Ineos Grenadiers have announced their squad for the upcoming Belgian semi-Classic Brabantse Pijl on Wednesday April 14.
The British team have brought a mixture of climbers, Ardennes and cobbled Classic riders, with 2019 Giro d'Italia champion Richard Carapaz likely co-leading the team.
Carapaz has shown that he has solid form coming out of the Volta a Catalunya and Tour of the Basque Country in the last couple of weeks but missed out on GC in both races due to crashes. The Ecuadorian isn't the only strong name in the team, however.
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British talent, Tom Pidcock, continues his rather long schedule before he heads into his first Ardennes Classics campaign next week. Pidcock has looked relatively solid during the cobbled Classics but never quite managed the big result with his best performance a third place at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne.
One rider who will be hoping he is getting close to his top form in time for the upcoming Ardennes races is Irishman Eddie Dunbar who often is strong on these sort of races. The 24-year-old has a good kick but would likely be going for an early move.
The rest of the team is made up of solid workhorses: veterans Michał Gołaś and Cameron Wurf will be doing the early work for their leaders alongside Leonardo Basso, while super-domestique Luke Rowe will have the role of guiding his leaders into the right place at the right time.
The 2021 edition of Brabantse Pijl starts in the town of Leuven, which will be holding this year's World Championships, before taking 201.7km of sharp climbs and cobbled sectors.
Ineos Grenadiers will have it tough though as some huge names of the sport are down to race including Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma), Milan-San Remo winner Jasper Stuyvan (Trek-Segafredo), and Greg Van Avermaet (Ag2r Citroën Team) as they prepare for the Ardennes.
Other riders who are coming into the race with good form are Deceuninck - Quick-Step duo of Mikkel Honoré and Rémi Cavagna, as well as Matteo Trentin (UAE Team Emirates), Michael Matthews (BikeExchange), and Sep Vanmarke (Israel Start-Up Nation).
Former winners Sonny Colbrelli (Bahrain-Victorious) and Petr Vakoč (Alpecin-Fenix) are both riding as well as last year's third place, Benoît Cosnefroy (Ag2r Citroën Team) who finished behind Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck - Quick-Step) and Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Fenix), both of whom are not riding.
Ineos Grenadiers squad for Brabantse Pijl 2021
Tom Pidcock
Richard Carapaz
Eddie Dunbar
Michał Gołaś
Leonardo Basso
Luke Rowe
Cameron Wurf
Tim Bonville-Ginn is one of Cycling Weekly's content writers for the web team responsible for writing stories on racing, tech, updating evergreen pages as well as the weekly email newsletter.
Bonville-Ginn started working in cycling journalism while still at school and university for a voluntary site based on Twitter before also doing slots for Eurosport's online web team and has been on location at the Tour de Yorkshire, Tour of Britain, UCI World Championships and various track events. He then joined the Cycling Weekly team in late February of 2020.
When not writing stories for the site, Bonville-Ginn doesn't really switch off his cycling side as he watches every race that is televised as well as being a rider himself and a regular user of the game Pro Cycling Manager.
He rides a Specialized Tarmac SL4 when out on his local roads back in West Yorkshire as well as in northern Hampshire with the hills and mountains being his preferred terrain.
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