Be sure to check out my first volumes on Julian Alaphilippe, Matej Mohorič, Niccolò Bonifazio & Bob Jungels
Next Up - Alexey Lutsenko!
Photo - Tour of Oman, Credit
Kazakhstan's top rider Alexey Lutsenko is definitely entering his peak cycling years, and he's showed his form so far in 2019 with back-to-back victories at the Tour of Oman (Stage 2 & 3) as well as leading the GC at time of writing. A specialist Stage winner that will undoubtedly notch up a fair few this year at this rate, and an outsider for some of the Classics this year with a solid One-Day racing pedigree.
I thought that the Kazakh definitely deserved a feature, and he's probably not as well known as he really should be in the pro peleton - so I'd like to change that!
How did he perform in 2018?
Lutsenko is definitely a fan of the Tour of Oman, and in 2018 he started his season off with a GC victory and podium finishes on Stage 2, 3 & 5. He then had quite a quiet mid-season, before he won the Kazakhstan National Road Race and Stage 6 at the Tour of Austria shortly after. At the Summer Asian Games, he won the Junior ITT and Junior Road Race, but I wouldn't look too far into that as his opposition was mostly against Continental riders. At the Tour of Turkey he also took another Stage victory at Stage 4, and was narrowly pipped by Eduard Prades to the GC (coming 2nd).
What can we expect him to win in 2019?
He's definitely on track for a back-to-back Tour of Oman GC victory, and I expect he'll at least get another podium Stage finish there. Whether he'll be able to take a step up and go for Stage victories at the Tour de France will be interesting, last year he rode the Giro and really struggled to even finish in the top 20 of any Stages - maybe the TdF will suit him more? I've also tipped him as an outsider for a couple of the Classics; I don't think he's quite at the level to take a Monument, but he could definitely slip under the radar in a break and go all the way at one of the smaller Northern Classics (Kuurne - Bruxelles - Kuurne perhaps?).
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