“I can ride with freedom here" - Richard Carapaz on his 'free role' at Tour Colombia

Finishing 17th on the second stage of Tour Colombia in Santa Rosa de Viterbo, EF Education-EasyPost's Richard Carapaz is now 34 seconds down in the general classification.

“We wanted Andrea Piccolo to get to the line and fight for the win, but we also didn’t want to give up too much time,” Carapaz explained post-stage in quotes collected by Cycling News. “In the end, it was part of the strategy of the team. We knew that Rigoberto Uran and Esteban Chaves were in a good moment too, so we just wanted to cut the gap a bit to stay in contention for the general classification. We were happy with the situation for most of the day, because we had Piccolo out in front and that meant we could stay a bit more calm, but it was still important to maintain our options for the days ahead.”

On paper, EF Education-EasyPost have probably the strongest outfit at the race and stage 3 could be a pivotal day for riders such as Carapaz that hold general classification ambitions.

“The Alto del Vino will be decisive but there’s a lot of altitude gain across the day tomorrow, so I think it will be pretty demanding too," he assesses. “I don’t have any pressure for this race. I can ride with freedom here, it’s sort of a ‘free’ race for me in a way. I’m here for my teammates and I was glad to keep them in front for the days ahead.”