New Italian head coach Paolo Bettini has returned from checking out this year’s World Championships road course in Melbourne. He proclaims it a good circuit for sprinters, according to la Gazzetta dello Sport. Not quite a pure sprinter’s course, like Zolder, Belgium in 2002, when Mario Cipollini won, he says, but more like another course that saw an Italian victory.
The double World champion made the trip with three Italian riders: Giovanni Visconti (ISD-Neri), Filippo Pozzato (Katusha) and Luca Paolini (Acqua & Sapone).
“It’s more like the course in Benidorm [Spain] in 1992, when [Gianni] Bugno won,” he said, “when he made his sprint over not too many pure sprinters… or, you know, like a the Amstel Gold race without the finish on the Cauberg.”
“It’s not a predictable course,” he continued, “it’s open to interpretation. The first 90km could be tiring, narrow roads with course asphalt and irregular edges that will make it difficult.”
While the winner from Salzburg, Austria in 2006 and Stuttgart, Germany in 2007 expects it to be a fast finish, he predicts that it will be a strong rider that takes the title rather than a pure sprinter.
“The circuit doesn’t have many places to recover,” he said, “it could be a sprint finish, but the winner will be a rider who knows how to race on a mixed course. [three-time champion Oscar] Freire is the name that comes to mind.”
As a prolific winner on courses like this, Bettini himself would have been a big contender a few years ago.
“I would enjoy it,” he joked, “but with the right legs…”