A year after he got his pro career off to a superb start with five stage victories in the race, Italian sprinter Andrea Guardini has returned to the Tour de Langkawi with high ambitions.
The 22 year old Italian is regarded as one of the top young sprinters in the sport and while the level of competition is likely to be higher this year than last, he’s feeling ambitious and is determined to start racking up results.
“I hope to be lucky and to take the first success of this season,” he stated, three days before the start of the race.
In 2011 the Tour de Langkawi took place a month earlier. Consequently, this time around, Guardini will have a lot more racing in his legs than he did then. He’s done three stage races in all this year; he was second and third on stages of the Tour de San Luis, eighth on a stage of the Tour of Qatar and seventh, eighth and ninth during the Tour of Oman.
In other words, he’s been banging on the door but hasn’t quite hit the mark. Rather than being discouraged by that, both he and his general manager Luca Scinto believe that everything will click in time.
“I'm sure that I did good work in the winter,” Guardini said, “and so does Scinto too. I'll need only luck to get my first success. In San Luis I felt good and I went close. In Qatar and Oman I had more difficulties, but I'm sure that I'm near at the result.”
One of those difficulties was being correctly placed before the sprints started. His team was up against a number of ProTeam squads in those races and was outmanoeuvred on a few occasions. He’ll hope that the squad of Matteo Rabottini, Alfredo Balloni, Thomas Bertolini, Cristian Benenati and Rafael Andriato will be able to get things exactly right in the days ahead.
Stefano Giuliani has clear memories of last year, with a bet with the rider that he couldn’t win five stages forcing the directeur sportif to give up smoking once he reached that goal. He described himself and Guardini as both being ‘quiet’ heading into the race, ruling out any great nerves. “We will go to Malaysia to work well and have fun together with all the guys. They are strong riders ready to do something good.”