‘Cycling is going to lose a lot’ –Filippo Ganna says club rider Filippo Conca winning Italian national jersey is bad for the sport

“An earthquake”, “a fairy tale”, “destabilising for the professional teams” – wherever you looked, it felt like everybody in Italian cycling had an opinion to give after the spectacular and surprising victory for Filippo Conca in this year’s Italian National Championships.

But given just how unexpected this win by a low-category rider against some of the biggest names in the WorldTour had been, perhaps that was only natural.

The dramatic results spoke for themselves: formerly with Q36.5 and Lotto-Soudal until Conca couldn’t find a team at the beginning of this season, this year he joined an Italian club, Swatt. And to say Swatt were collectively punching above their weight on Sunday’s rolling 228km race in North-east Italy between Trieste and Gorizia, is no exaggeration.

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Fighting against teams as powerful as Ineos, Soudal-QuickStep and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, two of the Swatt riders, Lorenzo Ginestra and Francesco Carollo, nonetheless made it in a long early break and two others, Mattia Gaffuri and Conca, were present in the final moves.

Against all the odds, Conca, 26, crossed the line half-a bike length ahead of former Giro d’Italia stage winner UAE Team Emirates-XRG Alessandro Covi, with Gaffuri placing fifth. After Conca had done so, he held up his finger to his mouth.

The short phrase he then uttered, “everybody can shut up now”, before collapsing on the ground, presumably exhausted and overcome by his achievements, spoke volumes both about the scale of his triumph, and also how much it meant to him.

Behind Conca, the list of WorldTour teams and stars silenced into submission by an upstart club rider was a long one. XDS-Astana, present with nine riders including Classics racer Alberto Bettiol, were just one big-name squad that perhaps was left empty-handed in the most surprising of circumstances. But, albeit in smaller numbers, there were plenty of other teams too caught napping or left vulnerable by illness.

Such was the case of Lidl-Trek with Jonathan Milan, their sprinter star who is set for the Tour de France this Saturday, but could only manage seventh. As for Ineos Grenadiers rider Filippo Ganna, who’d fallen sick after racking up his sixth time trial title last week, the Italian spent part of the race vomiting on the bike and was only able to finish second last.

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Despite his illness, Ganna did have enough energy, though, to add his opinion to the many about a victory that means that, as a club rider triumphed, there will be no Italian tricolore jersey in a hefty percentage of professional road races this season.

“It’s a destabilising result for the Italian professional squads,” Ganna told La Gazzetta dello Sport. “Cycling is going to lose a lot, because only the winner counts.”

As for the newfound champion himself, Conca said he hoped his phone to start ringing with the offer of contracts, and he also argued that this was a lesson for the teams with ‘old-fashioned mentalities’.

But having switched over to regular employment once he failed to get a contract, he also recognised it would take a lot of time for such an unexpected, if timely, win to sink in.

A crash with a marmot, running a B&B, and a gold medal

Conca on the top step of the podium at the Italian Nationals alongside Alessandro Covi and Thomas Pesenti (Image credit: Federazione Ciclistica Italiana)

At the end of last season, winless and out of a contract after four years at WorldTour level, “There were a lot of pros who found themselves out on a limb, only a very few got back into the sport,” he told Gazzetta.

“Most of the guys like me are working now, but I also run a B&B in Lecco, I got my boating license to do boat tours, and I would like to open a bike rental shop.” He also resumed his university studies and managed to complete his degree in Economics.

At the same time, he spent a lot of time training hard, partly at altitude, for the one race where he knew he’d be able to gain maximum exposure. During this long build-up for the nationals, he had some memorable setbacks, such as when on a descent from the ski station of Livigno, he ran over a marmot and crashed badly.

That accident cost him a week’s training. But close chance encounters with marmots apart, he said, the important thing was not to lose his self-belief.

“I trained so hard. It was like training weeks for one event, like it was a marathon,” he told Bici.Pro.. “I didn’t give up, and after I had to stop for a week [because of the marmot-inspired crash], I started preparing again for this objective.

“I’m really happy. Happy I won, but even more, perhaps, because I had the mental strength to not give up in these months.”

He explained to Gazzetta that his role in the teams he’d been in meant that “even when I had great legs, I had to work for someone.

“Teams have to work for their leaders, there’s nothing wrong with that, but when you spend your time fighting fires in a race and having to fill in the gaps, you risk” – in terms of contracts – “being left high and dry.”

Regarding his chances of reviving his professional career, he said, after he was told last year by Q36.5 that there was no longer a place for him in the team, for now, he could only hope there was a way back in.

“I’ve been looking for a team for months, and there was no way forward. This was a unique opportunity and I’m happy to have taken advantage of it.

“I was here to go for a top result, even if my chances were extremely limited. But it happened.”