Ben Healy has been biding his time. Now, this does not come naturally to him, but the wait is almost over, and he’s poised and ready to pounce at the Tour de France.
Healy was one of the stars of last year’s Tour, lighting up stage after stage with an irrepressible barrage of attacks that netted him a stage victory and plenty of new fans besides.
But the Irishman has been relatively anonymous so far in the current Tour, which seems bizarre given the all-action impact he had on the race 12 months ago.
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There is a good reason for all of this, and it’s not because of any lack of form related to his slightly disrupted season. Rather, a heatwave has engulfed the race since the opening weekend in Barcelona. The high temperatures have stifled one of the peloton’s most energetic characters.
“The heat is my Achilles heel really,” Healy tells Cyclingnews.
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“When I have big swings in performance, it’s always because of the heat. I do everything I can, you know, but, yeah, just some of us aren’t built for it.”
The temperatures have barely dropped below the mid-30s since the Grand Départ, leaving Healy unable to put together his characteristic style of repeated accelerations.
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“You just don’t recover,” he explains. “Every effort, you don’t recover from it. I’ve ridden in the heat enough now to know when I’m on the limit, and I just can’t do my attacking style like I would normally, because if I keep attacking, I’m not recovering as fast in the heat, and that’s what I’m good at.
“I haven’t had much of a choice. When I’ve been wanting to go for it, it’s been too hot, and you have to listen to your body. If you’re missing even a per cent or two, it really catches up with you.”
Healy, named ‘the best breakaway rider in the world’ by his boss at EF Education-EasyPost, Jonathan Vaughters, has infiltrated one breakaway at this Tour, being one of 30 men to go clear on stage 10 through the Massif Central.
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However, he played a minor role as his EF teammate Richard Carapaz attacked later for the stage win. But that move came to nothing as Tadej Pogačar and his UAE Team Emirates-XRG men turned a potential breakaway day into another GC showdown, which has been very much a theme of this Tour.
“When I look at the stages and who’s won them, I don’t think there’s been too many opportunities lost,” says Healy, who sees a blessing in disguise in the fact he hasn’t burned as many matches as he otherwise might.
“It’s not been too hard of a ride for me in the gruppetto,” he adds, explaining that the heat is not having any sort of accumulative fatiguing effect on him.
“Going into the rest day this year was probably the freshest I’ve ever felt on a rest day in a Grand Tour, so I haven’t done too much damage to the body, and hopefully that’ll pay dividends in the second half of the race.”
Healy might not have much longer to wait, and the stars might just be aligning perfectly. Temperatures are predicted to finally drop from tomorrow, which coincides with the perfect terrain for a rider like Healy – two medium mountain days in the Vosges and a summit finish at Plateau de Solaison in the Alps.
“I’m really looking forward to this weekend ahead. Temperatures are dropping, and as soon as it cools down, I really feel like the body’s there,” he says.
“I can really feel that I’m ready to race.”
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