Giovanni Ellena with Egan Bernal
Former ds Ellena talks about the beginnings of the pink jersey: “The duel with Pogacar? It will be stellar, the pink jersey on long climbs is stronger ”
MILAN. Autumn 1995, province of Vicenza. Team Androni is doing the first physical tests to its athletes in view of the new season. The sports director Giovanni Ellena, a former rider anchored in the Canavese area, is at the flagship who marks his times one by one.
Franco Pellizotti, the expert captain, approaches. «John or this takes us by the c..o we have caught a champion». Ellena, on the day of Bernal’s pink coronation », she laughs again. The “this” of Pelli, who today excellently directs the Bahrain flagship, Damiano Caruso is the Bernal pink jersey. Ellena still remembers: «’Pelli’ she said to me more or less like this: ‘the boys are destroyed, that one is around the curve smoking a straw …».
The test worked like this: two km on a climb, gradually increasing the wattage. The other riders were exhausted, Egan could have continued for a long time ». Now the Colombian is 24 years old and appears, even in racing, much more mature than his age.
At the time? “He was a child, mature and determined but still a child.” Another anecdote. The director of the Androni would have to sell. And he tells them while driving the youngest of the Giro, the 18-year-old Ukrainian Andrii Ponomar from the flagship for pre-time trial.
Egan Bernal, 24 anni
“The next day we went to Michele Bartoli for a test and we realized that he had two larger cycling shoes, two fingers passed through them and yet he had managed to make those times”. Legs, lungs, head. «He always greets me, we write to each other every day. After the Giau I wrote him “chapeau”. Immediate response: “John this was a journey and you are part of it”. Better him or Tadej Pogacar? «Two phenomena: the Slovenian is more explosive but on long climbs and at high altitude there is no match. Against Egan there is nothing for anyone, maybe at the 2022 Tour they will entertain ».
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