Italian Martina Fidanza was seen as “an ideal match” for Visma-Lease a Bike and signed the younger sprinter to a two-year contract. Fidanza has spent the previous three seasons with Ceratizit-WNT Professional Biking and can transfer to the Dutch Ladies’s WorldTour squad to start out 2025.
The 24-year-old gained back-to-back levels at Lotto Thüringen Women Tour this season, holding off seasoned veterans like Lucinda Model (Lidl-Trek), Barbara Guarischi (SD Worx-Protime) and Tiffany Cromwell (Cayon-SRAM) in bunch sprints. She additionally had three podiums in one-day races in late spring, together with a win on the GP Mazda Schelkens.Â
Fidanza is a confirmed winner on the observe, having gained junior World titles for Italy in Staff Pursuit and Scratch races, and has two elite ladies’s World titles in Scratch and one in Staff Pursuit.
“Martina has already achieved some good outcomes. We imagine that we will develop her right into a sprinter able to competing with the perfect within the WorldTour. We rigorously analyzed the place we wanted reinforcements throughout the staff within the brief time period, and Martina was the right match,” stated Rutger Tijssen, staff supervisor, in a press launch. “The plan is for her to kind our sprinting duo with Nienke (Veenhoven) subsequent season.”
Veenhoven is a 20-year-old Dutch sprinter who joined the Visma staff in 2023 and showcased her pace on the Ladies’s Down Beneath Criterium with a victory plus a number of top-5s at one-day races together with Egmont Biking Race and Konvert Koerse.
Fidanza stated she needed to develop with the powerhouse staff for extra frequent journeys to the rostrum, but additionally study from skilled, multi-discipline teammates, particularly Marianne Vos, who will experience a fifth yr with Visma in 2025, and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, who transitions from a mountain bike focus again to a full street programme subsequent yr.
“This can be a dream come true. I’m tremendous proud to be a part of Staff Visma-Lease a Bike subsequent season as a result of I think about it top-of-the-line groups on the earth. As well as, I significantly admire the staff’s method,” Fidanza stated in a Visma-Lease a Bike assertion.
“With Marianne Vos and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, I will likely be racing with two nice champions. I anticipate to study loads from them and I wish to give them the very best assist in races. Moreover, I wish to present over the subsequent two seasons that I need to be a part of this staff.
“I hope I get to have a good time many extra wins within the coming seasons, however my final objective is to win a WorldTour race.”
In her first season at Ceratizit-WNT in 2022, the younger Italian was a part of three Ladies’s WorldTour occasions, finishing her first Giro d’Italia Donne after two different appearances, and had a powerful end with ninth on the ultimate stage in Padova. In 2023 she got here near that WorldTour victory, ending second on stage 2 and third on stage 3 at Tour of Chongming Island.
Her older sister, Arianna Fidanza, at present rides for the Ceratizit-WNT Professional Biking staff, however doesn’t have a contract for 2025.
