Giuseppe Martinelli gets off the hook on Vincenzo Nibali’s heir

Vincenzo Nibali has two potential heirs according to Martinelli

Italian cycling is looking for an heir to Vincenzo Nibali, who will retire from competitive activity at the end of the 2022 two-wheel season. Giuseppe Martinelli, asked about this by ‘La Gazzetta dello Sport,’ even proposes two names in this regard, that of Italian champion Filippo Zana and 21-year-old Antonio Tiberi.

“An heir to Nibali could have been Giulio Ciccone,” said the Astana Qazaqstan sports director, “but he has already lost too much time and has shown himself to be more from stages than from the classification. I say Filippo Zana and Antonio Tiberi. Zana is more experienced, he is 23 years old, he is the Italian champion. I saw him finish third in the Tour de l’Avenir in 2021, when he could maybe even win. With the move into the World Tour from Bardiani-CSF to BikeExchange he could make a quantum leap: he can race with more continuity, he has a program mapped out as early as December.”

“And then Tiberi, 21, who rides in Guercilena’s Trek, a manager who knows how to develop young people. Tiberi is a photocopy of Nibali as a young man, even the face resembles him,” Martinelli sentenced.