ProTeam Elia Viviani at the start of the Scheldeprijs: “Ready to throw myself into it.”
“Most sprinters have fifteen, twenty race days under their belts. They’ve ridden Tirreno or Paris-Nice. I have exactly four in my legs,” says Elia Viviani. “I feel good, I had a strong winter, kept training continuously, and kept hoping to find a team. Lotto crossed my path at the last moment, but of course that means I now have to make up for lost ground. The numbers are good, but that doesn’t say everything. I’m throwing myself into a sprint race like De Panne almost out of nowhere. Aside from the interruptions caused by the many crashes there, I didn’t immediately have the feeling I could win it. I feel like I’m still falling short. The Tour of Turkey is coming up on my program soon—my first stage race. That will be good for me, eight days of racing in a row. At the same time, I still have to get to know the rest of the peloton, too. It’s not easy to just follow someone—that’s not automatic after three or four races.”
That doesn’t change the fact that Viviani once again lines up at the start of the Dutch-Belgian sprint classic with plenty of hunger and ambition. “I’m curious to see how it goes. In 2017, I once finished second here, behind Marcel Kittel, but I haven’t lined up here often since. What will the wind be like? Because it’s always a deciding factor here. I’m hoping for some kind of selection beforehand. Because if there’s no wind, then everyone knows we’re heading into a mass sprint with a full peloton, and that can get dangerous. Everyone is sprinting—not just for the podium, but for the top ten. Every position counts nowadays. Physically, I’m ready. But a sprint race like this is always a bit like a casino. And I definitely know when I can count myself among the favorites—and when I can’t. But if everything falls into place, I’ll absolutely go all in.”
Picture: Brecht Steenhouwer
