At the heart of that strategy was an intent to turn the
stage into a war of attrition, isolating race leader Isaac Del Toro and forcing
him to crack without team support.
“Our plan was to really destroy the race. We wanted to make
it a man-to-man fight, because we saw the strategy of UAE on Friday. Then they
kept two men with Del Toro, who blocked the course. Towards Sestriere you
needed teammates, so we wanted to isolate Del Toro as quickly as possible, by
making everyone go completely red from the bottom. Then it was 17 kilometers to
the top, man-to-man.”
That all-out attack came at a cost, with EF riders pushing
to their limits from the base of the Finestre. Gárate explained they had
specific intentions for how to control the break and deploy their riders.
Stage 20 will go down in the history books
“We didn't want anyone in the breakaway and would have liked
to keep it within seven minutes. That way, not many riders would have been able
to join us on the Finestre. Unfortunately, we went off the road on a descent
and we only wanted to use Kasper Asgreen to control, so that we could save the
rest of the team for the action uphill.”
“We didn't have the pink jersey, so chasing with more than
one man wouldn't have made sense. It was also good for us to have Van Aert with
us at the front, right?”
As for the critical moment, when Simon Yates made his move
and ultimately won the Giro, Gárate revealed that Carapaz was instructed not to
follow, in order to test Del Toro’s nerve and endurance.
“Richard would normally have gone with Yates, and he would
have also benefited from Wout. But he had tried three times and had not let go
of Del Toro, so we told him to let Yates go. He was 1.20 minutes behind Del
Toro, who had no teammate in front. So that was how we wanted to put pressure
on Del Toro. But it didn't work, because he didn't ride.”
What followed clearly left the EF camp perplexed,
particularly Del Toro’s passive response to the crisis.
“How many times in your journalistic career have you seen a
pink jersey wearer who hasn't ridden the entire stage and then sprints for
ninth place in the results?” Gárate asked pointedly.
The team had still hoped to strike again on the final climb
to Sestriere, but their hopes faded when UAE’s key domestiques managed to stay
close and Del Toro never committed to a chase.
“I only let Richard ride three kilometers in front and those
were the last kilometers of the Finestre, because I didn't want to let Brandon
McNulty and Rafal Majka, teammates of Del Toro, return,” Gárate explained. “I
wanted to put even more pressure on Del Toro towards the valley, so that he
couldn't hesitate on the way to Sestriere and had to ride. And then we could
have dropped him on the final climb, although from the Finestre it had always
been for second place. It's good like this.”