After a relatively disappointing 2020, Marta Bastianelli (UAE Team ADQ) bounced back at the end of last season, finishing the campaign strongly with a stage win at The Women’s Tour and a fifth place at the inaugural Paris-Roubaix Femmes. She has begun 2022 in a similar fashion, winning the Vuelta CV Feminas following a near-perfect lead out from her team.
“Because the final part of my season last year went well, I have started this new season pretty well. It wasn’t an easy year last year but it doesn’t always go our way, we’re not machines,” Bastianelli said from her training camp in Altea, Spain last week.
Bastianelli quickly proved just how well she was set for the season by delivering a win during the first race outing of the new UAE Team ADQ colours, and she will now be turning her attention to the key goals of the season. The 34-year-old has won several prestigious races such as Gent-Wevelgem, Ronde van Vlaanderen and Ronde van Drenthe and this season, and she will once again orient her year around these types of races.
“Certainly the classics of the north, as always,”, she said, contemplating the upcoming year, “then we will evaluate a few good stages for me in the Tour de France and the Giro Rosa.”
Many of Bastianelli’s previous victories occurred during her long tenure at Alé Cipollini, later renamed Alé BTC Ljubljana, which has now been ransformed into UAE Team ADQ. Aside from a year spent at Team Virtu Cycling, she has been an integral part of the set-up since 2016 and although new sponsors decorate the team’s jerseys this season, the core of the squad has remained the same.
“It hasn’t changed much,” Bastianelli said. “We are always the same people, and there are some very nice and funny companions with whom I feel good so it will be like a second family.”
The bonds forged within the team were evident at the Vuelta CV Feminas as Bastianelli crossed the line with her arms aloft, her victory pose mirrored by her teammates Anna Trevisi and Maaike Boogaard as they finished the race.
As one of the most experienced members of a team containing several young riders, Bastianelli’s influence on her teammates seems to somewhat extend beyond the road.
“I like to give advice to them but I also like that they ask me for ‘help’ because sometimes I don't want to be too heavy like ‘the old teacher’ so it always takes half and half,” she said.
There is plenty of teaching by example, too, because even as Bastianelli is entering the final act of her career, she remains one of the most prolific sprinters in the women’s peloton.
