The stage to Megeve was a breakaway kind of a day and Neilson Powless was curious to see if the Tour de France peloton thought he was still a breakaway kind of a rider.
Nothing doing. The American’s impressive riding in this year’s Tour de France has made him a marked man. When the decisive break was beginning to take shape on stage 10 to Megève, Powless made a couple of attempts to jump aboard but his presence was immediately clocked by the teams with an interest in the general classification.
Powless was just over half a minute off a podium place when the stage began, and although he would drop two places to 11th place overall by day’s end, he remains within 1:55 of Tadej Pogačar’s yellow jersey.
As the Tour enters the high Alps, the EF Education-EasyPost rider has little option but to continue targeting a place in the upper reaches of the overall standings. His aptitude in the mountains, not to mention his fourth-place finish at the Tour de Suisse, should only encourage him in that endeavour.
“For now, that’s got to be the goal for myself,” Powless said when he reached his EF Education First-EasyPost bus after the finish.
“I was poking around in the breakaway today and they weren’t letting me go. I guess that answered my question about whether they’d let me slip up the road.”
In the opening week of this Tour, Powless twice came within touching distance of the maillot jaune. He spent an afternoon in the break on the cobbles on stage 5 to Arenberg but fell 13 seconds shy of divesting Wout van Aert of yellow. A day later in Longwy, Powless looked set to inherit the lead when Van Aert was dropped in the finale only for Tadej Pogačar to leapfrog him thanks to the stage winner’s time bonus.
On Wednesday’s stage over the Col du Galibier and Col du Granon, Powless knows that he will not be granted any latitude to get up the road early on. Instead, he will look to hang tough in the yellow jersey group for as long as possible and then reassess the lie of the land once the Tour leaves the Alps.
“For now, it’s pretty straightforward: just hanging around with the GC riders as best I can,” Powless said.
“If I’m performing well and with the GC group, then that’s perfect, and I’ll keep doing that. But if I end up losing time, maybe I’ll lose enough to be able to go in the breakaway.”
Even though Powless’ card was heavily marked, his EF Education-EasyPost team still placed two riders in the break of the day, with Alberto Bettiol alone at the head of the race when the stage was neutralised due to a peaceful protest by climate change activists from the ‘Dernière Renovation’ group.
The Italian was recaptured on the final climb towards Megève, but his riding helped teammate Magnus Cort emerge victorious from the reduced group sprint at the finish.
“I think it just takes some pressure off the team as a whole,” said Powless on the stage win.
“You’ve got to get your first one before you can get some real momentum going. Hopefully this opens the door for more.”
EF Education First-EasyPost’s dearth of early-season results left the team at risk of relegation from the WorldTour at the end of this year, but Powless’ strong showing at the Tour de Suisse has been followed by an all-action opening to the Tour, with the American and Cort among the chief animators of the race’s first week.
“Every day we set out with a plan, and we pretty much nailed our plans in almost every stage so far,” Powless said.
“The win hadn’t come yet but we were just trying to be faithful that it would work out for us in the end if we kept executing, and today it finally came together for us, so happy days.
“This hopefully means the start of an upward trend for our team, some upward momentum. Magnus has been pretty incredible on the Tour so far, putting on a show for the fans and representing our team really well, and I’m so happy he was able to show his stuff at the finish too.”
