Filippo Ganna undergoing specific training for Paris-Roubaix

The INEOS Grenadiers rider will be racing Paris-Roubaix this weekend and come as one of the main wildcards. Filippo Ganna won't be the leader of the team, however he may prove to be a crucial card to play, one which will be complicated to predict how he'll be doing.

Italian national track coach Marco Villa has talked to Gazzetta dello Sport about the preparation work he is putting out. In the search of marginal gains, Ganna has been doing specific training that is meant to replicate the efforts he will be doing this Sunday: “Pippo will train on a points race bike, with a position very similar to his road position. He’ll use a fixed gear of 60x16, which is similar to 54x13 or 54x14 which he’ll use on the cobbles. We’ll do two sessions of 20 minutes which equals four or five cobbled sectors."

“Each sector equals eight or nine laps of the track, about two kilometres. The work starts behind the derny acting like being in the peloton. We then up the speed to lift Ganna to the power and cadence needed for the pave. That’s about 60-65kmh, with a cadence of 95-96 pedal strokes a minute and between 800-1000 watts. He does that for two minutes, about the equivalent of a sector of pave. He recovers behind the derny for about five kilometres and then does it again," Villa added.

Paris-Roubaix is a race where experience can prove vital. Ganna has done the race twice, but abandoned and finished outside the time limit. Despite this, his focus on the cobbled race this year has lifted the team's ambitions and focus on the preparation, as he will not be focusing on Giro d'Italia preparation this year.

Being a heavyweight rider with tremendous raw power, on paper it is a fair assumption that the World time-trial has the physical attributes to thrive in the flat roads and cobbled sectors of northern France.