Visma are strong, Pog is stronger

The Giro d'Italia showed that UAE Team Emirates XRG lack the tactics and team cohesion of Visma-Lease a Bike. But, says Felix Lowe, they don't need it

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They say you are only as good as your last race, and if so, things are looking pretty darn good for Visma-Lease a Bike. At the Giro d'Italia the team's new recruit, Simon Yates, completed a redemption arc seven years in the making to bury his demons on the Colle delle Finestre and become the fourth different Visma rider to win a Grand Tour in the past two years. By seeing the maglia rosa slip from their grasp at the eleventh hour, rivals UAE Team Emirates XRG, by contrast, continue to prove themselves incapable of winning a Grand Tour with anyone not called Tadej Pogačar.

The man who could have won the Giro for UAE was not their Plan A going into the race (Juan Ayuso), nor indeed their Plan B (Adam Yates). It was someone who may even have sat beneath Brandon McNulty in the team's pre-race pecking order. Isaac del Toro's defeat on the Finestre may not have been as all-consuming as Simon Yates's own pink plummet in 2018, but he could well have nightmares about it for just as long.

What made the difference was teamwork. Where Del Toro struggled on his own to chase Yates with an equally isolated Richard Carapaz, Yates benefited from having a satellite rider waiting on the descent - and not just any rider.

Pogačar has become unplayable. All his rivals can do is try to focus on the only thing that remotely resembles a weakness: his team