Former race leader and stage winner Marco Pinotti is building towards what he intends to be a strong ride in this year’s Giro d’Italia and, having shown good form of late, will now head to the Giro del Trentino.
The Italian race begins on Tuesday and will offer Pinotti four stages to test his strength. The opening stage will be a 14.3 kilometre team time trial which could work out very well for his BMC Racing Team.
After that, there are three climbing stages. Two of those are summit finishes, namely stage two to Sant'Orsola Terme Val dei Mòcheni and stage four to Passo Pordoi Val di Fassa. The stage in between those two, the leg to Brenzone Punta Veleno is almost the same sort of finish, with a 8.5 kilometre HC ascent topping out just 2.5 kilometres from the line. The brief descent will not enable any big gaps to be closed.
Pinotti finished fourth in the final time trial in the Vuelta al Pais Vasco, and also rode well in the preceding day’s breakaway. That helped him secure victory in the intermediate sprints competition.
"That race was not so easy, with bad weather and full gas racing all day. But it gave me a boost of confidence because I finished strong,” he said. “I look forward to keep improving and Trentino is a lot of climbing. That's what I need to work on now – the long climbs."
Pinotti had a bad crash in last year’s Giro, breaking his pelvis. He was out for several months but was able to return to racing and to start building up his strength once again.
He now appears to be coming good, and will hope to perform well in both this year’s Giro and also the Olympic Games, where he will target the time trial.
He will be joined on the team by talented young American Taylor Phinney who, like Pinotti, is aiming for time trial success in the Giro, plus former world champion Alessandro Ballan, Yannick Eijssen, Mathias Frank, Tim Roe, Ivan Santaromita and Danilo Wyss.
The team will be managed by former stage winner Max Sciandri, who described the riders’ approach. "For many guys, this is a finishing off race for condition heading into the Giro," he said.. "Everyone has slightly different goals, but we'll melt together as a strong team."