Vincenzo Nibali joins up with his Italian teammates today for some final training before flying to Rio for the Olympic Games. The Sicilian is the leader of the five-rider men’s road race team that will compete for one of the first medals of the 2016 Games on Sunday August 6. He will also ride the time trial on August 10.
Nibali set the Giro d’Italia and the hilly Rio road race as his major goals for 2016, sacrificing his hopes of overall success in the Tour de France in the hope of a medal. Also in the Italian team are Nibali’s Astana teammates Fabio Aru and Diego Rosa, and BMC riders Alessandro De Marchi and Damiano Caruso. De Marchi is the only one of the quintet not to have ridden the Tour de France and will take part in Saturday’s Clasica San Sebastian before joining the Italian team and national coach Davide Cassani for the flight to Rio.
The Italians will have one of the strongest teams in Rio but face serious opposition from the likes of Chris Froome and Adam Yates (Great Britain), Greg van Avermaet and Philippe Gilbert (Belgium), Alejandro Valverde (Spain), Romain Bardet and Julian Alaphilippe (France) and Rui Costa (Portugal). The testing 237.5km road race route is expected to see a battle between the best Grand tour climbers and strongest hilly Classics riders. The route includes a flat loop out of Rio, four laps of a two-hill circuit and then three laps of the Vista Chinesa 25km circuit that includes an 8.9km climb at an average of 6.2%. The start and finish overlooks the Copacabana beach.
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Ready to make a point
Nibali will head to Rio with good form after finishing the Tour de France but revealed to Gazzetta dello Sport that he is still angry and looking to make a point after being criticised for his performances at the Tour de France.
“I’m not a robot. Everybody always expects a lot from me, I get that but I never said I was going for the classification. That’s why I think I was far to heavily criticised when I was dropped on the first mountain stage in the Massif Central,” Nibali said hitting back.
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