Richard Carapaz (Team Ineos) will return to action at the Vuelta a Burgos on July 28 and then ride the Tour de Pologne and Tirreno-Adriatico as he builds towards the defence of his Giro d’Italia title in October.
The Ecuadorian outlined his programme to the EFE news agency from his home province of Carchi, where he is currently training before returning to Europe in July ahead of the resumption of the season.
Carapaz joined Team Ineos from Movistar ahead of the 2020 season and raced just once – at the Tour Colombia – for his new team before the coronavirus pandemic interrupted the season in March.
“It's like starting all over again, we're doing a period of base training, quite a few hours and with a view to the alternative calendar that has been proposed for us,” Carapaz told EFE. “The big objective is to do the Giro d'Italia and arrive in the best condition to try to do what I've been doing in recent years.”
Carapaz was an assured winner of the 2019 Giro d'Italia, beating Vincenzo Nibali and Primoz Roglic to the maglia rosa after claiming stage victories in Frascati and Courmayeur. He placed fourth overall in the 2018 Giro, winning a stage at Montevergine di Mercogliano.
The 27-year-old was signed to lead the Ineos team at the Giro and despite the revisions to the 2020 calendar, the corsa rosa remains the centrepiece of his season.
Carapaz will not be part of the Ineos team for the Tour de France, where the past three winners of the race – Egan Bernal, Geraint Thomas and Chris Froome – will all be in the eight-man selection.
Carapaz will instead build for the Giro by riding the Vuelta a Burgos (July 28-August 1), Tour de Pologne (August 5-9) and Tirreno-Adriatico (September 7-14). The Giro is scheduled to take place from October 3-25, and Carapaz’s rivals in Italy will include Nibali, Remco Evenepoel and Jakob Fulgsang.
“In the end, it’s a different year to the one we’re used to,” Carapaz said.
“The calendar is going to be compressed into just three months and there are going to be a lot of surprises. These were new and different moments for me, because we’ve never spent so many days training at home.”
