EF Education-EasyPost will race the 2026 Tour de France with an aggressive, breakaway-first strategy aimed at stage wins and secondary classifications, team founder and CEO Jonathan Vaughters said at a press conference in Gavà on Thursday, two days before the race opens with a team time trial in Barcelona.
Vaughters said that they had managed to protect the core group of riders they wanted at the Tour de France despite a season plagued with injuries. "We will try to be in every breakaway that can reach the finish. We are an aggressive team and we will try to be in every break," he said to Diario AS. He added that the team was also targeting the combativity award and the mountains jersey.
EF's lineup shows its ambition to be involved at the sharp end of the racing with Richard Carapaz and Ben Healy the main riders who will have a crack at GC as well as the mountains jersey and stage wins. The rest of the eight rider squad is Kasper Asgreen, Michael Valgren, Alex Baudin, Sean Quinn, Max Walker and Georg Steinhauser. The team's own pre-race announcement described the lineup as built for breakaways and opportunistic stage hunting rather than a single general-classification effort.
Carapaz comes to the race in good form off the back of taking second place at the recent Tour de Suisse. However, the former Olympic champion is not going to focus on the GC and will aim for the polka-dot jersey and stage wins instead. "I want to go after stage wins and could try to repeat winning the mountains jersey," Carapaz said in comments shared by the Team. He has identified Alpe d'Huez as one preferred target. And with two finishes on the famed mountain, he has every chance.
Carapaz rides for his mother
The Ecuadorian climber is also riding with personal motivation at this race. Carapaz lost his mother earlier in the year. Posting on X, he wrote: "My love for you has existed for as long as I can remember, and it will remain until my life is reunited with yours. I love you, mum." He wants to dedicate the race to her memory.
EF describe him as "back to his best" as they get ready to start the team time trial in Barcelona with Vaughters' plans for the team giving Carapaz freedom to do his thing in the mountains and to just give his all for stage wins and a mountain jersey that he previously took with a superb final week at the 2024 edition of the race.
Healy is another excellent option for the breakaways on hilly days. However, the Irishman has struggled for form and fitness with injuries limiting him throughout the year with him only racing at six races this year, DNFing the latest at the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes.
EF have come up with the goods already this season from the breakaway with both Valgren and Baudin getting wins from early moves. Valgren managed it twice on Italian soil with the former Danish champion delivering two strong rides to win at Tirreno-Adriatico and at the Giro d'Italia whereas Baudin took a dream win on local roads at the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes on day one, handing him a stint in the yellow jersey.
The opening stage on Saturday is a 19.6km team time trial through Barcelona, followed by a road stage finishing around Montjuïc on Sunday. Those first days will set the race's early hierarchy, but EF's main targets are the breakaway-friendly terrain and high mountains where Carapaz and Healy can operate away from the GC favourites.
Vaughters acknowledged the team's injury problems during the season but said the squad was healthy and in form for the Tour. "We have big aspirations," he said. "What we are going to do is a secret." Vaughters nevertheless made EF's approach clear: the team will attack.
Cover image credit: Charly Lopez
