In the toughness of the Palio del Recioto, Montoli, Muñoz and Gilabert played a good role
A race with 44 participating teams, four riders per squad, presents a point of complex uncertainty where the collective is blurred before the weight of the individual bet and the luck of the moment in which a moment of doubt consolidates an acceleration. The Gran Premio Palio del Recioto 2023 was resolved in this way, with a gap of this type: with victory for the Dutchman of Jumbo-Visma Tijmen Graat against the Italian of Bardiani Giulio Pellizari, with Andrea Montoli and Fran Muñoz in the top twenty (19th and 20th, respectively), both present in the leading group that faced the decisive part. Arnau Gilabert closed the top 25 of this edition.
Graat and Pellizzari moved inside the last two laps and the initial gap of ten seconds increased to one minute. Until then, although there was an earlier breakaway, a persistent quartet that grew to a sextet, the gaps were fairly small and the race was fairly controlled until the halfway point, at which point an increasingly smaller peloton swallowed up the escapees and rode for a few dozen kilometres without any movement to break it up. The members of the EOLO-KOMETA Cycling Team were always attentive in the first positions.
“The Palio del Recioto is always hard, there is practically no flat section, you are always going up or down and the race is very difficult to control because of the presence of many teams and the nervousness that this brings”, says Andrea Montoli. “The key was to stay in the top twenty in the hot spots of the course and, in this sense, I think that as a team we did very well. At the start of the sixth lap of the circuit, Trinity Racing set a much higher pace and caused a cut-off in which both Fran and I were. Towards the end, on the long climb, we gave everything we had to be among the first and as far ahead as possible”.
Rafa Díaz Justo, director: “Of this triptych of races in Italy, Trofeo Piva, Giro del Belvedere and Palio del Recioto, the one in Nogar is in my opinion the hardest of the three. And it is so because of the route, in the end there are 3,000 metres of positive ascent in just 150 km; it is so because of the level, with the highest level of riders in Italy and practically in Europe; and it is so because of the circuits: a complex route, five laps of a course with a hard climb, a sixth with an even harder climb and in the last one a very entertaining seven-kilometre climb. We were very good today because in the last group, with 18 riders, we had Fran and Montoli and Arnau, who went from strength to strength, stayed very close. I’m happy with the performance, it’s a race in which the guys have had a lot of attitude and without attitude in a race like this you’re out”.
[? GP Palio del Recioto / Photors.it (1)]
