Dutchman will have chances at week-long races before supporting Froome at the Tour
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Wout Poels at the summit of the Madone(Image credit: Pete Goding.)
Chris Froome and Wout Poels finish stage 19 after Froome crashed(Image credit: Courtesy of Polartec-Kometa)
Wout Poels secures Team Sky first-ever Monument victory at Liege-Bastogne-Liege(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Pre-ride coffees for Wout Poels and Jon Dibben at the house(Image credit: Pete Goding.)
Wout Poels drives the pace during stage 5 at the Criterium du Dauphine(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
With Chris Froome locking out Team Sky’s Tour de France leadership for the foreseeable future, opportunities to head up the team at a Grand Tour are hard to come by and Wout Poels is going to have to wait another year for his.
After possibly his best season to date, Poels cited his intentions to aim for the general classification at the Giro d’Italia towards the end of last year. However, he will not be heading to the Italian race this year, with Mikel Landa and Geraint Thomas set to co-lead, and will instead be back to support Froome at the Tour.
“If I can show myself in those races then they’ll have a little more confidence that I can lead a Grand Tour. This is the first step and then the second step could be a Grand Tour.”
“It’s a bit of a mental thing, especially if you go with Chris to the Tour. You have three weeks really on the limit. It’s quite stressful and then they say at the end of the Tour that you can go to the Vuelta, you’re not really jumping [saying] ‘yay, again three weeks on the limit’,” explained Poels.
The Ardennes and the Tour de France
The crux of Poels’ season will be the Tour de France where the team is looking for their fifth overall title and Froome is targeting his fourth.
Poels has become an indispensable part of Froome’s support network since joining Team Sky in 2015, and he is more often than not the last man standing in the mountains. His role may be even more pronounced this season with the Tour organisers designing a very different route.
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Born in Ireland to a cycling family and later moved to the Isle of Man, so there was no surprise when I got into the sport. Studied sports journalism at university before going on to do a Masters in sports broadcast. After university I spent three months interning at Eurosport, where I covered the Tour de France. In 2012 I started at Procycling Magazine, before becoming the deputy editor of Procycling Week. I then joined Cyclingnews, in December 2013.
