Marco Velo is following the Future Tower of the girls. The countdown to the World Cup has long since begun. The recent opening to a full squad for the elite and (so far) the presence of an under 23 in the competition dedicated to them, makes the city's observation very detailed. The very tough Europeans just a week later require a careful division of names, based on aptitude. But if Marco Villa it can include two distinct groups, for girls the choice is more obligatory and goes through a single name: that of Elisa Longo Borghini.
«Lucky him who has this abundance – Velo smiles – I will have to confirm 80 percent of the blockI don't have many girls for similar paths, so those who do the World Championships know they could then also do the European Championships. We return on Monday morning at dawn and those who make the journey on Wednesday must leave, because on Saturday we race».
It has been said that Elisa Longo Borghini will be the reference name…
The girls competing in the World Cup have been informed, but it's too early to name names now. Longo Borghini will be the beacon of the national team, that said, the European and World Championships are two courses that she really likes and that are within her reach. She knows very well that she has this responsibility, but she is an athlete who knows how to handle this pressure.He has demonstrated this throughout the years of his career (in the opening the arrival of the Italian champion in the Kreiz Breizh Elites Féminin won yesterday in Callac, France, ed.).
Will road racers also have to do time trials? Longo Borghini doesn't seem inclined to do so.
This year, time trials are Villa's business. She shouldn't be doing the time trial today, but I don't know if Marco will be able to convince her.I have no objections, because I come from the time trial sector. Marco and I have spoken, and we'll reach the best decision for everyone.
What do you know about the route of the road?
The European we went to see it after the Valence stage of the Tour, the second won by Milan. We didn't go to the World Championships, but I managed to get precise details of the climb.I'm not saying meter by meter, but at least a hundred meters by a hundred meters. With Stefano Di Santo, the engineer who makes the maps for the Giro d'Italia, we crossed paths with everyone. Strava profiles of the race they did on the route at the beginning of the season and details of the climbs of the final circuit have been releasedThe women and under-23s will do it eleven times. It's a tough course, with climbs that aren't particularly difficult or long. We're talking about 5-6 minutes, but one after the other, with an altitude difference of almost 3.000 metres.. Perhaps a little less than the 3.200 declared by the UCI.
Is it much harder than Zurich?
It's arranged differently. Zurich had longer climbs, these are shorter: there are 11 laps and therefore the difference in altitude is greaterPlus, in Zurich, there were longer recovery times. When you reached the lakeside, there were 4 kilometers of flat ground. In Kigali it's different, it's much more technical, more nervous, as well as being a long World CupIt's about 165 kilometers.
Is Pauline Ferrand Prevot's presence bad news or could we have expected her to come?
Maybe it's not her route, but I saw her accelerate in the first stage of the Tour and be left alone. If there's a tough race, she'll be a tough customer. We'll have to see if she has recovered after a Tour that in my opinion was exhausting for her.There's plenty of time to recover, but looking at the men, those who dropped out of the Vuelta a España didn't always make the difference. The Grand Tour gives you endurance, but it takes away some of your power.
For the World Cup and European Championships, is the idea to have just one leader or will there be a Plan B?
We will go with girls who have done well elsewhere, but it is also true that at the highest level we have no major alternatives to plan A. Certainly, as I said before, my idea is to make everyone run for one.
Which is harder: the European Championship or the World Cup?
I haven't seen the World Championships, except on paper. The European Championships, however, are really tough. They are two demanding courses, even too demanding, while In my opinion, it was enough to talk to each other and find a common ground. Knowing that there would be such a tough World Championship, one could imagine a European Championship that would reward a different type of rider. Not to mention that If Pogacar won both, no one would see the European champion's jerseyPerhaps they didn't fully appreciate how tough the European Championship was. When we were interviewed after the July inspection and said it seemed incredibly tough, they called us to tell us we'd overdone it.
