Malaguti takes Route Adélie de Vitré in horrible weather

One year after winning the Route Adélie with Roberto Ferrari, the Androni-Venezuela team created an even bigger surprise by dominating the local teams in the French cup race on Breton soil. Unknown recruit Alessandro Malaguti proved once again that Gianni Savio is right to give a second chance to unlucky riders.

Following breakaways in which he and his teammates Antonino Parrinello, Marco Frapporti and Omar Bertazzo have successively been noted, Malaguti anticipated the sprint of what was left from the bunch: less than twenty riders, as the very cold and rainy conditions had taken their toll and sent back to the busses and campers 90 of the 123 starters. The Italian preceded on the line Belarus champion Yauheni Hutarovitch and up and coming Justin Jules who leads the French cup competition since the opening Grand Prix of La Marseillaise he won at the end of January.

Malaguti was in tears, shivering and cramping after the finish when he was handed a mobile phone to receive the congratulations of Savio. Without waiting for questions, the 25 year old from Romagna then started a monologue. "I don't realize what's happening to me," he said. "I'm not fast. I've never been fast. But everybody else was cooked.

"In the last kilometer, I noticed that they were kind of stopped by the toughness of the race. My luck today has been the rain. In these conditions, there are ignorant riders who don't know how to guide their bike. And when the peloton is suffering, I suffer less than the others. It comes from my difficult history with the sport.

"I've not followed the usual path of a professional cyclist. I've turned pro with the Ora Hotel team that collapsed. I've joined Miche that never started last season. I've raced really little until I received the call from Androni. Here I've found an unbelievably extraordinary staff that looks after me like I've never been looked after before. Today it was only my fourth one-day race [after Classic Loire-Atlantique, Cholet-Pays de Loire and Strade bianche] but thanks to the staff, I've come here with good form."

Runner up Hutarovitch confirmed the physical state of the leftovers of the starting peloton at the end of the five hours of hard racing. "We were all cooked," the sprinter from Belarus noted. "I've drunk only two bidons. In these conditions, you forget to drink. I've seen the guy [Malaguti] going but I couldn't follow him. I'm disappointed. Second means first of the losers."

"I only accelerated in order to create a gap to prepare the sprint for Bertazzo," Malaguti explained. "I didn't think I'd make such a difference. In the uphill finale, I looked back three times to believe that I was going to win. I started from far out [500 metres] after passing the final curve in sixth or seventh position. When I crossed the line, I thought of my mother who passed away one month ago and I cried. Excuse me, I'm still crying. I also thought of our brotherhood of the "passatori": all cyclists from Romagna who have turned pro gather once a year. Some of them have raced with Marco Pantani. People from Romagna, we're special."

Malaguti found a very special way to finally start his pro career for good under the Breton storm.

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