For US racer Will Barta in the Giro d’Italia this year, just like in 2023, the main priority is once again working for his Movistar teammate and GC contender, Einer Rubio. But when a time trial like Saturday’s 31.2-kilometre race against the clock begins to loom on the horizon, it’s never lacking in interest for the North American.
A former runner-up in the time trial at the 2023 US National Championships and a narrowly defeated second in the Vuelta a España’s third week TT in 2020, as Barta told Cyclingnews on Thursday in the Giro d’Italia, the team is currently focussed on keeping Rubio, ninth overall, as high on GC as possible.
However, as he also put it about Saturday’s rolling time trial from Castiglione delle Stiviere to Desenzano del Garda, “If I have the chance, I’ll go full gas.”
Barta would normally have the Giro d’Italia opening TT as a reference point to gauge his effort on Saturday. But a crash the day before the 40.6-kilometre effort between Foligno and Perugia meant that up to a certain point, he’ll be going in the stage 14 TT blind.
On top of that, he said, riding such hefty distances in time trials as those on offer in the Giro this year is increasingly rare in modern-day racing, making it even more of an unknown quantity.
“The crash meant there were not too many lessons to learn from the first time trial; it was just a bad day,” Barta, who nonetheless still managed to place a respectable 21st on the stage 7 results sheet, 2:56 down on Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) said.
“But the second time trial is a bit more rolling in its first section so that part does favour me a little bit more than the first part of the last TT.
"Plus, there’s no late climb, either. So we’ll see what we can do on Saturday.”
As for whether he regarded that kind of medium-distance TT as an ideal length for him, Barta said, “Honestly, I don’t really know. We don’t do that many time trials that kind of length so 30, 40ks - sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. So can’t really tell you.”
Looking at the GC field in general, Barta says he seriously doubts that Pogačar will create such significant differences as he did in the opening race against the clock in the Giro d'Italia.
"I don’t think it’ll be like the last one because he made so much difference on the final climb. Maybe he’ll pace it differently, but you could see in the splits that everybody was a lot closer and then, in the last section, Tadej went incredibly fast. This time around, there’s just not that opportunity for him.”
While Barta’s left leg was “a bit beat up” from the crash on stage 6, he says he’s now doing better after a couple of rough days. But for Movistar globally, in this year's Giro the team are feeling very upbeat, Barta says.
First and foremost, Pelayo Sanchez fended off Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-QuickStep) for Spain’s first Giro stage win in five years, while Einer Rubio remains in ninth place on GC and if last year’s victory at Crans Montana is anything to go by, he should go from strength to strength in the upcoming mountain stages.
“We’re doing the sprints with Fernando [Gaviria] and hoping for a good GC with Einer so my main goal is helping out now,” Barta repeated. “Ideally, we’d like to see Einer finish in the top five overall.”
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