After last year’s successful experience, Consorzio CIAL supports women’s cycling once again through a partnership with the new “Servetto Giusta Alurecycling“ team.
The Consortium continues to support sports and promote an increasingly important and popular ecological message:
“Appropriate separate collection of aluminium has huge benefits to offer the environment, because aluminium is 100% recyclable an infinite number of times, saving vast quantities of energy and materials, up to 95%”.
In addition to its partnership with the Astana men’s cycling team, team of super-champions Vincenzo Nibali and Fabio Aru, for the second year in a row CIAL has also reached an agreement with a team including some of the most promising professionals in women’s cycling today.
The team, which goes under the new name Servetto Giusta Alurecycling, is a member of UCI – Union Cycliste Internationale, a world-wide organisation coordinating international cycling competitions and including all national professional cycling federations – and will be sending its athletes to compete in the most prestigious competitions on the calendar, including the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France.
Throughout the year 2017 the 14 cyclists will be testimonials of an ecological message about recycling aluminium in Italy and all over the world, especially in Europe.
On Saturday, January 28, the team was presented to the press at an event held in the historic “Cantina Contratto” in Canelli (Asti), a winery founded in 1867 renowned as Italy’s oldest maker of sparkling wines, which hosted the official unveiling of the team from Asti chaired by Stefano Bortolato.
14 athletes in the Elite category make up the team, directed by team manager Dario Rossino. Three continents and ten countries are represented on the team: Italy, Cyprus, Russia, Brazil, Germany, Colombia, Kazakhstan, Switzerland, Belgium and Taiwan.
The spotlight will most likely be on Asian star Ting Ying Huang. The twenty-six-year-old Taiwanese sprinter won the Asian Championships in Nakhon Ratchasima in 2015, while last season she placed first in the first leg of “The Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhon’s Cup – Tour of Thailand” (UCI 2.2), completing the tour in second place, won the “Tour of Okinawa” and, above all, placed first two legs in the “Tour of Chongming Island”, a Chinese competition valid as a trial in the new U.C.I. Women’s World Tour, a world-wide competition consisting of multiple trials which has taken the place of the World Cup. Huang also took part in the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and the Road World Championships in Doha (Qatar).
New faces include Daniela Gass of Germany, who has raced in numerous international competitions in the past year, including the “Festival Luxembourgeois du Cyclisme Féminin Elsy Jacobs”, the “Tour de Feminin – O cenu Ceskeho Svycarska”, the “BeNe Ladies Tour” and the “Lotto Belgium Tour”; thirty-two-year-old Femke Verstichelen of Belgium, who placed first in the “Brugge-Dudzele”, was on the podium in the “Herentals Fietst”, in the Oostkamp and Naast competitions, and in the ‘top ten’ at Hulste, Putte, Ledegem, De Klinge, Haasdonk, “Maria-Ter-Heide” (Brasschaat), Ninove, Arendonk, Borgerhout, Beveren-Waas, Nieuwpoort, Oedelem and Eeklo in 2016 ; young Russian cyclist Ksenia Dobrynina, thirty-year-old Colombian climber Laura Camila Lozano Ramirez, on the podium in the 2016 national championships, sixth in the Panamerican championships and eighth in the “G.P. della Liberazione Pink 2016”; Khazhak cyclist Natalya Sokovnina; expert Brazilian climber Clemilda Fernandes Silva; Francesca Pisciali of Bolzano, Italy, who is not yet eighteen and is making her début in the Elite category, and twenty-six-year-old Swiss athlete Aline Knechtli.
Five athletes will be back this year, in addition to Huang. They are the talented young Italian Alice Gasparini, who placed in the Junior Timed European Championships, Gaia Tortolina of Piedmont and Letizia Borghesi, who starred this winter on the gravel roads of the cyclo-cross competitions and made her début in the top category, the twenty-four-year-old medal-winning Cypriot cyclist Antri Christoforou, who competed in the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and came first in the “Arava-Arad” and “Dead Sea-Scorpion Pass” U.C.I. 1.2 international competitions in Greece, and twenty-nine-year-old Russian climber Anna Potokina, who will be wearing the Piedmont team’s shirt for the fourth year in a row, a strong candidate for the role of ‘director on the go’.
“A very important new season in competition begins today, opening a new Olympic four-year period which will culminate in ‘Tokyo 2020’ ,” noted Servetto Giusta Alurecycling president Stefano Bortolato during the presentation of the team. “I wish to thank all the sponsors who believe in what we are doing in women’s cycling. We hope to reward them for the trust they have placed in us once again.”
“The team is well amalgamated, and the athletes are already very much united, very close despite their different nationalities, ” commented Team Manager and Sporting Director Dario Rossino. “We will be taking part in all the most important competitions in the World Tour and do our best in all kinds of competitions and routes. The most important events undoubtedly include the ‘Giro Rosa’, the classic races in the north, the various national road and timed championships, the European championships and the world championships. The team will make its official racing début on Saturday, March 4 in ‘Strade Bianche’, a competition on gravel roads which is a U.C.I. Women’s World Tour 2017 trial event, with the participation of all the strongest athletes on the world cycling scene.”
ATHLETES
- BORGHESI Letizia (ITALY) 16 October 1998
- CHRISTOFOROU Antri (CYPRUS) 2 April 1992
- DOBRYNINA Kseniia (RUSSIA) 11 January 1994
- FERNANDES SILVA Clemilda (BRAZIL) 25 June 1979
- GASPARINI Alice (ITALY) 14 December 1997
- GASS Daniela (GERMANY) 05 November 1980
- HUANG Ting Ying (TAIWAN) 29 May 1990
- KNECHTLI Aline (SWITZERLAND) 26 May 1990
- LOZANO RAMIREZ Laura Camila (COLOMBIA) 25 October 1986
- PISCIALI Francesca (ITALY) 19 May1998
- POTOKINA Anna (RUSSIA) 18 June 1987
- SOKOVNINA Natalya (KAZAKHSTAN) 18 January 1990
- TORTOLINA Gaia (ITALY) 29 June 1997
- VERSTICHELEN Femke (BELGIUM) 22 March 1984