You change in sport. You change shirts, countries, teammates and bikes… You change because you seek new opportunities and new stimuli. And for Bettiol, born thirty years ago in Poggibonsi, changing is also the way to avoid getting sucked into the routine, to get out of what many today call the “comfort zone”. A professional career that began right in the American house that before becoming Ef was called Cannondale, a career with important victories, one above all the Tour of Flanders in 2019 but also stages at the Giro and the Tour Down Under and this year the Milan-Turin, the Italian championship in Sesto Fiorentino and a stage and the final classification of the Tour de La Mayenne. Evidently the time had come to change. To take off. ” Let it be clear that even if it was a choice made mid-season it is not a leap into the unknown – he says – Astana is a Kazakh team but I know many teammates and there are many Italians. And then there is a project that will not lead me to change my attitude or my way of racing”, which is not a threat but absolutely a hope because in a modern cycling made of tactics, accounts and points to take home for the teams that rank in the World Tour, Bettiol is still one of the few capable of racing “against the wind”.
“It’s a way of being, maybe of living,” he explains. “I think you have to have courage when running, even to lose, even to make a bad impression. But I don’t want to finish a race with the regret of not having tried. It would be worse…”. And so here is Bettiol sprinting up Monte Morello, up Vecchio Kwaremont, trying in Glasgow on the Montrose Street climb in pursuit of a world championship with an outcome already written. There are those who accept and those who don’t give up and the Tuscan, luckily for us, belongs to the group of brave people who always try to play their cards, maybe even at the end of September in the world championship in Zurich. “I hope to go there, to be among those called up,” explains the Italian. “But it’s not my race, it will be a long challenge, difficult especially if the weather gets complicated, a world championship almost for climbers with a 5km climb that will be repeated eight or nine times. If I’m there I’ll do everything I can to give a hand to the national team but there are two absolute favourites: Tadej Pogačar And Remco Evenepoel. …”. And if there is one, he will try to do everything to annoy them, to make their life difficult, to disrupt things.
As always. In his slightly old-fashioned, but very modern cycling. “The cycling of our days is a different sport compared to the epic years of the past. Honor to the great champions but now everything has changed, tied to other logics. When some young people ask me for advice on how to get to professionalism, the answer that comes from my heart is not to explain to them how to get there, but how to stay among the professionals. Many young people arrive and then give up, they can’t do it because they join a group already tired from many years in the youth categories faced with too much responsibility, too much pressure from parents, technicians, clubs. Then they find themselves facing endless seasons that begin in December and end in October, with sacrifices, trips, planes, far from their families and loved ones and they get into difficulty. I believe that for a young person today the priority, even if he wants to do cycling, is to study, learn English, learn to move and travel, compare himself with other countries, other cultures… Of course then he also has to pedal hard, obviously… But the new cycling is this stuff here…”.