Can anyone push Pogacar for the pink jersey? Thomas, perhaps?

There’s no skirting around the issue: one rider – and one rider alone – is expected to win the 107th edition of the Giro d’Italia, and it’s not the man who came within a whisker of taking the famous maglia rosa home last year.

Welsh veteran Geraint Thomas may be back to try and win the jersey so cruelly torn from his shoulders on the final hurdle by Primoz Roglic last year. But with debutant Tadej Pogacar in such indomitable form, another second place may be the best Thomas can realistically aim for in 2024.

And yet, one crash or bout of illness could dramatically turn this Giro on its head. What should be, on paper, a complete cake walk could turn into the most open race in recent history with all number of riders capable of pulling off a surprise. With that in mind, we can expect a cluster of riders pushing hard for that second place on the podium in the hope of a miracle.

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Tadej Pogacar’s results from 10 race days prior to his first ever appearance at the Giro d’Italia looks like a binary code devoid of zeros – and it’s for this reason that, barring disaster, illness or a crash, nothing will come between the 25-year-old and a maiden maglia rosa on the streets of Rome on Sunday 26th May.

None of the remaining riders in the so-called Big Four opted to include the Giro in their season programme and, in any case, Jonas Vingegaard, Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel all crashed out of Itzulia Basque Country last month, jeopardising their participation in the Tour de France later this July.

Wout van Aert may have provided some competition for Pogacar, but the Belgian all-rounder was himself forced to pull out of his own first appearance in the Giro after a heavy crash in the cobbled classics. That said, even a fully fit Van Aert would have struggled against a GC giant like Pogacar.

As things stand, Pogacar could win five or six stages without ever hitting top gear – all while keeping an eye on the yellow jersey in July for what could be the second half of a rare Grand Tour double. With a strong UAE Team Emirates unit around him, Pogacar will be unbeatable if all goes to plan. But as cycling fans, we all know that things don’t always go fully to plan – except this year’s Strade Bianche, the Volta a Catalunya and Liege-Bastogne-Liege for Pogacar, that is.

The 26-second lead Geraint Thomas held coming into the decisive time trial up Monte Lussari in Stage 20 of last year’s Giro evaporated into a 14-second deficit by the time his big rival Primoz Roglic had remounted his bike after a heart-in-mouth mechanical and laid his demons to rest on the climb.

Granted, Thomas perhaps only found himself in such a position – on the cusp of a Giro victory – after the hot favourite Remco Evenepoel pulled out because of Covid just moments after winning the second time trial and moving into the race lead.

But Thomas’ decision to return to the Giro 12 months on will have a lot to do with his belief that he has unfinished business in Italy. Like Pogacar, the 37-year-old also plans to ride the Tour. The Ineos Grenadier leader, however, will know full well that his chances at finishing above the Slovenian in either race are very slim – slimmer, perhaps, than his old team-mate Chris Froome winning a fifth Tour title before retiring.

Given what happened to Evenepoel last year, though, Thomas will ride in the knowledge that a lot can happen over the three weeks of a Grand Tour. It remains to be seen if the Welsh veteran can muster up the form that saw him push Roglic all the way last time round. So far this season, Thomas has come 65th, 27th and 13th in his three stage races, and was 70 places behind Pogacar over the Tuscan dirt roads of Strade Bianche.

“He shouldn’t even be racing.” That was Geraint Thomas’s assertion when discussing Nairo Quintana as a possible contender for this year’s Giro on his podcast. To which his team-mate, compatriot and fellow podcaster Luke Rowe added, with trademark tongue-in-cheek, “Little f****** rat”.

Quintana today is a far cry from the Quintana who romped to two stage wins en route to securing the pink jersey, his 51st and last pro win coming in February 2022 and his last Grand Tour podium coming at his second Giro in 2017.

No one is expecting much from a rider whose last Grand Tour stage win came almost five years ago in the Vuelta. But if he can rediscover the form that saw him come runner-up on the Col du Granon in Stage 11 of the 2022 Tour, then perhaps Quintana will have a small role to play in Italy this May.

If Pogacar wins and Thomas finishes runner-up for the second successive year, that leaves the last spot on the podium up for grabs. A solid start to his time at Bora-Hansgrohe saw Dani Martinez win two stages while pushing Remco Evenepoel all the way in the Volta ao Algarve. Tirreno-Adriatico proved a different story, and the 27-year-old all-rounder was forced out after six stages and has yet to feature since.

If Martinez may be a punt for that third place, then Australia’s Ben O’Connor looks like less of a long-shot. Not only have Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale been in rip-roaring form all season since they ditched the brown shorts in favour of their new slick colour scheme, but also the 28-year-old O’Connor has shown flashes of his best form – finishing runner-up in both the UAE Tour and Tour of the Alps either side of fifth place at Tirreno.

O’Connor should thrive as one of the bigger fish in a pool that only includes one shark from Slovenia and many minnows. Expect him to shine in Italy even if the sun doesn’t.

Things have changed since Romain Bardet (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL) was pushing for Grand Tour podiums, since Michael Woods (Israel-Premier Tech) was your go-to Canadian to make the top 10, since Domenico Pozzovivo (VF Group-Bardiani CSF-Faizane) picked up his only ever Giro stage win, and since Damiano Caruso (Bahrain Victorious) came runner-up in the first post-Covid Giro.

With a combined average age of almost 37, none of this quartet is exactly a spring chicken but all still have a lot to offer. Caruso took a brace of wins at last year’s Tour of Sicily; Woods triumphed on the Puy de Dome last July; and Bardet recently rolled back the years with a stirring second-place in Liege-Bastogne-Liege – his best ever result in a Monument.

It’s inconceivable that any of these four veterans will win this Giro even if Pogacar comes a cropper; it’s unlikely that they will even make the top five. But they’re all capable of a stage win and a push for the top 10. There’s certainly life in these old dogs yet.

Dutch climber Wout Poels should have been on this list but he was pulled by his Bahrain Victorious team at the eleventh hour “to prepare for other important races”. It seems an odd decision given the 36-year-old picked up stage wins in both the Tour and Vuelta last year and, after a decent showing in the Tour of the Alps, would have had been a good shout to complete the grand slam in Italy

At the other end of the spectrum, we have the unpronounceable Cian Uijtdebroeks (Visma-Lease a Bike) and his fellow Lowlander, Thymen Arensman (Ineos Grenadiers). Belgian 21-year-old Uijtdebroeks controversially moved to Visma off the back of a promising eighth place in the Vuelta, his maiden Grand Tour, breaking his contract with Bora amid allegations of bullying.

Uijtdebroeks has enjoyed a solid if unspectacular start to his time at Visma, but with both Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert injured, and Primoz Roglic going the opposite way to Bora, he now has a chance to spearhead the team’s push for pink. While he’s got staying power and bouncebackability in the mountains, Uijtdebroeks lacks a killer instinct. But a top five finish will be progress for a rider with a big future ahead of him.

Three years his senior, Dutchman Arensman won two stages in the Vuelta in 2022 and has finished sixth in that race as well as last year’s Giro. The 24-year-old is a strong climber and team player, but should team leader Thomas falter, Arensman is more than capable of picking up the slack for Ineos. A maiden top five finish is a real possibility – with or without the Welshman.

Another young rider to throw into the mix is Australia’s Luke Plapp (Jayco-AlUla), who only rode one Grand Tour during his apprenticeship at Ineos Grenadiers. A lot has happened in the career of the 23-year-old since he came 95th in La Vuelta in 2022 – not least his Australian national championships double this January and a sixth place (four places better than Primoz Roglic, no less) in Paris-Nice.

Ireland’s Eddie Dunbar (see below) may be Jayco’s team leader, but Plapp will look to prove his worth as a Grand Tour rider this May.

The Angliru exploits of Hugh Carthy (EF Education-EasyPost) may seem like an eternity away now, but although the 29-year-old has not since matched his third place in the Vuelta, he has twice cracked the top 10 of the Giro, so we can expect a similar target for Carthy this May. Form has been lacking this year and last, but he’s an experienced Grand Tour rider now with a fair amount of savoir faire.

Let’s go from A to Z, drifting across borders from the Angliru to the Zoncolan, where Lorenzo Fortunato (Astana-Qazaqstan) picked up a memorable win on his Giro debut back in 2021. The Italian finished a career best 16th the following year and was 21st last year, both for EOLO-Kometa. Now at Astana, he will look to take things up a few notches. The form is middling, but this will be his main target of the season.

A late addition to Astana’s roster will ease the pressure on Fortunato as the experienced Kazakh jack-of-all-trades Alexey Lutsenko steps up for his first Giro appearance in six years. The 31-year-old recently pulled out of the opening stage of the Tour of Romandie with sickness, but it seems like Astana wish to capitalise on his good form and put him on the bus to Venaria Reale. Winner of the Giro d’Abruzzo, Lutsenko will aim to stealth himself into the top five and will almost certainly improve on his 87th in 2018 given his two top 10s in recent editions of the Tour.

Rather than heading south to match his geographical trajectory, the career of Eddie Dunbar instantly went on the rise when he joined Jayco-AlUla from Ineos Grenadiers in 2023, as encapsulated by his stellar seventh place in last year’s Giro. The 27-year-old Irish climber was unable to build on his progress in the Vuelta owing to an early crash that ruled him out in the opening week.

Dunbar has struggled for results since and, still without a WorldTour win, has a point to prove. It’s not exactly make-or-break for a rider who was never really let off the leash at Ineos. But he will want to put in the kind of performances that will have his former employers regret showing him the door, rather than gleeful at having turned the handle.

Meanwhile, over at Ineos, Norway’s Tobias Foss will hope to continue his solid start following his switch from Visma-Lease a Bike. The 26-year-old won the opening stage of the Tour of the Alps last month and he has a decent record in the Giro, the only Grand Tour he has ridden to date (in three appearances, his best finish was ninth in 2021). Sidelined from all Grand Tours in his last year at Jumbo-Visma, Foss will be itching to show his worth in Italy.

Czech climber Jan Hirt is the closest thing an Evenepoel- and Landa-less Soudal-QuickStep have by means of a GC rider. Sixth two years ago, the 33-year-old was runner-up in the Tour of Oman in February so he could well ride stealthily to a similar position on the long, winding road to Rome.

While team-mate and compatriot Quintana will cop the attention, Colombia’s Einer Rubio (Movistar) will look to improve on his 11th place in last year’s race, when he famously beat Frenchman Thibaut Pinot in the head and on the road to Crans Montana for a maiden Grand Tour stage win.

It would be remiss not to mention the rider who took the overall blue jersey at the Tour of the Alps – a rider who, lest we forget, enjoyed a 10-day stint in pink during his debut Giro back in 2022. Now that Juan Pedro Lopez (Lidl-Trek) finally has a WorldTour win to his name, the 26-year-old Spaniard will return to the Giro with the belief that he can improve on his 10th place two years ago.

With Italy’s Giulio Ciccone ruled out of his home race, Lidl-Trek will look to Lopez as their answer to mounting a GC challenge and competing for wins over the mountainous terrain. Lopez could thrive with his outsider status – although anything better than scraping the top 10 would be highly unlikely.

Ciccone’s absence and Caruso’s advanced age means the home nation don’t really have a feasible GC man. Another rank outsider to throw into the minestrone is Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious), who is in the process of rebuilding his career following that bizarre – and quite lamentable – episode involving his shooting of a cat last year. Yet to ride the Giro, 22-year-old Tiberi finished 18th in last year’s Vuelta and recently came third in the Tour of the Alps.

***** Tadej Pogacar
**** N/A
*** Geraint Thomas, Ben O’Connor
** Dani Martinez, Hugh Carthy, Thymen Arensman, Cian Uijtdebroeks
* Wout Poels, Nairo Quintana, Roman Bardet, Eddie Dunbar, Michael Woods, Damiano Caruso, Juan Pedro Lopez, Alexey Lutsenko