Giro di Sicilia: Matteo Malucelli win stage 1 sprint

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Matteo Malucelli (Italy) won stage 1 of the Giro di Sicilia after he overhauled Matteo Moschetti (Trek-Segafredo) in the bunch finish in Bagheria.

Moschetti opened his effort from distance on the gently rising finishing straight after Trek-Segafredo had led out the sprint, but the Italian was unable to maintain his speed in the closing metres and Malucelli came past to claim the victory. Filippo Fiorelli (Bardiani-CSF-Faizané) took third on the stage.

Malucelli is racing for Daniele Bennati’s national team in Sicily following the demise of the Gazprom-Rusvelo squad in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The 28-year-old was already a stage winner at the Tour of Antalya this season, but he hadn’t raced since the UAE Tour in February.

The Italian selection at the Giro di Sicilia includes five riders from the now-defunct Gazprom squad, as well as Damiano Caruso, who was prominent in aiding Malucelli in the finale here.

“This has come at a difficult moment, and I hope this won’t be my last win as a professional because for the moment, I’m without a team,” Malucelli said. “With my former team, we worked very well during the off-season in training camps,  and the results were coming. Today we showed that we were on the right road and that we would have been dangerous this season.”

2021 overall winner Vincenzo Nibali (Astana Qazaqstan) was the main at the start in Milazzo, not from his hometown of Messina, and the opening day of the Giro di Sicilia brought the gruppo along the island’s northern coast by way of Tindari and Cefalù.

A seven-man break featuring Michael Belleri (Biesse-Carrera), Alejandro Ropero (Eolo-Kometa), Stefano Gandin (Team Corratec), Nelson Andres Soto (Colombia Tierra de Atletas), Garbiele Petrelli (Cycling Team Friuli ASD), Guido Draghi (Mg.K Vis-Color for Peace-VPM) and Francesco Zandri (Work Service Vitalcare Vega) forged clear in the opening kilometres, and they would animate much of the stage.

Gandin led over the day’s sole classified climb at Tindari, and they would build up a lead of four minutes as they tripped along the headlands, before Trek-Segafredo and Astana Qazaqstan set about whittling down their lead.

“It was a long stage of 200 kilometres and it’s a long time since I’ve raced, so the condition is always a bit of an unknown in a situation like that,” said Malucelli, whose Italian squad became more active as the afternoon progressed.

The break began to fragment in the closing stages, with Petrelli and Belleri the last two survivors of the move. They dangled ahead of the peloton deep into the finale, but they were swept up with 5km to go as Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux took up the reins on behalf of Danny van Poppel, though the Dutchman would not make an impact in the sprint.

Instead, Trek-Segafredo took over in the final kilometre, but Moschetti was perhaps dropped off in front a little too soon, and he was unable to fend off the fast-closing Malucelli, whose teammates Alessandro Fedeli and Damiano Caruso came home in fourth and fifth, respectively.

Malucelli carries the overall lead into stage 2, which brings the race through more rugged terrain in Sicily’s interior, with an uphill finale in Caltanissetta.