Androni-Sidermec team manager Gianni Savio has urged Giro d’Italia organisers RCS to award a fifth wildcard slot for this year’s race. The Italian manager has asked that his squad and Nippo-Vini Fantini be allowed to submit a combined team after they both missed out on spots.
In mid-January RCS awarded their four wildcard places to Bardiani-CSF, CCC Sprandi, Gazprom-Rusvelo and Wilier-Selle Italia, therefore leaving out both Savio’s team and Nippo-Fantini. This caused anger and surprise, mainly within Italy, with Savio’s team missing out for the second year running.
The 18 WorldTour teams are automatically invited to the Corsa Rosa meaning a total of 22 teams will ride the 100th edition of the Giro d’Italia. The race starts in Sardinia on Friday May 5 and ends three weeks later in Milan on Sunday May 28.
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In a statement released by Savio, the veteran team manager states: “We believe the time has come to put an end to the controversy following the award of the wild cards for the Giro d’Italia.”
“While noting that it would be virtually impossible to achieve the solutions proposed so far, we have not given up and we propose an exemption from the rules to assign a fifth wild card to a mixed team, composed of four riders from Androni-Sidermec and four from Nippo-Fantini.”
Savio argued that with eight extra riders on the road safety would not be a compromised and he pointed to the 2011 edition of the race as an example. That year RCS granted a special dispensation for an extra wildcard team, in order to celebrate 150 years since Italy’s Unification.
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