Ahead of his first race in the new role of Sport Director, Elia Viviani talks us through the team’s planning and approach to the seven-day UAE Tour.
Hi everyone. Myself and the team are really excited to fly out to UAE Tour and put our plans into action.
We have a strong team with different options to play during the week, which is really important for a race like this. A key focus during the week will be around the sprint stages with Sam Welsford. He’s showed how strong he is at the Tour Down Under with a win already this season. The goal is to support him with a strong lead-out with Connor [Swift], Ben [Swift], Josh [Tarling] and Artem [Shmidt] and put him in the position to do his best in the sprints versus some of the best sprinters in the world. The sprint field is always exceptional at UAE Tour and it’s a challenge everyone is looking forward to.
Another important day for us will be the stage two time trial on Tuesday, and the goal is to win it with Josh. It’s his first race this season and it’s a stage he won last year over the same distance (12.2km). We are confident he can compete for the win this year too and he will have our full support.