With Joaquim Rodríguez concentrating on the Tour de France, and Denis Menchov having suffered a recurrence of an old knee injury, the Katusha Team is heading to the Giro d’Italia with neither of its tried and trusted Grand tour Contenders. Instead of the 2013 runner up and 2009 winner, the Russian team will be pinning its hopes on the as-yet untested Yuriy Trofimov, who has never led in a three-week race before.
Katusha was only officially granted an invitation to the Giro three weeks ago as the International Cycling Union (UCI) granted race organiser RCS Sport special dispensation to field a peloton of 207 riders. The team only secured its ProTeam registration in mid-February, following an appeal to the Court for Arbitration in Sport (CAS), and was not offered one of the four wildcards available.
Nevertheless, despite the eleventh hour nature of its official invitation, and the absence of its two biggest names, the Russian team still aims for a as good a result as possible.
“As usual it will be a long, demanding competition, said the head directeur sportif Valerio Piva. “The Giro d'Italia is always one of the hardest races of the whole season, and this edition won't be any different.
“If you have a team with a rider that will fight for general classification, you must be focused from the beginning to the end,’ he explained. “The first part will be easier but there will be some nervous, dangerous stages, with hot weather, really different from what the riders found in this first part of the season; while in the last week the peloton will reach the Alps, where the overall will be decided, with Tre Cime di Lavaredo the day before the final stage.
“I think our team can obtain a good result,” Piva added. “We will have Trofimov as a leader, but also [Giampaolo] Caruso proved to be really in shape so we will see. We will have also many riders that can win a stage, such as [Luca] Paolini, [Maxim] Belkov and [Pavel] Brutt; we will attack and get in the breakaways as often as we can. So, our goal will be to win at least a stage, and to take a good final position in general classification. I think Trofimov can get into the top-ten, and I would be very happy if we manage to take this result.”
Katusha Team for the Giro d’Italia
Maxim Belkov, Pavel Brutt, Giampaolo Caruso, Vladimir Gusev, Petr Ignatenko, Dmitriy Kozonchuk, Luca Paolini, Yuriy Trofimov, Angel Vicioso.