Leaving Sky team ‘key to Viviani’s success’

ELIA Viviani said he wouldn’t have been able to win Saturday’s Giro d’Italia stage in Tel Aviv had he still been riding for British team Sky.

The emotional Italian, who won Olympic ominium gold on the track in 2016, spent three years with the dominant outfit of Tour de France champion Chris Froome but said he left to pursue his own ambitions at his home Tour.

And his dreams came true as he won the 167-kilometre second stage from Haifa to Tel Aviv in Israel – the first time a Grand Tour has started outside of Europe. But having been left out of the Sky team to ride the Giro last year, Viviani wasn’t going to let lightning strike twice.

“Of course it’s never nice to be at home during the Giro, especially after the Olympics because at that point in my career I wanted to concentrate on the road to really establish myself,” he said.

“It sowed the first seeds of thought about changing teams, but that wasn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was at the end of the season and discovering that Froome would be riding the Giro and once again I might be excluded.”

There are no hard feeling’s though and Viviani said he appreciates everything Sky and their controversial manager Dave Brailsford did for him.

“That doesn’t take anything away from the fantastic years I had with the team because if I hadn’t been with Sky, I don’t know if I would have won the Olympics.

“So my relationship with the riders, the staff and Dave B are the best.”

Having changed teams in the off-season, Viviani had a busy start to the year with Quick-Step, winning the Dubai Tour in February, taking the points classification at the Abu Dhabi Tour a couple of weeks later and then finishing second to world champion Peter Sagan at GentWevelgem in March.