January star Christian Scaroni leads XDS Astana on quest to save their WT license: "We’ll keep pushing"

Cycling
Thursday, 30 January 2025 at 03:00
christianscaroni

With new sponsor, Team entered the 2025 season in a strong fashion, racking up 435 UCI points over the recent three one day races in Spain. Much of the credit goes to Christian Scaroni who has taken up a role of leader for the early-season races and scored over half of these points himself.

But despite this good start, Scaroni can't be quite happy with how the races went - because he already finished runner-up for the second time in a row at Trofeo Calvia. Once again - short of a Swiss rider too. "Once again, I was close to victory," knows Scaroni, "but I just fell short. Still, I'm happy with how I raced – I gave it everything I had. I’ve managed to start the season well and come into these first races in great shape, which was my goal after a not-so-successful last year."

But winning in Mallorca isn't the main objective of XDS Astana in 2025. The Kazakh-Chinese team set out on an unlikely journey to recover from a near-5000 points deficit in the three-year UCI ranking and remain in the World Tour for the next three years. In this regard, the powerful displays from whole team at the start of the season shed a ray of hope.

And of course Scaroni can be happy about it too. "Our team had a great day; we were always at the front. With 25 km to go, I attacked on a climb alongside Clément Champoussin, and a Red Bull rider joined us. Then he counterattacked, and we had to spend a lot of energy to neutralize his move. In the end, I just didn’t have enough left in the legs for the sprint. But overall, it was a really good day. I’m happy with my form, and we still have chances to fight for a win, so we’ll keep pushing."

claps 1visitors 1
Write a comment

Just in

Popular news

Latest comments