Back from Paris with Elisa Longo Borghini's ninth place in the women's road race, Paolo Sangalli is packing his bags and preparing his notes for the U23 Tour de l'Avenir.From there it will be time for a high-altitude training camp with the girls from the World Championships, the European Championships, and the trip to Zurich at the end of September that will close out the Italian team's season. Yet there is something left in my head about Paris. Not so much for the “Longo” test, who did what she could and in the end took it all on her shoulders, apologizing for the lackluster result. Rather, for the choice of the other blues, which in our opinion would have made sense during the last winter, but which the results of the season could have called into questionDid they bring the best names or athletes available?
«In Paris – says the blue city – we did what we set out to do, Regardless of Elisa's bad day, we had planned the race so she would get as little air as possible in the first 110 kilometers, and in fact she never showed her head. I thought that Silvia Persian (opening photo, ed.) could have held out longer, but she was delayed by the same crash 50 kilometers from the finish that stopped Wiebes. On that circuit, even 20 seconds were impossible to recover. We wanted to do like Faulkner, but things don't always go well. Talking to them we said that we had taken the ideal path of approach and perhaps we had closed the Giro d'Italia in the last meter of the last stage contributed to the fact that Elisa arrived in Paris more tired than expected.».
You can't blame her, in fact. She races too much. Classics, Vuelta, Tour of Switzerland, Giro d'Italia, Olympics, now the Tour and Plouay, and then the World Championships...
This is women's road cycling today. Also the Kopecky she arrived in a hurry, because if she had been the one we know, she would have won the goldShe didn't miss a beat. Vos is an athlete we know very well; she arrived after a month and a half of not running and took the silver medal. The Dutch should have probably all raced for Wiebes, but the crash changed everything.
How difficult was it to build this team? Have you ever considered changing your choices?
But no, because at that point the change was only possible with a medical certificateI could have done it in case of a fall or Covid. But The Olympics is also a synthesis of recent yearsAnd if you go and look, three out of four of the Italians came from world-class results and I want people on my team who are capable of getting there.
But shouldn't they also be in the same condition that led them to those results? Persico hasn't been at the level he was in at the bronze medal in Wollongong for a while, and perhaps Elisa Balsamo, after her retirement from the Giro, wasn't a card worth risking...
With Persico, we worked hard to get to Paris in top condition. Then, after the Giro, he contracted Covid. One to replace it with could be the bertizzolo, but she was also out due to the same fall as BalsamoWho should I have brought?
Perhaps Soraya Paladin would have provided a high-level job base?
I believe that he could have done what Persico did, maybe something more. It's logical that with hindsight you can say anything, but in recent years the results have spoken clearly. Persico should have done the Giro in progression, but then she felt bad insteadHe had invested in that race for the last four months and we moved forward. The signs were good and if she hadn't been caught up in that crash, there would have been a ride to give Longo a hand.Because we agree on this: in a race like this, the only one who could have finished ahead was Longo.
Or a 100 percent conditioner….
She would have done as Wiebes had, also penalized by the fall. In the end, she was aiming for victory. Balsamo did his best for the situation he hadAnd anyway, I'm a very decisive person in things and unfortunately I didn't even have the choice of Sofia Bertizzolo because that damned fall in Spain involved both her and Elisa Balsamo. as to Paladin, she is a girl that I think highly of and is in fact already in the plans for the world championship.
Are we turning the page?
We turn the page, sport is like this. We left Paris with a ninth place, after Elisa was coming from two medals. But anyway, the first bronze came due to Van Vleuten's fall in the downhill, these things happen. Races go like that, but they do not take anything away from the calibre of Longo Borghini who is the benchmark Italian rider for the major classics. She won't be there for the European Championships, because I'm letting her recover, but for the World Championships I expect her to be back at her best.
There are some points that are creaking, but the position is shared. The Olympics can be the synthesis of the results of the previous three years (in this case), but provided that the athletes involved have the same level and maybe 2024 said different things. At least for the World Cup we should have them all at their best, hoping in the meantime that Silvia Persico finds her shine again and in Wollongong in 2022 he brought her this close to winning the world championship.
