AMORE e VITA - PRODIR The cycling team competes in Argentina

Fanini: << Despite a little of bad luck at the beginning, our results were definitely excellent >>

The new 2020 racing season started from Argentina with the right attitude, in fact, among many great World Tour teams, Amore and Vita – Prodir, has not absolutely disfigured. The A&V cyclists were quite always in the midst of the action, always on the attack with the young climber Riccardo Marchesini, and the finally recovered Antonio Zullo. But also with the expert veteran of team A&V, Latvian Viesturs Luksevics, was pretty active during the whole stage race. We need also to remark the valuable action in the “queen stage”, of Marco Tizza, whom arrived not far from the strongest, and unfortunately was cut off from the games for the victory only because of the wind that splitted up the leading bunch in the crucial moment of the final kilometers.
Besides, even team’s sprinters Davide Appollonio and Maris Bogdanovic were excellent in performances. Above all, Appollonio, well know in the cycling buch as “Appojet”, has shown – albeit being not yet in top condition – that he’s already up to the situation alongside to “sacred monsters” of sprints like Fernando Gaviria and Peter Sagan.
So, actually the glass is well beyond from being half full and this despite the bad crashes in the first two stages.

“If you go check the arrival results, you will find some real “24-carats” winners – explains the team manager of the longest-running team in the world, Cristian Fanini – but despite the crash due to a spectator in the last 3 km of the first stage (with 5 of our 6 athletes at the start on the ground), and the other one in the second due to a dog (with two of our athletes who went down and the rest remained behind until a few hundred meters from the finishline), our placings can be considered really excellent. We closed the last day with Davide Appollonio’s 7th place, but also in the previous ones there were other placings in the top 20, still with Appollonio, and then with Bogdanovics and Tizza. It means that we are on the right track. So, for this Vuelta a San Juan we have to make a big applause to all our men, but a special one goes definitelly to Marchesini and Zullo, who repeatedly went on the attack, demonstrating the right behaviour and an excellent approach to racing. Must say, that at the start of this prestigious competition there was the three-times world champion and winner of many monuments classics Peter Sagan, the yellow jersey at Tour the France and winner of the Milan-Sanremo, Julien Alaphilippe, and also there was the athlete who will probably become one of the strongest cyclists in history, the winner of the Vuelta San Juan, Remco Evenepoel, but all this has not stopped them. Motivation is everything, so we are satisfied and we look to the next goal, the Colombia 2.1 tour with lots of enthusiasm and determination “

Tour Colombia 2.1 is another very prestigious stage race and the athletes directed by Marco Zamparella who lived in Colombia for a year (when he was riding for team Movistar in 2014), will know how to live up to the challenge. The team will find many World Tour teams also on this occasion, but team’s leader Davide Appollonio will try to improve himself, pursuing a victory. In the meantime the other leader of Amore e Vita – Prodir, Marco Tizza has returned to Italy with the d.s. Starchyk to look for a result in the Laigueglia Trophy, scheduled for February 16th. So at the start of the Tour Colombia 2.1 there will be valid elements such as Bogdanovics, Luksevics, Zullo and Marchesini, all for one for “Appojet” who is looking forward to throwing himself back into the fray to leave his mark this time.