After catching an overnight flight from Milan to Muscat, a bleary-eyed Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) had to be stirred from his bed on Monday afternoon to come downstairs for the pre-race photo call of Tour of Oman favourites in the courtyard of the Hormuz Grand Hotel.
The Sicilian will doubtless be part of the wide awake club by the time the race gets underway on Tuesday, though after undertaking an 11-day block of altitude training at Mount Teide in the build-up to the race, he is unsure of whether he will hit the ground running in Oman.
“I don’t know, we’ll have to see,” Nibali said after pulling up a seat. “I’m only down from Teide for three days so I’ll need a few days to assimilate the work I did up there at altitude. I’ll have to get back to race rhythm. It’s always a bit of a change when you come down and there’s the change in temperature, too, although it seems very, very good here, a lot cooler than last year.
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“The Green Mountain stage will be the most important stage again, and I’ve just seen that it’s two kilometres longer so it’s going to be even more difficult.”
Winner atop Green Mountain in 2012, when he also finished second overall, Nibali has been a regular in Oman over the years. Though his programme changes this season with his return to the Giro d’Italia, he saw no reason to forgo the trip to the Middle East. “This has always worked well for me, it’s more or less always been part of my programme. I didn’t feel like I needed to change,” he said.
Speaking to reporters at last month’s Tour de San Luis, where he began his season, Nibali had lamented that he had been burdened with “the wrong teammates” at the 2015 Tour de France, where he recovered to finish fourth overall after a trying opening ten days. He took a more diplomatic line when asked to revisit the topic in Muscat on Monday.
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