Conceria Zabri – Fanini, Sofia Cilenti and her first Giro Rosa “my heart was beating like crazy and fear become determination”.

We had the pleasure to listen fromp0 Luca Chirico how he prepared the Giro d’Italia and his words  went beyond the pure technical information and he painted a colorful poirtrat of his personality, so we are sure it could be really interesting to have an ideaon how to prepare a Giro Rosa, so we asked to Sofia Cilenti to tell us about her experience in 2018.
It’s a pleasure to introduce Sofia, and we need a flashback in time till 23 March 2014 at the start of Milano Sanremo when a friend introduced her and asked to bring her all around the bus to see all the best cyclist of the world. Her eyes were sparkling and showed a great joy: Sofia was coming to life after a 2 years struggle against a terrible disease then little by little she could ride again and now she’s one of the most popular Italian cyclist and in 2018 she took part to her first Giro d’Italia.
That autumn during the annual meeting of a bicycle team Sofia, Luca Chirico (ready to start in 2015 his professional career with Bardiani team) and were all witted in the same table and she was so happy “to come back to ride my bicycle, just for a little but it was such an emotion”, so we asked her how is the life of a pro that share is life between school and training and how she lived her first Grand Tour.

“Sofia, your characteristic as a cyclist”
I’m tiny but I’m very strong and I’m very fast in the sprint. In the last year I worked hard in climbing and in long distances and I dropped the track so I lost a little bit of explosivity.

“Your team Conceria Zabri – Fanini”
My team is full of talented teammates, we support each other and thanks to the team job we make great results. I always take them as an example and I learned a lot in the last season.
Everyone has her character, some are calm, some not, but I live every moment with calm because I am sure anxiety is not a help for me or for the team. Probably I have a different point of view of life referred to other people, I never get angry if everything in a race is perfect, there are other situation in life to become worried! But I must say I am so proud of my team and the staff and my sport director Manuel Fanini believe in me and gave me a lot of opportunity.

“Your training”
You mean how many kilometer make a pro rider? Many! And I? Of course less. I have a lot of limits, If I train too much I feel tired for weeks and now I know my body and I know when it’s time to stop. My blood analysis are low and give me big limitation. And winter times give me other limitation because I live in the mountain, last year I did not enough training and then I worked harder during the season and I did 13 thousand kilometer. It was not my record but I have never rode so much from March to October and I took part to many competition.

“Focus Giro d’Italia”
I knew only one month before that I would have taken part to the Giro so my specific training was quite in a hurry. In that month I grew the distance in my daily training and during the retreat with the team we tried the time trial bicycles! After the Giro we planned to relax for one week without bicycle but I had a little problem and I stopped a couple of week.

“Your feelings during the Giro”
I had great and strong feeling during the race, from happiness to sadness! I didn’t know what expect from this experience… When Manule Fanini told me I was chosen for the Giro I was so happy I couldn’t even answer to the phone, and after the calling I cried! One week before the race during the retreat with my teammates I was afraid and very worried. The greatest emotion was at the start of first stage, a team time trial: my heart was beating like crazy and fear become determination, I felt myself so important riding that wonderful time trial bicycle, like I was looking at me from the sky looking at me in the greatest race of the world in a crowd of people around us, as I had always dreamed in my life. Day after day I was so happy to finish each stage, then I was so angry when the judges sent me out of the race because I arrived after time limits but that day me and another girl followed a motorbike of the organization and it took a wrong way so we lost a lot of time for something that was not in my control.

“Your future”
Of course I wanna come back to Giro Rosa, I have already took part to almost all the most important race in Italy but I have never did any race abroad so it would be great to have almost one experience in another country!