"I think the Tour is a bit out of reach" - Neilson Powless doesn't rule out riding Grand Tour GC but is realistic about his own capabilities

Locked in with EF Education-EasyPost until the end of the 2027 season, Neilson Powless has the freedom to experiment and search for what kind of rider he is. Although he refuses to rule out a future as a Grand Tour challenger completely, he realises he's not quite at that level just yet.

“It’s hard to say if I’ll ever go and go into a grand tour looking at GC. I think I’ll have better success if I shoot for stage wins and maybe the polka dot jersey,” Powless told Velo. “GC at the Tour de France is pretty specialized to about three or four guys that could realistically aim to win. I don’t count myself in those three or four."

Impressing at the Tour de France earlier this year, wearing the King of the Mountains jersey for a number of days, the American thinks a Giro d'Italia or Vuelta a Espana challenge could be more realistic. "I probably won’t try for GC in the Tour de France, at least. The Giro and Vuelta could be a different story one day, but with the current competition, I think the Tour is a bit out of reach with the physical abilities that I have right now," he explains.

Finishing 12th overall at the 2022 Tour de France, Powless showed his potential over a three-week race. “At the Tour last year, I wasn’t going into it thinking about GC, so I feel like the pressure was really low the whole time and I genuinely just enjoyed it," he recalls. "It just felt nice to be up there with the best and finishing so high in the overall felt, for my career, it was in some ways defining for me. Even though it wasn’t the most extravagant result, it still gave me a lot of a lot of pride to see where I’ve made it this far."

It's his experience challenging for polka-dots at the Tour de France this year that may have given him some inspiration. “I feel like this year it was almost more pressure because the polka dot battle was just so complex. There were so many different ways that you could gain points or lose points or fall behind and the GC was really straightforward. You just needed to survive as long as you can, or just get up the road to take time and basically get to the finish line as fast as possible. Every day, the Polka Dot jersey was way more complex, and I feel like it was almost even more stressful than GC.”

“It was an awesome experience going for the jersey. Physically, I wasn’t as good as I was hoping to be and that’s kind of what kept me out of the fight. In the third week, especially, I kind of felt like I almost faked it a little while because I could still get in the breakaways and I still have a pretty good punch,” he said. “But I just never felt like I was on top of things. It felt like I probably had one or two really good days and the rest were okay. Not great, but just okay. And you can’t win a jersey at the Tour just being okay.”