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Ben Healy is the revelation of the season so far (see figure 1). Finishing 2nd and 4th in respectively Amstel Gold Race and Liège-Bastogne-Liège is an achievement few people had expected at the start of the season. 

Although the 22-year old had his success in one day races, he won GP Industria this year, there is still little to show as it comes to general classifications. Now he is about to start his first grand tour ever with the Giro d'Italia and we asked ourselves the question, can Ben Healy finish on the podium in Rome?

In our article about the favorites for the Giro, there is no Ben Healy within the top-20 generated by the formula. That makes sense as there are only few results from Healy that are considered by the algorithm. This phenomenon is called the prediction explanation fallacy. As our formula is based upon historical results, it will never predict a first time result for a rider and for this reason young talented riders are often undervalued in predictions. 

Up to this point in his career, Healy has accumulated 107 PCS points in GCs from the 5 stage races at professional level he finished. The longest stage races he did were Tour de l'Avenir in 2019 and 2021 and Giro Ciclistico d'Italia in 2021, all 10 days long.  In total he has 88 racedays in professional races. Let us take a look at past Giro editions. The following table lists the rider in the top-10 with the least GC points before the start of that edition. 

Last year Juan Pedro López from Trek-Segafredo finished 10th, including 10 days in the Maglia Rosa. At that point he had only one top-10 GC result in his career, 6th place in Tour de Hongrie 2019. Maybe even more unexpected was the 9th place of Tobias Foss in 2021. Before that he accumulated only 127 GC points in professional races, roughly equal to that of Ben Healy now. Foss had only 66 racedays in professional races before starting that Giro. Another interesting fact, he managed to finish 9th with only two top-10 stage results. 

In 2014 we find that Fabio Aru finished on the podium with only 228 GC points upfront and 91 professional racedays. He took his first career victory in stage 15 of that Giro. Noted that it was the second grand tour he started, as he rode the Giro also the year before, finishing 42nd.

With his results in the Arden classics, his climbing strength looks good although he needs to prove himself on longer climbs as well and over a 3-week period. How about his time trial skills? In 4 out of his last 5 time trials he finished top-10, obtaining a 3rd result in Coppi e Bartali, lagging only 19 second behind TT specialist Rémi Cavagna. 

When we accumulate the TT points for GC riders for the last 3 years, we can find Ben Healy back on position 12. Again, a chart like this favours riders that have had stable TT results for the past 3 years. Figure 5 shows the best TT result (excluding NCs) in the past 12 months for a selection of GC riders. Sorting this way, Healy comes up 5th. 

In conclusion we can state that Ben Healy can finish on the Giro podium this year. He has shown good form, has a solid time trial and is a strong climber. At the moment of writing, he is listed 58th in the PCS game in number of stars for the final GC.