The Italian national cycling team as guests of Garda Trentino at the AktivHotel SantaLucia

If you come across cyclists dressed in blue on the roads around Lake Garda from 23 to 27 September, these are the athletes making up the Italian cycling team representing Italy at the World Championships on 29 and 30 September in Austria.
For this important final training session, Technical Director Davide Cassani chose the Trentino-Alto Garda region because of the significant differences in altitude of the routes around the lake – an essential requirement for professionals’ athletic training.
In spring, we were chosen as the most suitable bike hotel in Trentino to host the team. We are honoured and delighted to host the best national athletes here at the hotel. We are full of energy, and we will do our best to support them during this important training before the World Championships.
Under the direction of Silvio Rigatti, the “language of cyclists” is spoken here at the hotel. AktivHotel SantaLucia is a member of the well-known associations Italy Bike Hotels and MTS (Mountain Bike Holidays and Roadbike Holidays) and a partner of major brands like Scott and Liteville. The hotel offers a great deal of individual services for cyclists, which make for a particularly pleasant stay.
Whether it’s for racing bikes or mountain bikes, here you will really find everything you need for a cycling holiday: from a hearty breakfast for sports enthusiasts, bike storage and a workshop, to bike rental, the info point and guided tours.

Behind the scenes
In April,
Technical Director Davide Cassani chose Trentino, and Lake Garda in particular, for the Italian national team’s final training session. After presenting the AktivHotel SantaLucia, the confirmation came shortly afterwards: we had been chosen as the Italy Bike Hotel in Trentino best suited to host the Italian team. In September, for the final training session before the World Championships in Innsbruck, Italy’s best cyclists will train on the routes around Lake Garda and stay overnight in Torbole sul Garda.

29 August 2019
Marco Velo, deputy of Technical Director Davide Cassani, came to the hotel for an inspection and took the opportunity to bike along Lake Garda with Silvio and Alessandro Bertolini.
https://www.facebook.com/AktivhotelSantaluciaTorboleGardasee/posts/2131796183521199

The nominees
The long-awaited test of the road cycling elite, the World Championships in Austria, is just around the corner and back home in Italy it is time to make the right selection.

Vincenzo Nibali – captain
Team Bahrain-Merida.
Professional since 2005, Nibali is a universal rider: climber, excellent descender and also a good time trialist. Superlative in the stage races, but the same can also be said for one-day races. Vincenzo Nibali, known as “the shark”, is one of seven cyclists in the world to have won at least one of the three major races (Vuelta a España 2010, Giro d’Italia 2013 and 2016, Tour de France 2014).

Damiano Caruso
BMC Racing Team.
Professional since 2009, the 30-year-old Sicilian, stage and mountain rider, guarantees performance on mountain routes. In recent years, Caruso has made a decisive leap in quality. A good follower, he has never failed to get involved in mountain stages that best suit his characteristics.

Domenico Pozzovivo
Team Bahrain-Merida.
He has been a professional climber and stage race rider since 2005. He is prepared to play an outsider role. Pozzovivo is the first cyclist from Luca to take part in the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España. In his career, he won a stage at the Giro d’Italia 2012 and Giro del Trentino 2012, a stage at the Volta Ciclista in Catalonia 2015 and a stage at the Tour de Suisse 2017.

Alessandro De Marchi
BMC Racing Team.
A professional since 2011, he is also a motivated stage and mountain rider, ready for any effort. At the 2014 Tour de France, he won the fighting spirit prize for the Tour’s most combative rider on two consecutive stages. A month later, at the Vuelta a España, he won the seventh stage and crossed the finish line as the underdog. The following year, he won the fourteenth stage of the Vuelta ahead of his teammates. De Marchi won his place in the team with a great success on the eleventh stage of the 2018 Vuelta a España and always finished as an outsider.

Franco Pellizotti
Team Bahrain-Merida.
Professional since 2001, a climber, he is ready for the role of “director” on the Austrian route.
For years, Pellizotti has had the task of helping Vincenzo Nibali in the mountain stages of the big races. In 2017, after helping the captain to third place at the Giro d’Italia, they took part in the Vuelta a España together. He took fifth place on the day after helping the captain on the Anglirù climb following his heavy crash on the descent from the Alto del Cordal.

Gianni Moscon
Team Sky
Professional since 2016, the rider from Trentino is strong on the flats, cobbles and climbs. With his strong explosiveness, Moscon is considered one of the best talents in world cycling. Slight uncertainty about his participation: after being disqualified from the Tour de France, he is now completing mountain training on his own in order to get to the top when competing in Austria. We are sure that Gianni is absolutely ready and will explode on the Innsbruck circuit with a lot of energy.

Other possible participants include Fabio Aru, Davide Formolo, Gianluca Brambilla, Salvatore Puccio and Diego Ulissi.

On 17 September, the Technical Director Cassani will decide on the composition of the team for the 2018 UCI Road World Championships Innsbruck-Tyrol.
The route description of the World Championships by Alessandro Bertolini