The Liquigas-Doimo team has announced its roster for the upcoming Giro d’Italia, presenting a team with a number of options. The team will first and foremost be battling for the overall classification with two captains, but is also armed with one of the fastest sprinters in the sport.
Franco Pellizotti will be looking to build on his second place of last year (after the subsequent disqualification of original runner-up Danilo Di Luca). The Dauphin, as he is known, won the tough mountaintop stage to Blockhaus in last year’s race and will be targeting the mountain stages to take time from the stronger time triallists. As the winner of the 2008 stage to the Plan de Corones, the last time the race visited the already legendary unsurfaced climb, he will be looking towards the identical 16th stage of this year’s race.
Ivan Basso starts as the team’s other captain, looking to reproduce his overall victory in the 2006 race. Basso has struggled to recapture the form he showed before he was suspended for his involvement the Puerto doping scandal, but his fourth place overall in last year’s Giro shows that he is gradually returning to the top.
Both captains will be ably assisted by such climbers as Robert Kiserlovski and Sylwester Szmyd.
As well as aiming to take the pink jersey at the race’s finish in Verona on May 30th, the team will also be chasing stage victories and the red points jersey with Daniele Bennati. The sprinter from Arezzo took three stages and the points jersey (then ciclamin coloured) the last time he rode the Giro in 2008, and will be confident of reproducing similar results this time.
Conspicuously missing from the team are young Grand Tour contenders Vincenzo Nibali and Roman Kreuziger; both riders are aiming for the Tour de France in July.
Liquigas-Doimo for the Giro d’Italia:
Valerio Agnoli, Ivan Basso, Daniele Bennati, Maciej Bodnar, Robert Kiserlovski, Franco Pellizotti, Fabio Sabatini, Alessandro Vanotti and Sylwester Szmyd