The Russian Katusha team will be riding Milano-Sanremo in support of its Italian champion Filippo Pozzato in Saturday’s Milano-Sanremo. Pippo, the last Italian to win la Primavera, has had a quiet start to 2011 so far but the team hopes that he can get his season going with a result in the Italian classic.
"Pippo, at least till now, didn’t obtain any good result in 2011,” said Katusha sports director Serge Parsani, “but he arrives at the event in a good shape. He cares a lot about this race and he’s very motivated: for this reason I’m sure he will be one of the protagonists".
One of the riders who Pozzato will rely on to help him in his attempt at a second Sanremo victory is veteran compatriot Luca Paolini. The 34-year-old crashed heavily in stage 5 of last week’s Tirreno-Adriatico, forcing him to abandon the race, but he has apparently recovered sufficiently to ride.
Back in 2003, Paolini was a major part of Paolo Bettini’s victory by helping the future World and Olympic champion keep ahead of the peloton after they escaped with local rider Mirko Celestino on the Poggio. Besides Paolini though, the team has no shortage of Sanremo pedigree; team manager Andre Tchmil won the race in 1999, surprising the peloton with one of his trademark final kilometre attacks, while the team’s technical advisor Mario Cipollini won the 2002 edition.
"The tactics, in races like this, is conditioned by lots of factors,” explained Parsani. “First of all, we´ll have to consider the weather condition. Then, as always, we´ll have to see how the race develops in its first part. In particular, we´ll have to understand if there will be important escape or just extemporary escapes bound to finish in few kilometres.
“Finally, we have to be careful of what happens in the end, especially in "Cipressa" and "Poggio", where lots of the last edition were decided".
Katusha team for Milano-Sanremo:
Mikhail Ignatyev, Vladimir Isaychev, Alexander Kolobne, Vladimir Gusev, Leif Hoste, Aliaksandr Kuchysnki, Luca Paolini, Filippo Pozzato
Sport directors: Serge Parsani, Claudio Cozzi