New coach behind Tao Geoghegan Hart’s Tour of the Alps win

Brit bounces back after two years of illness and injury with a major stage race victory

- Tom Thewlis

You can’t keep a good man down, as the saying goes, but sometimes you need another to help pick him up. That would certainly apply to the way in which Tao Geoghegan Hart bounced back from two years marred by illness and injury at the Tour of the Alps last week, helped by a new coach.

Since winning the Giro d’Italia in 2020, Geoghegan Hart has struggled to reach the same level that he displayed during the Covid-19 affected season. A stage win and GC podium at Volta Valenciana in February suggested he was getting back to his best but last week in Austria and Italy confirmed he has arrived at that destination.

Once racing got under way the Londoner set an early benchmark with a stage victory on day one in Alpbach.

From there, he didn’t look back. A second victory would swiftly follow on stage two, and his Ineos Grenadiers team then dictated proceedings throughout the rest of the week, shutting down any potential challenge from their rivals including eventual second-place finisher Hugh Carthy (EF Education-EasyPost) and third-place finisher Jack Haig (Bahrain Victorious).

Throughout the race, Geoghegan Hart heaped praise on his team-mates, but it was the impact of working with his new coach, Dajo Sanders, that he said was largely responsible for his upturn in form.

“In these last six or seven months I learned a lot about the best training for me,” he said. “That was something that I always felt I’d missed, kind of like a recipe. Certainly for me, but also something that I see with a lot of my colleagues, is that it’s so easy to do too much training, and always to do more,” he added. “I think it’s helped just having a really clear plan involving good communication with Dajo.”