The madmen, the comeback, and the coach who races
Good morning,
These are today's quotes and interviews worth your time.
Stood out to me today: "When I start performing well, it's always the same thing. The moment you have one bad result, people start saying 'overrated' or whatever. When actually, they're the ones who put you on the pedestal. And they're the ones who tear you back down."
¡Vamos!
🎤 INTERESTING INTERVIEWS
"Stefano won here in 1998, and he's no longer with us."
Giulio Pellizzari on the special meaning of his stage win at the Tour of the Alps
The scream at the finish line in Val Martello came before the tears. Giulio Pellizzari had just won the second stage of the Tour of the Alps, and the emotion wasn't really about the result. It was about Stefano Casagranda, the father of his girlfriend Andrea, who died on October 1, 2025, after four years of illness.
"Stefano won here in 1998, and he's no longer with us. I wasn't even born when he won in Arco," Pellizzari told La Gazzetta dello Sport. "I thought about it a lot over the last month. I wanted to dedicate the win to him. To my girlfriend, his daughter, who has helped me live a beautiful story." Arco, where Casagranda won in 1998, is also where today's stage will finish. The coincidence did not go unnoticed.
The win also gave Pellizzari the race lead, four seconds ahead of Thymen Arensman. On his broader trajectory: "This race is special because it launched me. I'm proud to have won. After Tirreno-Adriatico I was happy, but not entirely: I was missing the win. In recent years I lacked the winning mentality. I'm working on it."
"We might seem like a couple of madmen, but in the end, something interesting might come of it…"
Domenico Pozzovivo on his comeback at age 43
Before the Giro del Trentino became the Tour of the Alps, Domenico Pozzovivo raced it as a neo-pro in 2005. This week, at 43, he's back on the same roads — returning to the peloton with Solution Tech-NIPPO-Rali after retiring at the end of 2024. His first daughter was born in December, and in the months since he's been building a coaching practice, working toward a master's in nutrition, and commentating for Swiss television.
The fitness numbers are what finally tipped him over the edge. "I've kept training all the while, and my performance levels have remained very high," Pozzovivo tells Domestique. "In some respects, my numbers were surpassing what they were when I was still racing, so I said to myself, why not?" The practical shift helped too: fewer altitude camps, more time at home. "I realized that there was maybe a middle ground."
Part of the experiment is scientific, part personal. He's been coaching race walker Alex Schwazer since early 2025, and it was Schwazer — himself staging a comeback at 41 after a doping ban — who planted the seed. "Even before I'd announced my comeback, I'd often show him my training sessions to help motivate him," Pozzovivo says. "And he was the one who actually said to me: 'Since I've tried to make a comeback, why don't you give it a go too?' We might seem like a couple of madmen, but in the end, something interesting might come of it…"
After this, the Giro dell'Appennino and Tour of Hellas await. And July? He'll be at the Tour de France — as a commentator, doing stage recons on the bike.
"He revolutionized cycling, taking it beyond its borders."
Gabriele Uboldi on the champions he's worked alongside
Gabriele Uboldi has spent years inside the orbit of cycling's biggest names, first with Peter Sagan, now with Remco Evenepoel and Giulio Pellizzari. Speaking to La Gazzetta dello Sport, the communications specialist offered a rare outsider-turned-insider account of what separates elite riders from each other — and what connects them.
On Sagan: "Peter is a true media star in every sense of the word. He revolutionized cycling, taking it beyond its borders. Everyone loved him — not just Slovaks. They always rooted for him. He was universal." Among the specifics: long-term commercial contracts, including a lifetime deal with Specialized. And a moment that Uboldi calls particularly meaningful: "Probably the most important of all the off-bike events was the meeting with Pope Francis, when he also brought his mother. It really mattered to him."
On Evenepoel: "Remco is a perfectionist. And extremely professional. Unlike Peter, he has to deal with the enormous expectations of his country. In Belgium, cycling is a religion."
On Pellizzari, where Uboldi is only just getting started: "With Giulio I've only just begun, but it already feels like we've known each other a long time. He's likable, loved by people, has a very good heart."
The through-line between all three? "They're all extremely well-mannered. And manners make a difference."
"He's obviously not a normal rider."
Inside Tom Pidcock's difficult return at the Tour of the Alps
Tom Pidcock arrived at the Tour of the Alps three weeks after falling into a ravine at the Volta a Catalunya. The medical timeline alone was remarkable. But the performance reality was blunter. After finishing second in stage one, he called it "the worst day on the bike of my life."
Sports director Gabriele Missaglia put it in context at the start of stage two. "It was a good result — better than I expected. Tom is simply not in form at the moment, he hasn't ridden for nearly two weeks," he told In De Leiderstrui. "During the stage he was suffering a great deal. Over the radio he told us several times that he wasn't feeling okay. But we pushed him a little to keep his morale up." The finish line, as ever, changed something in him. "I know Tom — when the finish line comes into view, it's like a red rag to a bull. Something changes in his head."
Coach Kurt Bogaerts filled in the wider picture after stage two, in which Pidcock finished 76th, nearly seven minutes down. "Even in the off-season he's working virtually every day. He never sits still. I don't think he's ever had a period of eleven days doing nothing in his career until now."
The mental adjustment took until day two to settle. "It's difficult to accept, but by Tuesday it already felt better mentally. Tom has a clearer picture of the situation now." Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the Monument he built his spring around, remains on the radar but is not guaranteed.
Missaglia kept it simple: "The first goal — and it remains the only goal — is to suffer through every stage of this race and come out the other end in better shape. He's obviously not a normal rider. He's a leader and a true champion — he starts every race to win, not to train. Fortunately, we are realistic enough."
"Riding in the peloton and descending are still my weaknesses."
Valentina Cavallar on the long road from rowing to the WorldTour
Valentina Cavallar spent nearly a decade as a competitive rower, reaching the Olympics in 2021. She stumbled into cycling almost by accident. "In 2022 I happened to come across the Tour de France Femmes. I followed a stage by bike and from that moment I really started to dream of a career as a cyclist." The switch was practical as well as romantic: she'd been working 14 hours a week as a fitness coach to fund her rowing career. Cycling, unlike rowing, could actually pay the bills.
The learning curve was steep. In her very first race, the GP Féminin de Chambéry in 2024, the nerves were physical. "Before the start, I already felt how close together we all were. My heart rate went up and it was loud around me. I still waste a lot of energy, because my nervous system is so alert to everything we encounter and might encounter," she told In De Leiderstrui. "I was getting tired, just from riding in the peloton, which meant I couldn't even finish a full race in the bunch in my first months." That same year, still on her fifteenth-ever race day, she climbed to seventh on the Alpe d'Huez on the final stage of the Tour de France Femmes. "I didn't necessarily see it as a surprise, even if it was a big performance. I only realized what I'd done later."
Now at SD Worx-Protime, where Anna van der Breggen is overseeing her development, Cavallar is honest about where the gaps are. "Riding in the peloton and descending are still my weaknesses. It's hard to learn, but I like learning and I think I can get good at it. That takes time, but I don't see that as a bad thing. There's so much I can still improve."
🏆 THE SERGE BAGUET AWARD
"I think it's idiotic. Because you have guys — people say 'yeah, he's super nice off the bike', but on the bike, it's just wow, really dangerous. I don't get it. How do you switch personalities like that? How do you endanger others if you're such a good person off the bike — what is that? And we're gambling with our lives too. It's a game, it's a sport. Sure, there are financial stakes, whatever you want, but it's sport. We're not in a factory, we're not at war. People who put others at that kind of risk — I just don't understand it."
— Kévin Vauquelin, Eurosport
Wonder what The Serge Baguet Award is all about? Check it out here.
💬 QUICK QUOTES
"Of course you want that again, but it won't be easy. I'd rather have one real standout result than three podiums." — Puck Pieterse on her Ardennes campaign, CyclingNews
"Some people invest in property. I invest in myself and my body, because that's what I need. I started to come around to that way of thinking — telling myself there are great champions who do this and say it really helped them. Might as well listen to them and try it. If I ever win the Tour, the money I put into myself — in purely financial terms — it pays off. That really is the word for it: investing in yourself." — Kévin Vauquelin, Eurosport
"Sure, it's motivating too, but we saw it again with Paul Seixas. And even when I start performing well, it's always the same thing. The moment you have one bad result, or you're not at 100 percent, people start saying 'overrated' or whatever. When actually, they're the ones who put you on the pedestal. And they're the ones who tear you back down. Honestly, it got to me a bit, and I had to step back from it. Now I live for myself." — Kévin Vauquelin on the cycle of hype and backlash from French media and fans, Eurosport
"We are a very critical country towards our cyclists. Especially towards Remco. He often gets unfairly more criticism than others among us. So he knows he really has to win. And I think it genuinely isn't that easy to deal with. I have the feeling that he has already changed considerably in how he speaks in interviews. There's always a kind of guard around what he says, whereas he used to be a bit more open. His racing too — it's calculated, it's measured." — Oliver Naesen on Remco Evenepoel and the pressure from Belgian media and fans, HLN Wielerpodcast
"Being back home for a few days, I can see things have been a bit crazy here in Belgium. It probably wasn't a bad thing to get away from all that for a while." — Wout van Aert, back in Belgium after a week of vacation in Spain following his Paris-Roubaix win, Sporza
"I'm here to test my punch. This is something new for me. Those short efforts of two or three minutes, it's different. I still have to discover how I respond to that." — Paul Seixas ahead of his first-ever appearance at La Flèche Wallonne, Domestique
That's it for today. See you tomorrow 👋
Jay