Giovanni Visconti has forgotten about being overlooked for the Giro d’Italia, his problems this spring and has returned to win two stages of the Tour of Turkey. He leads the race with four stages left, looking ahead to a second Italian national title and the World Championships.
“I am no longer thinking of it. The delusion is going. I like the Giro but I cannot kill myself if I don’t race it,” Visconti told La Gazzetta dello Sport. “I have other goals. I will give my all for the national title [in June] and then the Worlds, but that is a little further off. For now, it is better to just keep an open mind.”
Visconti came to prominence in 2007 riding alongside World Champion Paolo Bettini at team Quick Step. Then 24 years old, he won the Italian national championships and the Coppa Sabatini. The next year, he traded his tricolore Italian jersey for the pink leader’s jersey for seven days at the Giro d’Italia.
This week, two stage wins in Turkey lifted the spirits of the ISD-Neri rider from Sicily. He had been dogged by health problems this spring despite dedicating himself to training over the winter.
“I trained a lot this last winter, but at the Giro di Calabria I suffered from hypothermia. It took me about 20 days to recover, but then I started to have problems with my left leg and my back. I went in and had many exams to discover if there were some problems with an artery, but everything was normal.
“This all weighed on my mind and I was not mentally in the game, but now I am better, also thanks to the warmth.
“I am growing but slowly and I am making progress, I need to make the jump in quality [of wins], but I have a long racing career ahead of me.”
Other riders of the same age are progressing, like Liquigas’ Vincenzo Nibali. Nibali will race the Vuelta a España and have a chance to better his seventh place at the Tour de France this year.
“Undervalued? I don’t know if that is the right term. We young riders are growing and we deserve more consideration. We are talking about me, but it could also be Nibali. Give us faith, also because we have never had problems with doping.”