SIENA – The final stage of the Eroica Juniores Nations Cup gets underway. allows us to make a point with Dino Salvoldi, blue city leading the boys in this raceThe national team bus parks in the square of the Giardini la Lizza, behind which you can admire the Medici fortress. The sun, high in the sky, invites the coach to put on his dark glasses.
A new cycling
Salvoldi talks to the boys, fine-tunes the tactic that almost turns the race around, and goes down. There's always a nice crowd of people around him.: sports director of junior teams such as Pavanello e Shinto, but also many other characters.
«It was seen – says the coach – that potentially among the best riders in the category we have everything we need to be competitive. We demonstrated this (even more so a few hours later at the finish line of Chiusdino, editor's note). The guys are excited about this type of competition, it's new in cycling and in the category, with a calendar that allows us to consistently compete at this level. We, as Italy, have a history and a structure that are still different. Those countries that don't have these historical characteristics have joined forces to tackle a calendar of this size."
What teams are we talking about?
Nations like Norway, Denmark, and Great Britain, for example, which don't have a national calendar as rich as ours, have organized themselves to have their kids run in this type of competition, always. If we then add the I have to team up In the WorldTour we have a similar situation to that of professionalismWe, as the Italian national team, must organize ourselves so that our best players can become attractive.
Making these kids play for the national team means taking them away from their club teams.
I must say that the perception that my collaborators and I have, without any presumption, is that we have established a good dialogue with the various teams. What we are trying to put into practice is linear programmingOf course, unexpected events happen; sometimes one or two places fill up at the last minute.
Which kids do you work with?
As we did last year and as we will do this year, half of the team participating in international events will be made up of the young people who represent the core of the working group.
Speaking of programming, is it possible to work continuously?
It's becoming difficult to have preparation rallies, also because in this category there is the schoolIn the first part of the season we managed to have mini monthly meetings, where we worked with the kids. We are good at scheduling training sessions and calendars based on events shared with the teams..
What would it take to do better?
Everything can be improved, if there was more availability we would do more. With the budget we had we were forced to make sacrifices and invest it in another direction.In anticipation of the most important events, such as the track and road world championships, we will be holding extended rallies.
What was invested in?
Participation in stage races, for the reasons explained above. And with the fact of wanting to keep the ranking high to bring the greatest number of kids to international eventsThen there's the track, there was the desire from the very beginning to do a good job in Montichiari, on an ongoing basis.
This Eroica brought the news Viezzi, at his second international road race, the first with the national team.
He and Proietti, who is a first year. I didn't find any difficulty in fitting into the group with them.Road cycling is much more of a team sport than cyclocross, for example. I didn't find this kind of difficulty and there wasn't one on a coordination or technical level either.The boys are talented and capable of moving from one discipline to another. In the past, there had been greater difficulties. However, with Viezzi and Proietti, there were none.
