Filippo Ganna is setting the bar high for 2025, with top results in Paris-Roubaix, Milano-Sanremo and the Tour de France amongst his targets.
The Ineos Grenadiers racer is currently training in the Canary Islands with director Leonardo Basso. But in his head he is already riding over the capi of Sanremo and the cobbles of the Hell of the North, with July in France another big goal.
Ganna has never won in any of his three big races for the first half of 2025, he told Bici.Pro. But the ultra-versatile rider with multiple World time trial titles, the Hour Record and stage wins in the Giro d'Italia to his name has every intention of changing that this year.
The 28-year-old Italian recognised the difficulties of his challenges, particularly given the varied nature of the terrain, with Paris-Roubaix a particularly idiosyncratic kind of course.
"Roubaix is a different sport, in my opinion it's not cycling. It's a mixture between hurting yourself and suffering a great deal, but cycling is something else," he told Bici.Pro.
"However, it's a race that is in the heart of many athletes - both in the present day peloton, past racers and amongst future generations as well."
A participant in Paris-Roubaix four times, Ganna has taken part in the Queen of the Classics four times, his results steadily improving to a career-best sixth in 2023. In 2024, with his eyes firmly set on the Olympics, he did not take part.
"It's a savage race, and you have to take care of every last detail to finish with the best. But then there's a guy like Sonny [Colbrelli, 2021 winner - Ed.] who did it all in his own way and who managed to win the first time he turned up."
"Whatever the race, whether it's a Classic or anything else, the instinctive part of you comes out. So you have to be cool and calculating, but other times you have to follow your heart."
Ganna will not change the bike setup too much for targets as different Sanremo and Roubaix, saying that in the French Monument he will switch to slightly broader tyres, extra handlebar tape and gel to ease the effects of the cobbles' vibrations on his arms.
After that there will be a return to France in the summer for a very different kind of racing, with the Tour's first time trial on stage 5 in Normandy one option that naturally fits Ganna's talents. The second TT stage in the Pyrenees is uphill, so will not be a target, but Ganna is not ruling out success on other stages, either.
"The only thing that San Remo, Roubaix and the Tour have in common for me is that I have never won them. Not a single stage, nothing at all. So in that sense, I am a bit behind and I hope that 2025 will be the year in which I can finally tick off these three races," he told Bici.Pro.
Ganna is set to start the 2025 season on February 5 at the Étoile de Bességes in France, a race he has participated in twice, in 2021 and 2022, picking up a total of three stage wins. More success there would be welcome, but his key ambitions for 2025 are much further down the line - and in Ganna's mind at least, his top three goals of his season are already standing out very clearly on the horizon.
