"Most of the time I ended up ill in a hotel room or in my house" - Alessandro Covi rues illness that wrecked 2023 season
Cycling
Third at the Trofeo Laigueglia was the highlight of Alessandro Covi's season. The UAE Team Emirates rider completes the season with 66 race days, however he never found his form as a mononucleosis kept him under the weather throughout most of the year.
“This year my season ended early, I've already been out of competition for two weeks and I'm resting. It wasn't the season of my dreams but certainly a season where I learned a lot," Covi shared in a social media message. “In March I found out about a reactivation of the mononucleosis virus which knocked me out for the rest of the season. I tried in every way to get back to good levels without ever succeeding, in fact most of the time I ended up ill in a hotel room or in my house."
After quite a lot of success in 2022, where he inclusively took a stage win at the Giro d'Italia, Covi looked to find his own space with the UAE team but ended up as a domestique. The team's growing quality is definitely a factor, but multiple bouts of illness saw him unable to train with consistency and quality. He ends his season prematurely after the Trofeo Matteoti in mid-September, thinking about recovering and better luck for next year. "We and the team preferred that it would be better to stop and rest for my health and obviously to rearrange everything to best prepare for the next season," he tells.
"I expect luck to give me back a lot of good things for next year, so now we recover, we recover and then we project ourselves into 2024. I'm sorry not to be able to help the team fight until the last race for the world ranking but I am convinced that they can do it and I will always support them”
Read also
Just in
Popular news
Latest comments
- The bike industry situation is the same as the future Dutch talent pool discussion , it’s a fakely perceived problem due to an exceptional period that’s come to an end.Mistermaumau18-12-2024
- It's all a part of the fun. Sometimes it takes a few races before you can tell who's who and what's going on.
santiagobenites18-12-2024 - Every year cycling teams force their fans to memorize the jersey colors of all the teams so you can tell which team is doing what in a race. Not like normal sports where the jersey's and numbers mostly stay the same year after year.Sweep18-12-2024
- Genetics? No, mostly PEDS. Armstrong proved that.Sweep18-12-2024
- Sadly the number of dorks is decreasing every year. In the US the vast majority are over 40 years. E-bikes are crushing the road bike market.Sweep18-12-2024
- Cycling is dying. That's obvious. All you have to do is look at the huge hits the major bike component companies are taking year over year. Then there's the loss of outlets providing coverage and the costs of streaming with those that remain. Add to that the effects of E-bikes on the younger generations. Now figure that it's a sponsor based sport instead of viewer based sport.Sweep18-12-2024
- As you probably won’t or can’t, here are some facts. WC viewing is less than 1/4 of the Vuelta which is BY FAR the least viewed of the 3 GTs. Yes the Vuelta has many stages so it works cumulatively but tgat counts for the WC too! Tvere are more WC races thsn there are stages at a GT. If you look at different countries’ national viewing figures, a popular WC race line the elite mens road race will just about reach the bottom rankings of the top 10 most viewed cycling events beaten by several monuments and classics, often national championships and ususlly by the more interesting stages of tours like Paris-Nice or the Critérium du DauphinéMistermaumau18-12-2024
- Also one of the rare sports where old and young can mixMistermaumau18-12-2024
- Give me spectator and viewing figures then.Mistermaumau18-12-2024
- Also, the article completely omits discussing the fact that cyclocross had to share TPs exploits with road racing and MTB, he wasn’t exactly the best candidate to distinguish XC as a sport in itself.Mistermaumau18-12-2024