Matteo Trentin didn’t have any doubts. In the honeyed light of an autumn afternoon in Vicenza, there was one wheel to follow above all in the winning break at the Giro del Veneto. To win the race, he knew he couldn’t give Alessandro De Marchi an inch.
“Today, the person who worried me the most was obviously De Marchi,” Trentin said after he had pinned back his compatriot’s late attack and then won the sprint. “He’s someone who had to attack and normally if you give him three metres, then buonanotte, you won’t bring him back.”
De Marchi remains among the peloton’s most reliable strongmen after more than a decade as a professional. His peers know it only too well, as Trentin’s vigilance on Wednesday showed, yet the Friulan somehow finds himself reaching the end of the season still without a contract for 2023.
“I’m simply waiting. We have some leads that could open, but that haven’t opened yet, so I’m simply trying to focus on the races,” De Marchi told Cyclingnews before the start of the Giro del Veneto, which he would finish in fifth place. “I’m waiting for something to move and for certain things to fall into place to try to find somewhere.”
Cycling has always been a sport with an absurdly short memory. Just last year, De Marchi wore the maglia rosa for two days at the Giro d’Italia. The feat was notable not just for the athletic endeavour, but for the eloquence that followed in a thoughtful post-stage press conference, where he discussed everything from the campaign for justice for Friuli native Giulio Regeni, abducted and killed in Egypt in 2016, to his own, unfettered vision of the sport.
“My way of doing things is a lot more romantic than modern cycling allows,” De Marchi said then. “Maybe my style isn’t the most practical. There have been races where I spent the day in the break and got caught, and I was still happier with those than races where I got a placing.”
Still, De Marchi showed he knew how to win last season, too. A heavy crash ended his Giro prematurely, but he rallied to sign off on his 2021 campaign with a fine victory at Tre Valli Varesine. It all augured well for the 2022 season, but a sequence of illnesses ruined his Spring, bringing an early end to three successive stage races.
The 36-year-old somehow struggled his way through the Giro, but it was only at the Vuelta a España that the vim of old truly returned. His aggression there has continued in the late-season Classics, including…
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