How did you feel when you won the mountains classification in Australia?
It was a really nice beginning to the season, and I wasn’t expecting to feel so good at the first race. It’s always difficult to identify the goal for the race because you don’t know what level it will be, and you don’t know quite how you’re feeling yet. Plus, I came from the winter in Italy to summer in Australia and you never know how your body will react. But it was amazing to win the Queen of the Mountains [QOM] in the jersey of my new team [Human Powered Health] in the first race of the year!
Why are you going so well at the beginning of the season? Were you doing anything differently over the winter?
A lot of motivation comes from riding for a new team. I’ve found a really good environment. If you have good backing from the soigneurs, the mechanics, the director, it helps everything run smoothly. Also, I changed something in my training: most of all, I had to do shorter intervals, which I hadn’t done in the past. I’m mostly an endurance rider [Ragusa was second at Paris-Roubaix in 2023] so I had to improve my power output in shorter intervals. We did intervals of three to four minutes at VO2 max – hard for me.
