Giant-Shiamno manager Iwan Spekenbrink has defended his decision to not take talented Frenchman Warren Barguil to the Tour de France.

Spekenbrink told Cyclingnews that it had nothing to do with Barguil’s talent or current form. It’s all about forward planning. “He can go to the Tour. He is a good rider who can go to the Tour. That is not the question. We want to work on making him as good as he can be in two or three years and we don’t want to make any missteps,” he explains.

“We are not thinking how the team can benefit best from him in the short term. Of course, it is very tempting and it would be very opportunistic to step away from that path and say ‘it’s the Tour lets do that.’ But for him, we should not focus on being opportunistic. We need to stick to that path and make him as good as he can be.”

Barguil will now return to the Vuelta a Espana, where he was the revelation of the race, taking two stages in his debut Grand Tour in his neo-pro year.

Barguil has had to deal with lots of pressure after winning the Tour de l’Avenir and then taking the brace of Vuelta wins, leading him to be called “France’s next Grand Tour winner”, something that has become more of a blessing than a curse. Howver, it is not hard to see why he has been given this title as his talent is blatantly obvious.

“Warren Barguil is a great sporting project for us. We believe that we can do something similar with him as we did with Marcel Kittel,” Spekenbrink tells Cyclingnews. “We believe that he is a very special talent and we have to give him a lot of attention.”

“He did well in Catalunya and he believed that he could have a good role in the Tour and he can have a good role in the Tour. He is dreaming of going there and that ambition is making a rider progress and it is a fuel for him. But he also understands that we are working with him and in him best interests and consequently in the team’s best interests in making him as good as he can.”

Eventually, Barguil will race in the world’s biggest race and he will no doubt achieve success there. But for now, he must play second fiddle to Marcel Kittel’s sprint ambitions, something that in the future Spekenbrink does not see as a hindrance. 

“I think it can work,” he says confidently. “The guys who help the GC guy until the last climb, guys like Tom Dumoulin and, in the future, Lawson Craddock, those kinds of guys also have the physical talent to do a pull in the last kilometre for the sprints. When you have a guy who can fight for a good GC then it gives the team a big boost if you can also get the stage wins. It can take a little pressure off you. There are ways in between.”