This year’s Giro d’Italia will feature the climb of Mount Etna for only the third time in the race’s history and the riders are taking the prospect of the Sicilian volcano very seriously. This week, coincidentally, there will be two of the top ProTeams hoping for Giro glory on the mountain to check out its gradients, and also to take advantage of the relative good weather compared to the rest of the high Italian mountains further north.
Astana and Lampre-ISD will both be travelling to the mountain, which is Europe’s most active volcano.
"Next week, Wednesday or Thursday, the riders will go in reconnaissance of the course of the 2011 Giro,” said Astana manager Giuseppe Martinelli. “We also chose to come to Etna, because last year Paolo Tiralongo trained there and strongly advised us to return with the team; this place seems ideal for a training camp at altitude”
Rémy Di Gregorio, Dmitriy Fofonov, Enrico Gasparotto, Maxim Iglinskiy, Fredrik Kessiakoff, Roman Kreuziger, Francesco Masciarelli, Evgueny Petrov, Sergey Renev and Paolo Tiralongo will be the Astana riders present at the camp.
"This training camp will be also useful for Paris-Nice that’s coming soon,” Martinelli explained, “and will be his first race with Vinokourov and the first big objective of the season for the team."
Although Lampre-ISD’s Michele Scarponi has already spent some time climbing Etna’s gradients in December, he evidently feels that the Sicilian mountain is worth a visit. With the Eagle of Filottrano this time though will be Daniele Pietropolli, Przemyslaw Niemiec, Marco Marzano and Leonardo Bertagnolli; they will also be supported by the team’s technical staff under the guidance of director Orlando Maini
"We thought it was necessary to give the riders the chance to perform altitude trainings,” said Maini, “choosing Etna as a good place for doing this. After the early days, we'll perform intense training, while in the last days the work will be lighter in view of the coming races.
“We'll have also the chance to test again the course of the 9th stage of Giro d'Italia. Scarponi and Marzano will probably stay on Etna until 19 February".
Scarponi is enthusiastic to return to the mountain that he was checking out just seven weeks ago.
"I'm happy to give additional value to my fit performing altitude training,” he said. “Etna's roads will give to me and my team mates extra motivation, since we'll perform training on the roads that will be the protagonist of Giro d'Italia in May"
The Giro d’Italia will climb Mount Etna twice on the 9th stage on May 15th; it will climb first from Linguaglossa to Rifugio Citelli and then from Nicolosi to Rifugio Sapienza, where the stage will finish.