The goal for Neilson Powless at this year’s Tour de France is simple: win a stage.
He’s certainly capable. So are the other five Americans in the field, and collectively they represent perhaps the strongest contingent of U.S. cyclists in the sport’s most famous race since the drug-fueled days of Lance Armstrong and Levi Leipheimer more than a decade ago.
There is Sepp Kuss, the climbing extraordinaire from the Jumbo-Visma squad, who ended a 10-year drought for Americans with a stage win last year and who will try to usher Jonas Vingegaard, last year’s general classification winner, to back-to-back yellow jerseys; Matteo Jorgenson, who featured in several breakaways a year ago and nearly won a stage himself; new U.S. road race champ Quinn Simmons; Kevin Vermaerke, whose own debut last year was waylaid by a broken collarbone; and Lawson Craddock, back for the first time since 2018.
Then there is Powless, the 26-year-old from Florida and the first rider of Native American ancestry to compete in the Tour de France, and who already has won two lower-level races this year while performing well in the spring classics.
“I think the prep that I have done has brought me to the right level of fitness at exactly the right time,” said Powless, who will also be charged with protecting EF Education—EasyPost’s overall contenders, Richard Carapaz and Rigoberto Urán.