Max Moncassin 6th in Spain at the Trofeo Palma
Palma de Mallorca (ESP). In the fourth and final “chapter” of the XXVIII Challenge Ciclista Mallorca, finally comes out the first prestigious placement in the top ten for the team Amore & Vita-Prodir.
Lined up at the start of the races there were a parterre of athletes and a list of champs worthy of a stage of the Tour de France or the Vuelta Espana, and the winner, Marcel Kittel (of the team World Tour Katusha Alpecin) is considered by many as the strongest sprinter in the world today.
Among all these significant details, it stands out an equally considerable one, the outstanding performance of Maxence Moncassin.
For the young sprinter, son of the former champ and French C.T. Frédéric, an amazing 6th place, conquered in the Trofeo Palma among the main big names of the world cycling.
Max, 22 years old, made during the Challenge Mallorca, has amazed many with the performance of yesterday but, for the management of A&V-Prodir, instead it was a great confirmation.
"We started this season with the right foot -explain from Spain the D.S. Vlady Starchyk and Roberto Marchetti - we started a bit on the shadow and in the first three competitions we didn’t achieved much, but it was all under our control, and most important we concluded as we were set. We knew that Trofeo Palma could be suitable for us and we raced chasing this goal. Competing with world champ Valverde, and other champions like Fabio Aru, or Marcel Kittel and classic monuments winner as Dagenkolb or Kristoff, is always an extraordinary challenge which helps our rider to enhance their potential background. We have to give a big round of applause to Danilo Celano who performed our tactics perfectly and was on a break-away for almost the whole stage. Then, Luksevics, Bernardinetti, Nika and Freuler did the rest in the final kilometres to best lead out Max in the sprint. In the end we caught a sixth place that is really worth a lot, also because Max was the victim of a bad crash two days earlier, reporting many bruises and abrasions and consequently he couldn’t be able to sprint at its 100%. With this we do not want to exaggerate by saying that he could fight for the victory against a ‘sacred monster’ like Kittel, but the podium would definitely be within its reach, this without any doubt. However, we are aware of the qualities of this athlete and we are sure that very soon he will improve the result achieved yesterday”.
The team will now continue in the direction of France where there will be two important stage races in schedule: L'Etoile de Bessege 2.1, a competition mainly adapted to sprinters and therefore pretty suited to Moncassin (who would like to be able to scale in the footsteps of his Father who has won several stages in this race); and then the Tour de Provence 2.1, another very challenging commitment and where there will be many World Tour teams to increase the motivations of the of Amore & Vita-Prodir squad.
02/02/2019
