B.C.’s Riley Pickrell has strategies for the sprints in his Giro d’Italia debut

The day before Riley Pickrell would make his debut at the start of the Giro d’Italia, the young rider reflected on his route to his first Grand Tour. I spoke with the Victoria native in the dining room at the team hotel. He had recently finished a late lunch that followed the day’s training ride.

Pickrell’s journey to that hotel had started this past winter. Members of the team management mentioned that they were interested in sending him to the Giro. Pickrell was excited by the opportunity and structured his training accordingly.

Even though he was on the long list for the big race, his place wasn’t assured. “As we got closer and closer to the selection date, I made sure that my intentions were still known. I made sure to drop hints,” he said. “I tried to be a squeaky wheel without being too annoying because I don’t think anybody wants to have an annoying rider at a race that lasts 23 days.”

Riley Pickrell and the Spring Classics

Pickrell got the good news in mid-April, about two weeks after his long spring campaign that featured Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, where he spent 80 km in a breakaway, Scheldeprijs—his second appearance at that race where he was in the mix in the finale—and his first Paris-Roubaix. After Roubaix, he needed a break. Also, despite all the hard racing he’d done, he’d have to get in some training before the Grand Tour.

“During the Classics, you might train one day, and then you’re recovering again for the next race,” he said. “And the Classics are so stressful that even though your fitness might not actually be improving during the racing, you’re just so fatigued from the stress that you actually progressively lose fitness through the Classics campaign. Once I recovered from the stress of Roubaix, then I could actually put in a substantial training block that I wasn’t able to put in earlier.”

A Grand Tour is an extended period of racing and stress, too, but Pickrell figures the Giro’s conditions are significantly different from those in northern Europe in early spring. “The Spring Classics in Belgium are a step above almost every other race as far as stress. It’s a fight for every corner, whereas here there are bigger roads and not everyone races for every stage. If there’s a mountain finish, I’m not racing,” the sprinter said. “I’m just kind of commuting from the start line to the finish line.”

A Grand Tour changes a rider

While Pickrell is looking forward to the Giro itself, he’s also keen to see what the experience—racing 21 stages with two rest days—will do to his body. The volume and intensity that a rider can only get in a Grand Tour changes an athlete.

“For example, I can train hard for 21 days,” Pickrell said. “I’ve done it before, but it’s very different when somebody else is deciding the pace every single day. There are no days when, if you don’t feel so good, you can just ride easier. In the Giro, you can ride easier, but you won’t be allowed to start the next day. Your only option is to keep on pushing.” All riders have to finish a stage within a certain amount of time. The time cut is calculated using a percentage of the winner’s finishing time. The percentage is determined by stage’s difficulty and the average speed at which it was raced.

“So, when you come out of a Grand Tour, everyone I’ve talked to has said you’re just a completely different rider,” he added. “You’re so much fitter. You’re so much more resilient. So I’m really looking forward to that as far as a future adaptation.”

Michael Woods on Riley Pickrell

“I requested to room with him,” said Michael Woods, whom I chatted with before snagging time with Pickrell.

(“He just texted me one day,” Pickrell told me later. “‘Hey, you wanna be roommates at the Giro?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.'”)

At a picnic bench outside the team hotel, the 37-year-old climber spoke highly of his 22-year-old roommate. “He’s a great kid,” Woods said. “He gets me motivated because he’s high energy and just a crazy sprinter. I think he’s got some opportunities coming up early and maybe later in the race as well. He had that stage win at Tour de l’Avenir in 2023. I think the sky’s the limit with Riley.

“I think it’s going to be really fun to see how he does here, and watch him suffer on those big mountain days.”

Suffering on Day 1

The Giro started with a bang. Its first stage was a 140-km ripper with three significant climbs. With about 30 km left in the race, I jumped into the second team car driven by Israel-Premier Tech sports director Oscar Guerrero. He has been a DS since the mid-2000s and joined IPT in 2017. In 2023, Guerrero was at the Giro supporting that squad’s crop of young riders, including Derek Gee.

On Saturday, Guerrero was looking out for Pickrell. Shortly after the riders got into Turin, they began a loop that would send them up Colle Maddalena (6.1 km, average 7.4 per cent) and a kicker called Bivio di San Vito (roughly 1.5 km, 9.8 per cent, hitting a maximum of 16 per cent) for a second time. On Maddalena, Pickrell was well off the main group. He was with David Dekker, another sprinter, of Arkéa-B&B Hotels and Adrien Petit of Intermarché–Wanty. Guerrero kept the car close to offer support.

“Riley is a fighter, one of the biggest fighters. He’s a rock,” Guerrero said. “I’ve seen how he’s mentally super strong. But, yeah, he will need some motivation after today. It’s super hard. You will have good days, bad days and a lot of moments to suffer. Like today, maybe.”

“Maybe he didn’t expect to be here,” Guerrero continued, referring to Pickrell’s struggle up the inclines well behind the peloton. “But, after, I will speak with him to say, ‘It’s OK. It’s normal. It’s the first day. No worries. Just get back into the race. You will see that it’s completely different, day by day.'”

The time cut on that hard first day was roughly 25 minutes. Pickrell finished with a time of 17:36. Dekker, the lanterne rouge, came in just behind at 17:59. On the Giro’s second stage, up the Cat. 1 climb Santuario di Oropa where Tadej Pogačar took the pink jersey for the first time, Pickrell was in the same group as Biniam Girmay and ahead of other sprinters, such as Caleb Ewan, Jonathan Milan, Tim Merlier, Olav Kooij and Kaden Groves.

Sprint strategies: It’s all up for grabs

“The nice thing about a sprint is it’s different from a mountaintop finish,” Pickrell said during our chat before the Giro began. He then unpacked what makes sprint stages more open affairs—even with heavy hitters such as Ewan, Milan and Merlier charging for the line.

“If a climber makes a mistake on a mountaintop finish, if they come into the climb out of position, they have to ride extra hard for the first kilometre,” he said. “Maybe, they won’t pay too much for that until maybe 3 km to go. The climber can make up for the mistake. In a sprint, if you mess up with 500 m to go, you’re just done. You can be on the form of your life, but it doesn’t matter: you’re going to roll in 15th. Because sprints are such a toss up, they can be less stressful.

“At some point, it stops mattering that there’s 15 of the best sprinters instead of seven of the best sprinters because only 10 can really sprint for the win in the end. Eventually you run out of space on the road for everyone.”

Pickrell’s sprint-tactics realism actually has some underlying optimism. For the B.C. rider, that optimism is warranted. On Stage 1 of Tour de la Provence, he was third in a battle that went to Mads Pedersen. With Pickrell’s positive attitude for the Giro and the belief of the team in him, success could very well come on the roads of Italy.