Let's face it: the cycling world championships in Glasgow may have left a bitter taste in our mouths. in the final report for the Italian team. In the Olympic disciplines (and when it's the pre-Olympic year, these are the ones you should look at most) they won a silver and a bronze, always with Ganna in the middle. With a cool head, it is time to re-examine what happened in the two weeks in Scotland, projecting what happened – and above all the indications that emerged – towards 2024. and no one more than Diego Bragato he is suitable to do so.
Bragato, as well as being an integral part of Villa's technical staff for track cycling, is also responsible for the Team Performance and as soon as the world championship was over he went over the flood of data that had emerged on the computer, drawing very useful ideas for the approach to the appointment of Paris 2024.
«The balance in my opinion is positive – Bragato immediately begins – we must not forget that there are others at the World Cup too and a pre-Olympic event is always something different from the othersEveryone knows that there is a lot at stake, but rather than looking outside, we look at our own home and how we got to this point."
What do you mean?
For us, these were very different World Cups from the others. Scattered injuries and road activity have impacted our squad more than the others. I have to measure the results achieved precisely on the basis of this path of approach and for this reason I can say that overall we did well.
Measuring cycling is not easy: except for the team pursuit and, partially, the sprint (always referring to the Olympic program trials), there are no numbers that immediately quantify performance…
In fact, my job is to evaluate each individual case, looking at the overall performance based on the test taken. Look for example: Viviani: He arrived at the World Championship in very good shape, but he lacked the right approach to the race due to his lack of experienceIt's not enough to be physically ready, you also need to run the races several times to measure yourself against others, both old and new. The same goes for girls: Paternoster It was competitive like it hadn't been in a long time, but it lacked the right mechanisms. This is a first aspect to consider in preparation for Paris: ensuring our players regain familiarity.
Given that it's such a delicate World Cup, wasn't the decision to leave the decision-making responsibility to the girls a bit hasty?
It's a delicate, shorter four-year period and the girls are dealing with a thousand changes in the WorldTour – underlines Bragato – Villa he thought it appropriate not to overload them, knowing that there was a price to pay. If I look at the team pursuit, the stopwatch tells me that we are not that far from the topIn the bronze medal match, we lost by just three tenths of a second to France, whose women, to be at their best, had given up the Tour de France, their home race. This too must be seen as a positive.
However, it is an experience on which we must lay the foundations for a very different Olympic approach.
There's no arguing about this. We need a comprehensive agreement with the teams to which all our players belong. After the Vuelta, team manager Amadio, supported by sector technicians, has planned a series of meetings with all the managers of the relevant WT teams, both male and female, to map out the path towards Paris.. Villa as Welcome e Sangalli Work must begin with a clear timeline and method. This is especially true because the track season begins immediately, with the European Championships scheduled for January 10th to 14th, and a strong showing will be needed then.
Then there will also be three stages of the Nations Cup from February to April…
We will have to find the right balance and give the boys and girls the opportunity to work on the track continuously., but also having real opportunities for competition during the race, and the challenge will be extremely useful in this regard. Of course, reconciling it with the road calendar won't be easy, which is why the weeks immediately following the end of the season will be crucial.
Let's return to a topic debated immediately after Tokyo: wouldn't it be useful for us in cycling, as for all the other relevant federations, to have a counterbalance in the form of an Olympic Preparation sector of the CONI with various powers, which could play a role of supervision and support in the qualification process for the Olympic Games?
We're delving into a thorny issue," Bragato warns. "The disciplines are very different; cycling has demands that are certainly not those of athletics and swimming, to name two. We have a consolidated and very close relationship with the School of Sport, we often meet to raise the level of our disciplinesFor example, the School provided us with a whole range of equipment for recording and displaying the work done in Montichiari, and this is very useful. We're also working with the School on specific disciplines like freestyle BMX, where we're starting from scratch. We need to recruit very young people, and we can do so by also looking at other similar disciplines.
Objectively, do you feel optimistic?
I am convinced that we can do really well in every discipline from road to track to othersWe are strong and we know it, even the races that didn't reward us in Glasgow still tell us this. We need something more, we need enthusiasm, we need to rediscover that energy that was there in Tokyo and that we could already feel months later.We need to start off on the right foot and make sure everything fits together as best as possible. Besides, we'll start right away," Bragato says. "On the first day of the finals, there will be road time trials, and we know we have a lot at stake, both us in cycling and the entire Italian expedition. Let's try to start off on the right foot…
