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Jack Haig: "If any of us want to beat Evenepoel and Roglič we probably need to look for opportunities"
CyclingThursday, 04 May 2023 at 22:00
Jack Haig has raced the Tour de France twice but has on both times crashed out. Looking for a new challenge, he found himself eyeing the Giro d'Italia, and is arriving at the first Grand Tour of the season with his best form back.
Asked why he had chosen to race the Giro, the Australian answered: “Because I crashed the last two times at the Tour de France and I was a bit fed up with it. It's basically the only reason," he joked in an interview with Cyclingnews. “To be honest the most frustrating thing is that the two crashes I had at the Tour de France I don’t think were of any fault, it was just bad luck. Normally, touch wood, I don’t actually crash very often. Those two injuries – the collarbone and my wrist – are the only two injuries I’ve had in cycling, I think, so it's kind of frustrating.”
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He spent several months out of competition, ending his season in July. He reports that it was difficult to get back to his form. "I think the most time I’ve ever had off the bike. I really struggled this year after coming back from the wrist injury. I was really hoping to have better results in Paris-Nice and Catalunya and for whatever reason it just didn’t work out and I didn’t have the level."
However as the season developed so did his form. Haig was 11th at the Vuelta a Andalucia and rode to 10th place at Paris-Nice, and after abandoning the Volta a Catalunya he went on a training camp which then saw him race the Tour of the Alps at a much higher level. He finished third there, alongside Tao Geoghegan Hart and Hugh Carthy who will be rivals over the next three weeks in the fight for the podium.
"It's coming now, more or less, which is nice. But I was struggling a little bit the first part of the season, not really knowing what was going on, why I wasn’t more at the front. I wanted a confirmation that the work I’d done in the altitude camp in Tenerife was on the right track."
He's gotten that confirmation, and Bahrain - Victorious enter the Giro as Damiano Caruso has finished on the podium of the Tour de Romandie and Santiago Buitrago Buitrago rode to the podium at Liège-Bastogne-Liège respecively. The team has lost Gino Mäder this morning due to Covid-19 but enter the race with just as much ambition.
He is aware that the fight inside the Top10 will be quite interesting, specially as there are good chances tht Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel may be a level above the rest.
“There is probably a group from third to eighth that is really quite close," he acknowledges. "If any of us want to beat Evenepoel and Roglič we probably need to look for opportunities and bad moments those two might have and for the racing between ourselves, it is obviously quite tricky and also opportunistic as well.”
“If I can make top five I’d be very happy with the result to be honest, I think realistically looking at the names on paper. To finish in front of Primoz or Remco, if they have no problems, I think is incredibly difficult so top 5 would be something that I would be super happy with," Haig concluded.
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