Milan-Turin. Ellena: “Being here, for me, is beautiful.”

There is no time to catch your breath, nor is there time to look back. The season goes on, it doesn’t give a damn about what you have done and what you would have liked to have done, it puts new challenges and at the same time new opportunities in front of you.

Here is Milan-Turin, then: after Tirreno-Adriatico and its travails, another race that has made the history of the sport and promises battle. A race that over the years has always been able to transform and change faces, smiling sometimes at sprinters, sometimes at climbers, sometimes at breakaway hunters. This is thanks to a course that has reinvented itself each year, taking advantage of the characteristics of a territory that gives different spaces and terrain. This year the Orbassano finish and the substantial absence of climbs make one imagine a sprint finish, with our EOLO KOMETA banking on Lonardi’s speed. But however it will go, this will be a special day for Giovanni Ellena: the Italian sports director, the latest arrival in our group, was born and raised in Piedmont and it is obvious that he, this race, feels it in a special way.

“I am overjoyed to do my first Italian race with EOLO KOMETA right here, in what are my lands and roads: it is gratifying, and I thank those who gave me this chance. I almost didn’t hope for it, so much so that I had told my group of amateur cyclists with whom I go out on my bike from time to time that we would go together to watch the race on the road. Instead I had to say that I won’t be able to be with them because I will be in the car, and it was great to see that they were almost happier than I was. From a technical point of view, the finish will be very tricky because 900 meters from the finish there is a left turn and then there are a few twisty passages. I think that the teams that will be able to put a powerful train in front will have an advantage in the end: us, we will try to have our say by putting a man in the breakaway of the day and in the finale trying to put Lonardi in the best conditions.”

Lineup: Simone Bevilacqua, Mirco Maestri, Giovanni Lonardi, David Martin, Andrea Pietrobon, Javier Serrano, Samuele Rivi