Jonathan Vaughters clear on his goals for EF Education-EasyPost: "Become one of the best teams in the world"

With the 2024 road season now well underway in Australia at the Tour Down Under, EF Education-EasyPost boss Jonathan Vaughters has opened up on what he expects from his team this year.

“This is the first year that we’ve been able to build on what we started in 2019," says the 50-year-old American in conversation with GCN. "That year when we won Flanders and stages in all three Grand Tours. At that point, the mission was to become one of the best teams in the world but then COVID hit and we had to pull back all that ambition."

Having had a quieter couple of years, Vaughters believes the team are now finally, back in a place that they can dream of competing with the very best the peloton has to offer. "We trod water for a bit but were able to relaunch those ambitions with the signing of Richard Carapaz in 2022," he continues. "The ambition for 2024 is to go one step further and reinforce everything so that we’re back on the 2019 path. So the aim again is to become one of the best teams in the world.”

Having added the likes of Rui Costa, Archie Ryan and Markel Beloki among others, Vaughters also believes their transfer business is among the best in the sport. “We’re starting to recruit in a much more methodical and scientific way and we’re starting to support the riders in a much more focussed and creative way,” Vaughters says. “We’re a lot more robust. The talent that we’ve recruited is truly world-class and top-notch. It’ll take some time to develop but all the components are there. Initially, in the first couple of years, we’ll be inconsistent because of the new systems and the young riders but we’ll win unexpectedly and underperform unexpectedly. We’ll bounce around but that should straighten out.”

“For the Ardennes, we have a super ambitious Ben Healy but we’ve got a broadly ambitious team with Richard, Neilson Powless and multiple options. There are a lot of ways we can win in the Ardennes. For the Giro, we’ll go in looking for stage wins. We were thinking about a GC focus with Ben but his mentality is that of a winner, and he wants to play the breakaway game more than play the GC game,” Vaughters continues.

"We’re not a team that’s going to chase around eighth place at the Tour. That’s not our ambition. Ultimately our goal in 2024 is to win races, not win points," he concludes. “If that’s the case, with Vinegaard, Pogačar, Roglič and Remco all there and we do have to change our ambition, then I think that will be well apparent before the Tour starts, whether we can have the ambition of chasing the podium or if that’s a bit out of reach, but either way, Richard has proven he can win GC and stages. It’s not like we have to decide that now. He just needs to get himself back into his 2021 condition. At that point, we can start making decisions. First, he needs to get back to that physical point.”