Ilnur Zakarin is confident he can finish on the podium of the Giro d'Italia this year, with his Katusha-Alpecin sports director Dimitri Konyshev convinced the Russian will win a Grand Tour before his career is out.
And after an inconspicuous start at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, considerable weight was added to those hopes on the queen stage of the Abu Dhabi Tour on Saturday, where Zakarin rode away from what was pretty much the entire cast of this year's Giro favourites, though he was just pipped for the stage win by Rui Costa.
"I felt very good today and I'm happy with this results as I have recently trained hard at Mount Teide," said Zakarin, who distanced Nairo Quintana, Vincenzo Nibali, Fabio Aru, Bauke Mollema, Tom Dumoulin, and Steven Kruijswijk – who will all feature in Italy in May. "This is the fruit of that hard work and I'm happy."
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The Russian, who was banned for two years in 2009 for using anabolic steroids, was in a strong position at last year's Giro until two crashes on the Chianti time trial dented his push for the podium. Still lying fifth overall, his race ended when he crashed dramatically on the descent of the Colle dell'Agnello two days from Milan.
"At the Giro he had a very bad experience last year," Konyshev told Cyclingnews in Al Ain on the morning of the Abu Dhabi queen stage. "Talking about the podium is always difficult and in the last five days everything can change, but I think [without the crash] top five we could have done easily.
"The only thing he missed last year was experience. Now we have some. I cannot say he has a lot of experience but he has some. So this year we are thinking about the first three places, I think he's able to do that. He's much more experienced than last year. It was really the first three-week race as a leader. So he gained a lot of experience. Also with how to program the race. We made a couple of mistakes last year in terms of preparation for the Giro. He was too good at the beginning, and worse towards the end. We've changed his calendar and training a bit to try to organize it better."
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