A month ago, Filippo Ganna was in action at the Track World Championships in Roubaix but after a short holiday in the Maldives, the Giro d'Italia criterium in Dubai and celebrations with his local fan club, the time trial world champion will travel to Gran Canaria with several Italian national squad teammates on Thursday as he steps up his winter training in the sun.
Ganna will then join up with his Ineos Grenadiers teammate on December 7 for a ten-day training camp in Mallorca and a second camp in Calpe, Spain, before making his 2022 season debut at the Vuelta a San Juan in Argentina.
According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, Ganna will then ride the UAE Tour between February 20-26 as he builds the foundations to a spring Classics campaign.
Before travelling to Gran Canaria, Ganna visited the GoldTattoo7 studio in Brescia with fellow team pursuit riders Simone Consonni and Francesco Lamon for the first sitting of a celebratory tattoo.
Ganna opted for small Olympic rings and olive wreath symbol on his chest with the date of August 4, when he won an Olympic gold medal in the men’s team pursuit. He also had a much larger Samurai wildcat tattoo designed on his left shoulder.
The 25-year-old Italian was the anchor of the Italian team pursuit quartet, producing a high-speed final kilometre to defeat Denmark and set a new world record of 3:42.032, with the quartet repeating their success at the Roubaix world championships. Ganna won the world time trial in Belgium and won both time trial stages at the Giro d’Italia while helping Egan Bernal win the Corsa Rosa.
Ganna will travel to Gran Canaria with fellow team pursuit riders Francesco Lamon and Liam Bertazzo, the junior team pursuit squad, Martina Alzini and Martina Fidanza, who won the world title in the Scratch race in Roubaix.
Ganna will finalise his 2022 race programme and goals during the Ineos Grenadiers camp in December.
With opening time trials awarding the leader’s jerseys at both the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France, Ganna faces a difficult decision. He is also likely to consider an attempt at the Hour Record on the track in the summer before defending his world time trial title in Australia.
“I’d like to ride both,” Ganna recently told La Gazzetta dello Sport when asked to choose between the Giro and the Tour in 2022.
“But I’ve also got to remember that there’s the World Championships (in Australia) to defend too, so we’ve got to be ready to make some tough choices. I’ll decide with the team, I trust the evaluations they’ll make.”
