Vincenzo Nibali makes a promise to the fans

The Shark prepares for redemption after a difficult 2020: “Never again a year with zero tituli.”

Vincenzo Nibali is back in the saddle with the hope of forgetting 2020 as soon as possible: “More than anything, I’d like to erase it, not think about it at all. It messed up my preparation and even in the race it was so difficult to decipher. It had been since 2011 that I hadn’t ended a year without even one success, even though they then awarded it to me for that year. I would say that with the ‘zero tituli’ it can be enough (laughs).”

“Now we hope that the virus will let us work to regain a minimum of normalcy. The main goal? It’s the Giro, we’ve studied an approach march calibrated to the pink race Then we’ll adjust our aim week by week, but I’ll do a lot of races in preparation for the Giro to put myself on the right course.”

In 2020 so many young people exploded: “Undoubtedly it was their year, but I wouldn’t call anyone finished. Some I saw in person, for example Tao Geoghegan Hart at the Giro, while others I don’t know at all, like Pogacar. Maybe we will meet soon.”

Nibali will also participate in the Tour: “It’s perfect as an approach to the Games. Even if you don’t have ranking ambitions, it always gives you something more than the one-day race, and this was proven by last year’s World Championship, when in Imola everyone who had been in France played for the title. The Tour is the Tour also because of that.”

The Olympics: “They are something unique. I thought a lot about the crash in Rio in 2016, without that crash we would be here now talking about a great story. Instead I suffered a double fracture.”