"The aim is to have a few riders from the team in the day's breakaway" - Ben Healy eyes first Grand Tour stage win

One of the breakout stars from this year's Spring Classics, EF Education-EasyPost's Ben Healy has been active in the early stages of the Giro d'Italia without successfully getting into a break, something he hopes will change on stage 8.

"Hopefully it will be a good day for us," the 22-year-old Irishman revealed in a pre-stage interview prior to the action getting underway, revealing that the EF Education-EasyPost set-up had marked out stage 8 as a potential day for success. “As a team, we focused on this stage."

“The aim is to have a few riders from the team in the day's breakaway. Hopefully it will be a good day for us that way," he continues. Healy has never ridden the day's big climb before but he has heard stories about it from fellow riders so the Irishman feels he has an understanding of what to expect.

“They only told me that Alexey Lutsenko crashed in that stage, but still won,” the Irishman laughed, referring to a stage of the 2019 edition of Tirreno-Adriatico. “I also know that there are some tough and steep climbs in the near the finish.”