At the end of last weekend’s tricolor event in Tuscany, we reached the technical commissioner of the men’s national road team by telephone Daniele Bennati to draw an initial assessment of this season and turn our gaze towards the Olympic Games in Paris, where our national team will be able to field three men. The captain will be the new Italian champion Alberto Bettiol, in whom the coach has always placed a lot of trust. In fact, just on the eve of the Italian Championship Bennati – who had already chosen him to lead the national team in the road race in Paris scheduled for 3 August in unsuspecting times – had said: “Alberto has never been so continuous“, reaching four victories between 13 March and 23 June, as many as he had achieved between 2014 and 2023 albeit with notable results including the 2019 Tour of Flanders and the Stradella stage of the 2021 Giro.
Did you get the answers you were looking for at the Italian Championships?
“Bettiol’s response and confirmation is important both for him and for me. Alberto is our point of reference, I was a little scared after the crash at Switzerland, but I have to say that I saw him in excellent shape and therefore it means that he has recovered well. It may also be that this small stop did him nothing but good in view of the Tour de France first and then the Olympics. Rota, unfortunately, finished in second place for the third consecutive year, but for him too it was an important confirmation, he is not a boy who is afraid of attacking from afar and not in an Olympic key but from a World Championship perspective he can be an interesting boy as it has also been in past seasons. Zambanini had an excellent run, he is one of our most interesting young people and I am sure that over the years he can get some great satisfaction, he is growing well and is in a team (Bahrain Victorious) that gives him the right time to mature” .
Bettiol has shown excellent condition and will do the Tour de France. What do you expect from Alberto in an Olympic sense?
“I don’t expect anything, for Alberto the victory at the Championship was not decisive for being the leader in Paris, he has shown great consistency and I hope that at the Tour he can fully enjoy the Italian champion’s jersey – especially considering the start from Florence, in his homeland – and then I hope he can manage his energy in view of the Olympics”.
How do you manage an Olympic race with 3 runners?
“It’s certainly a completely different race, the teams are small and whoever has the most will have four riders at the start. It will not be up to us Italians to have to take responsibility, but I believe that nations like Belgium, Holland, Slovenia and Denmark can control the first 150 km of the race and after that it will be an individual race in which we will have to be very careful, have the right legs and a lot of instinct. having radios.”
What type of route do we find in Paris?
“It is a long route of 279 km, always starting and finishing under the Eiffel Tower. The first 225 out of Paris will be undulating with some hills (the classic French plain) and these will be quite challenging. There will then be the return to the town center with the Montmartre climb of 850 metres, which is not particularly demanding, where the maximum gradient will be 10% and then the circuit will be tackled twice (so the Montmartre climb will be done three times, ed. ) and after the last climb there will be a totally flat 6 km along the Seine that will lead to the finish line”.
You have always spoken well of Tiberi, now he has shown his value, as well as Pellizzari. Have we found two guys who can fight for the podium in the Grand Tours?
“Tiberi had an excellent Giro and is still very young, if he hadn’t had the problem of the double puncture in Oropa he would have been there fighting for the podium with Martinez and Thomas. Pellizzari is even younger, he struggled in the first week, but this allowed him to go out of the rankings and try to achieve a stage success. In the third week he was really very strong and this is certainly an encouraging sign for the near future.”
Paradoxically, in the short and medium term we now seem better off in stage races than in one-day races…
“We Italians always struggle a little more to mature, but I’m not sure why, perhaps due to cultural characteristics. There has been a generational change and now we need to have the right patience and give the kids the time necessary to mature.”
Can you tell us about the European and World Championships?
“I’ll go and look at the European Championships route after the Olympics, but it seems like a fairly simple route from an altitude point of view, unlike the World Cup route which resembles a Liège”.
Will the European Championship be an opportunity for Milan?
“It would be nice to be able to build a team around Jonathan, but I will make the assessments after the Olympics, which are very demanding events also from a mental point of view”.
Could Ciccone be a name for the World Cup? And what isn’t working for Bagioli?
“Ciccone is a rider suited to that type of route and therefore he would be one of the guys who could give greater guarantees. I haven’t spoken specifically to Bagioli yet, I certainly will and I will try to understand what didn’t work in this first part of the season, with the hope of seeing him as a protagonist in the season finale like last year.”
The favorite for the Tour?
“Pogacar will certainly have more fearsome opponents than in the Giro, but I think he can achieve the Giro-Tour double”.
