Egan Bernal already has a confirmed date for his season start in Europe. He will be participating in the Tour of Catalonia from next Monday, March 20, This was confirmed by the INEOS Grenadiers. The English team changed their decision and the cyclist will no longer go to Coppi e Bartali as the organization of that Italian race had announced.
The Tour of Catalonia will see the return of Egan after spending a month and a half in recovery. The Colombian suffered a knee injury in the Vuelta a San Juan and for this reason he was unable to ride the National Route or the Vuelta a Andalucía. All the rehabilitation and tuning he did in Colombia under the control of the British team and his personal work group.
For this race in Spain, Bernal will be accompanied by Jonathan Castroviejo, Ethan Hayter, Luke Plapp, Salvatore Puccio, Geraint Thomas and Ben Tulett. The competition is scheduled from March 20 to 26, there will be 7 stages, 3 of them in high mountains and the final day will be in Barcelona. There will be participating 18 WorldTeams and 7 ProTeams.
Colombia has always had outstanding performances in this Catalan tour, 5 Colombian cyclists won it: Álvaro Mejía (1993), Hernán Buenahora (1998), Nairo Quintana (2016), Miguel Ángel López (2019) and Sergio Higuita (2022). Egan Bernal was third when Superman took the title.
Bernal’s great objective in these months is to achieve a good physical, mental and sports condition to participate in the Tour de France that begins on July 1. Most likely, he will not arrive as a squad leader, but as a luxury gregarious for the great boss that INEOS chooses. Daniel Felipe Martínez is one of the candidates to lead the team.