In an period of UCI promotion/relegation cycles and groups creating calendars round factors scoring, EF Training-EasyPost CEO Jonathan Vaughters desires to maintain his group from falling into the “anticlimactic and boring” approach of racing he believes it breeds.
Vaughters’ EF Training programme have constructed up a fame of racing aggressively, chasing stage wins and sometimes concentrating on jerseys exterior of the leaders at massive races. In going all out for such, they’ve typically missed on potential prime 10 finishes on GC or an opportunity to attain extra UCI factors.
Whereas, in fact, remaining in biking’s prime division – the UCI WorldTour – stays an important ambition, Vaughters is not keen to surrender on persevering with to try for large wins instead of giving into the “absurd” UCI factors system.
“Speaking about UCI factors, I by no means wish to see this group have one man end fourth, one man eleventh and one other in nineteenth simply so we get a bunch of factors. To me, that is simply so anticlimactic and boring and actually form of a cynical approach of racing,” Vaughters advised Cyclingnews earlier than talking on stage at Rouleur Reside.
“What I wish to see is that all the group is behind somebody, or a plan to get somebody to win the race. Even when the chances are completely towards this, and even when it fully explodes all the group and we get zero UCI factors as a result of we blew ourselves to bits and our greatest rider was 84th place, that is OK.
“Not less than we went in with a plan to win and tried to execute that. It did not work out for no matter cause, however we did every little thing we might.”
Additionally, with a price range smaller than that of the ‘tremendous groups’ similar to UAE Workforce Emirates and Visma-Lease a Bike, and a much less stacked all-around roster, Vaughters meticulously plans his group’s objectives to make sure they are often winners indirectly.
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“The best way we’re setting up this group and the aims that we’ve got, are going to be totally different than a group like UAE. However from the metrics that we wished to attain, for example, profitable the polka-dot jersey within the Tour de France,” mentioned Vaughters.
“That is been a long-term dream goal of ours however I feel it symbolizes how we give attention to doing issues for our group. Do we’ve got a sprinter? No. Do we’ve got any individual who’s actually able to difficult to win the Tour de France on GC? No. We did not have that both. So you then go into the race and say ‘What can we obtain?’
“What I actually attempt to keep away from with this group is saying, ‘OK, we’re gonna go in and gonna get sixth on GC’. Sixth place on GC for almost all of sponsors, monetary backers and followers, it’s very meaningless.”
As an alternative, EF opted for concentrating on the polka-dot jersey with Richard Carapaz on the Tour, a jersey they’d occupied with Neilson Powless and Magnus Cort in recent times however not truly received. Carapaz introduced house an enormous stage win from the break however additionally the jersey they initially set their sights on in a massively profitable Tour marketing campaign.
For Vaughters, it is all about chasing these lifelike ambitions but in addition staying true to the group’s ideology. There isn’t any room for optimised UCI factors chasing for the boys in pink.
“It is consultant of the best way we did all the season, we took aside every race and checked out what can we do that’s impactful, attention-grabbing, enjoyable and fascinating – let’s go after that. Let’s not fear about, for example, UCI factors,” mentioned the group boss.
“I could not care much less. I feel it is absurd, the entire rating system, and designed by folks that do not actually know what they’re doing. I do not care what we’re ranked, simply so long as we’re not ranked nineteenth, proper?
“However what I do care about is doing issues like profitable the polka-dot jersey on the Tour de France, profitable a stage on the Tour de France, profitable a stage within the Giro d’Italia, that is stuff that makes the group totally different.”
Avoiding relegation after 2022 scare
EF Training-EasyPost completed two spots from relegation after preventing onerous throughout the 2020-2022 cycle, which noticed Lotto Dstny and Israel-Premier Tech go down from the WorldTour. It isn’t a course of Vaughters is hoping to must redo. Vaughters criticised the system then too.
“In that final relegation cycle, we needed to spend the second half of that 12 months racing in a really cynical approach and simply accumulating factors. And man did that flip me off,” continued Vaughters. “It simply felt flawed. I imply, it simply felt like we weren’t even there to win. We’re simply there to grift off of the opposite groups and end fourth and eighth.”
With the boys’s group sitting safely in twelfth out of the 18 spots that can keep up in 2026, it does not look seemingly that they should fear about it, nonetheless, permitting Vaughters to use his prime riders at their swashbuckling finest within the coming season.
“I by no means wish to see us get into that place once more as a result of I prefer to race all-or-nothing. And the riders that we’ve got, similar to Ben Healy or Richard Carapaz, are guys that additionally prefer to race all-or-nothing,” he mentioned.
Carapaz shall be EF’s important chief once more in 2025 and is ready to experience two Grand Excursions, concentrating on GC at one and phases on the different simply as he did this previous season. The previous Giro d’Italia winner is among the many prime climbers on the earth, nonetheless, is not the best to maintain centered regardless of his skills.
“Richard is essentially the most gifted rider I’ve ever labored with. He is unbelievably gifted however he is a little bit of a wild horse. I might say he is something however the very programmed, very centered, studious form of athlete that we’re seeing competing on the prime degree proper now – the very mechanical and robotic,” mentioned Vaughters of his GC star.
“He is the alternative of Jonas Vingegaard, somebody who’s watching his eating regimen and watching what he is doing coaching three hundred and sixty five days a 12 months. Richard comes as much as massive emotional highs and actually performs when he is on that emotional excessive. After which when he isn’t, he positively just isn’t as mechanical and robotic and centered, and he form of simply lives his life, proper?
“So with him, you must notice that that whereas typically it is irritating that his full, true potential and expertise does not at all times come out, however that that is simply who he’s as an individual, and you have to work round it and determine, you understand how to carry one of the best of him out. He is obtained to need it first, I am unable to pressure him.”
Vaughters is not certain but if it will be the Giro and Tour, or Tour and Vuelta, he takes on, nonetheless, what is definite is how a lot the Ecuadorian will characterise the racing. He not often begins a Grand Tour with out leaving his mark on it one way or the other.
Topping fourth on the Vuelta, a stage win on the Tour and the polka-dot jersey to go together with it will not be straightforward, however at 31, Carapaz continues to be among the many climbing elite of the peloton. With such an enormous haul of factors already racked up within the two years of the present relegation cycle, they’ll apply their give attention to staying true to aggressive, thrilling racing too.
