Elia Viviani never seems to stop. The newly crowned European champion’s road campaign may be winding down at the EuroEyes Cyclassics in Hamburg and the Bretagne Classic over the next two weekends, but the curtain won't fall on his 2019 season until November at the earliest. The demands of qualifying to defend his omnium title at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics have it so.
It has ever been thus. One season can easily bleed into the next for a man who toggles between road and track, but Viviani appears to know no other way of existing.
He has already had a busy August. A week after completing the Tour de France, he landed the RideLondon Classic. Seven days after that, he claimed victory in the European Championships in Alkmaar. In between, he confirmed his imminent transfer to Cofidis. All in a month’s work, and there are still miles to ride and promises to keep before he finishes his tenure at Deceuninck-QuickStep.
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"I’m trying to hang tough now and keep my Tour condition going for these last two races," Viviani tells Cyclingnews. "Then after a short rest, I’ll be focusing on the track."
Whatever happens in the coming two weeks, Viviani’s road season is already a success thanks to that European title and the maiden Tour stage victory that preceded it. For a sustained spell in May and June, however, Viviani’s year wore a different mien. If it was one thing to start the Giro d’Italia with fewer wins under his belt than at the same point in 2018, it was quite another to come away from this year’s corsa rosa with no victories at all.
In public, he wore his dissatisfaction with as much good grace as he could muster, keeping his counsel when the commissaires stripped him of victory in Orbetello, and then praising the speed of Arnaud Démare and Pascal Ackermann when he fell short thereafter. In private, his disappointment was more acute. Viviani was in the process of negotiating his 2020 contract and, suddenly, there was no guarantee that he would even make Deceuninck-QuickStep’s Tour de France squad.
Moving to Cofidis
The road to Tokyo
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/viviani-im-convinced-i-can-repeat-the-same-results-at-cofidis
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