.

“We are here first of all to get a good result, and also to prepare for the Giro,” Carthy continues. “The last few weeks I have done nothing more than train hard at home in Andorra. I have not done an altitude training. I trained hard at home and luckily stayed healthy.”