Derek Gee
The week: 15-21 April Location: Girona and the Ardennes Training for: Liège-Bastogne-Liège
Derek Gee took last year’s Giro d’Italia by the scruff of the neck and overnight – well, over three weeks – became a Grand Tour sensation. An unprecedented run of consistency earned the 26-year-old Canadian no fewer than four second places, as well as two fourths during the Italian stage race – a run of ‘luck’ that elicited one of the quotes of the season: “I think it will be hard to repeat a Giro like this,” said Gee, “but luckily I left myself room to improve by not winning anything.” Will the Israel-Premier Tech rider become a modern-day ‘eternal second’ or can he pick up a WorldTour win this year?
Having sustained a broken collarbone at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the Canadian national TT champion is back in the saddle, and when we spoke to him last week was preparing to race at Liège-Bastogne-Liège (where he finished 86th, in a group 18 minutes behind winner Tadej Pogačar).
How were you so incredibly consistent at last year’s Giro?
I really wish I had an answer for that. I think a big part of it was just that it was pretty miserable weather – the conditions took it out of a lot of people. There was some illness, some heavier fatigue with the grim days. I just got into a nice groove of racing hard. To be honest, I didn’t expect to be able to recover like that day to day. Obviously there’s nothing in the racing world that compares to a Grand Tour, so, you know, I’ll have to wait until my next Grand Tour to see if I’m especially good at racing over three weeks – or maybe it was just one month [last year] where the legs came good.
You aren’t racing the Giro this year – what’s the plan?
I’ll race two more one-days after Liège, and then go up to altitude camp. I think the Critérium du Dauphiné is on my plan after that. The Tour de France is never a selection at the start of the year – it’s a long list. But the goal is to make the Tour.
PROFILE
Age: 26
Height: 6ft 2in
FTP: 410W
Raised: Ottawa, Canada
Lives: Girona, Spain
Rides for: Israel-Premier Tech
Best results: 4x 2nd – Giro d’Italia (2023); 2x 1st – National Champs Canada, ITT (2023, 2022)
MONDAY
3hr 30min
Originally [before a late call up to Liège on Tuesday] I was going to race Tirenno-Adriatico, which had a TT, so this was my first day back on the TT bike after crashing at Omloop.
I rode four 15-minute blocks. I was riding at 380-390 watts for the efforts, which is around sweetspot – just steady, no crazy intensity. It
