Filippo Ganna after winning his fifth national time trial title ©Sirotti Stefano via IG
Filippo Ganna he won his fifth national title against the clock. On the Grosseto circuit, the holder of the world hour record (2022) and two-time time trial world champion (2020 and 2021) confirmed himself by extending a streak of victories in tricolor chronograph which from 2019 was interrupted only in the 2021 edition, when the workload in view of the Olympic event forced him to cede the scepter of Italian champion to his friend for a year Matteo Sobrero. This is the twenty-sixth success in a race against time, of the thirty-two total of his career INEOS Grenadiers.
Affini still second, Baroncini on the podium
The joke of the day is Edoardo Affini (Visma-Lease a Bike), which had already taken second place in 2021. The man from Mantua, penultimate to start, was 23″ behind the time of 39’17” set by the winner. Instead he climbed to the third step of the podium Filippo Baroncini (UAE Emirates), who paid 55″ from Ganna: for a certain time Baroncini was leading the race, given that the four who started after him, before Affini and Ganna, were unable to beat him. In fourth place, at 1’01” he placed Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek), who will be, like Ganna, a key element of the Olympic quartet, while the fifth Matteo Trentin (Tudor) reached 1’07”. The top ten is completed by the U-23 specialty world champion, Lorenzo Milesi (Movistar), then, always in order, Mirco Masters (Polti Kometa), Alessandro De Marchi (Jayco AlUla), Lorenzo Germani (Groupama-FDJ) e Alexander Verres (Arkéa-B&B Hotels).
Dress rehearsals for the Olympics
The elite time trial circuit consisted of a 35 kilometer route which after the first seven hundred meters entered a circuit of almost 17 km to be repeated twice, outside the city of Grosseto, where the long straights made the wind the main variable of the test, given the substantial absence of altimetric difficulties. In the finale we then returned to the initial 700 meters to the finish line. The characteristics of the route were thus designed following the indications of the Italian selector Marco Velo, who wanted this race to be a preparation for the Olympic time trial in Paris 2024scheduled for Saturday 27 July, where Filippo Ganna will be back in search of that Olympic medal which eluded him in 2021, when he finished fifth in Tokyo 2020.
