Martina Fidanza's 2025 began with many changes, but with the confirmation that when it comes to track cycling, she remains an absolute excellence in endurance disciplines. The first months of the year were hectic for the twenty-five-year-old from Bergamo, the adventure with Visma Lease a Bike was a new challenge she welcomed with trepidant emotion, but also with the awareness of further raising her road career level.

While getting acquainted with the Dutch reality, she returned to the velodromes, bringing home silver in the brand new women's standing kilometer and two European titles: one in scratch and one in the team pursuit with Martina Alzini, Chiara Consonni, and Vittoria Guazzini.

Talking to Martina Fidanza always means taking a journey with someone who truly loves cycling, but above all lives it day by day. From a young age, her career has always been divided between track and road, an almost perfect balance that has led her to excel in both disciplines without ever giving up either.

At the beginning of February, she made her road debut at the UAE Tour, a perfect way to rack up kilometers in her legs and return to experiencing competition adrenaline in an entirely new group. In the first stage, she and her teammates all worked together to support Nienke Venhoven, who finished third in the sprint, while on the last day of the race Martina secured a beautiful sixth place that projects her among the sprint greats. No sooner had she processed this excellent result than she was on a plane that evening headed to the track Europeans.

It's not simple switching between disciplines, beyond changing bikes there are long transfers that, despite experience, one never truly gets used to. Like true highlanders, Martina and her teammates from the quartet landed in Zolder, Belgium, with the Emirates race still in their legs, just enough time to recover before they were already racing to chase the top spot.

"I believe that racing on the road first was fundamental for all of us because it helped us break the ice and also allowed us to test our legs, but this could have been a double-edged sword. In the first stage, we were all a bit controlled, but the other days were very intense, we had to recover our energy in very little time. Immediately after the last stage, we boarded the plane together, traveled through the night and I won't hide that we were a bit worried: Chiara, Martina, and Vittoria had all fallen during UAE, even multiple times. We needed to understand how they were and especially couldn't push too hard right away," Martina explains, who was the only one from the quartet to emerge unscathed from the Emirates race.

Resetting everything for track races wasn't easy, certainly the experience of the young but seasoned athletes made a big difference, as did the always precious Marco Villa who put the girls in the right conditions to perform at their best. The debut was excellent, the challenge against Great Britain confirmed the quartet's resilience, and in the final against Germany, they won a true test of endurance that earned them yet another continental title. The possibility of collapsing was literally just around the corner, but the secret was precisely the unity of the four girls who have known each other forever and grown together on the bike.

"We understood immediately that, more than with our legs, in the final we needed to race with our heads; we knew we weren't in the best possible condition and if we lost concentration for a moment, we would have risked adding 10 seconds and finding ourselves out of the running. I was the only one in the group who hadn't fallen during the road race, so I needed to understand how the others were doing and support them. I believe that this time our winning weapon was knowing each other so well that we can openly tell each other everything - our doubts, our concerns - and this allows us to understand and compensate for any shortcomings. The girls were truly extraordinary; despite the fatigue and suffering from the fall, they held up incredibly well. In the final, we did everything to stay compact, a challenge of both legs and nerves."

While the Italian quartet was marking time to compete in the final, Martina was already focused on the scratch, her longtime discipline, which over the years has brought her two world titles. From the first evening, she arrived at the velodrome trying to regain familiarity with the track bike and reset everything for a race made even more complicated by the imposing presence of world champion Lorena Wiebes.

"It's hard to say, but when you have Lorena as an opponent, you start with the idea that in over 80% of cases you'll be beaten and will have to fight for second place. I knew very well I was the underdog, yet I had a strange feeling, I had to race my own race and try to believe in that less than 20% chance of succeeding. I used a very long gear ratio and set aside any strategy. It would have been easy to follow her wheel and settle, but I didn't want to do that. In the last two laps, thanks to the good lead-out by Irish athlete Gillespie, I found myself in an excellent position and started progressing. I was sure she would overtake me eventually, but when I saw she couldn't, I told myself I couldn't give up, I had to believe until the end."

In the final two laps, Martina delivered a heart-stopping progression that kept us all glued to the television. Currently, Lorena Wiebes is the number one in sprinting, and beating her adds value to her European championship title. As the Bergamo athlete herself says, it was like breaking down a wall, debunking a myth by proving that if you truly believe, anything becomes possible - and who knows, maybe she can repeat the victory on the road as well.

Hearing accounts of the European championship brings us the image of a completely rediscovered Martina, ready to start a new challenge and recover from an Olympic fourth place that hurt more than it might seem. In recent years, we've followed the quartet's journey from Tokyo 2020 to the Paris dream, a long path that required sacrifices and ultimately brought a prestigious yet bittersweet result. Martina had placed so many hopes, had redirected her entire recent seasons towards the track, only to find herself almost at a standstill with many doubts.

"In recent years, I've practically sacrificed everything for the quartet, I had twice given up the Giro and did extensive altitude training to be in my best condition for the Olympics. We were all motivated, we believed in it, and in the bronze final we had started very strong. Then something happened, we literally lacked the finale and in an instant, we lost everything. When I returned home after Paris, I felt empty, it was a very tough period, I was about to quit, especially because in September, before the track world championships, I had a training accident, yet another thing that wasn't going right. Fortunately, I always had a strong and special family supporting me, especially my sister Arianna who was always there, saw I was struggling and tried to encourage me not to give up. Then at the end of the season, I completely disconnected from the bike, put it aside, and it did me good. But I think what helped me most was the prospect of starting with a new team. I've always dreamed of racing in such an important team, it gave me great motivation, it was a goal I wanted to achieve at all costs."

The move to Visma Lease a Bike represented a real breath of fresh air, a new adventure she threw herself into with all of herself, chasing a beautiful dream. In December, when we found her at the Giro d'Onore awards, she had told us about her first impressions of the new environment - everything larger, everything more carefully curated, almost another world where she had literally rediscovered herself. The transition wasn't simple; she had to change the trainer who had followed her for five years and her nutritionist, but above all, she had to adjust to a new, more international, almost... gigantic world.

Martina was immediately enthusiastic about the new adventure, improved her English and entered a mechanism where self-awareness is the key to reaching every goal. The Bergamo athlete never hid that she was living a kind of dream, after all, it doesn't happen every day to find herself in the same team as her idol Marianne Vos, a first impact definitely strange but which she has now practically gotten used to. The Dutch rider's debut is still far away, but at the UAE Tour Martina had the opportunity to race alongside Pauline Ferrand Prevot, the other superstar of the team who, after blazing in mountain biking, decided to return to the road.

"It was beautiful to race with her, especially because it was her first road race after returning. No one expected her to move so well in the group: we were all ready to guide her, and instead she moved as if she had been doing it forever. She's an incredible athlete, truly determined to make a difference, I believe she's a model for many. I'm trying to learn as much as possible from her and honestly can't wait to do the same with Marianne Vos." During the training camp, we had the opportunity to discuss, and I immediately understood she's an amazing athlete, very down-to-earth but with incredible determination," says Martina, who is learning from her models to try to become an even better athlete.

The goal this season is to work hard on endurance in short climbs to try to make a difference in the Northern races, but above all to improve explosiveness and stand up to pure sprinters.

After a period of rest, Martina is ready for the classic races with De Panne, Gent-Wevelgem and the possibility of competing in the Vuelta or the Giro that will start from her hometown of Bergamo.

In 2025, the track will always have a special place, even though due to complicated scheduling, the next real goal will be the World Championships in Chile. "I love racing on the track, somehow it's always been a part of me," Martina repeated several times during our conversation, making us understand that despite the disappointments and increasingly ambitious goals on the road, racing in velodromes still holds a special place in her heart. Hearing her talk about the track provides an extra emotion, the feeling of entering a magical world that welcomed her since childhood and from which she never wanted to leave.

"I remember perfectly the first time I went to Montichiari. I was a first-year junior and until that moment I had only ridden on the track in Dalmine, I didn't know how to use a bike without brakes and was afraid. They made me ride around alone and then, almost to test me, they made me do a scratch race with the boys, and I immediately fell in love with that discipline. Everything was beautiful, especially in winter, at Montichiari there were races almost every weekend, it came alive with people coming to watch us. I immediately understood there was a special connection with that place. It's strange to think I started with scratch, I never would have imagined it would become my specialty, something that would become a part of me."

The victory at the Europeans can be seen as the restart of a project that is no longer potential, but a large and important reality in the Italian landscape. With the new federal nominations, Marco Villa becomes road team coach, but there won't be major upheavals in the women's track setup. As confirmed by the Bergamo athlete herself, the structure will remain practically unchanged with Diego Bragato taking on greater responsibility, Villa will always be by his side, and the project started from Tokyo 2020 will continue with the goal of further growing the movement.

Now on Martina's road opens the possibility of working on the standing kilometer, a discipline in which, without even specific preparation, at the Heusden-Zolder Europeans she won the silver medal. There's scratch, which is her eternal love, and the quartet with which the challenge has just begun. Los Angeles is still far away, yet one cannot help but think about it. The Bergamo athlete is already working hard to chase her dreams, meanwhile, there's the road with a new adventure and a world yet to be discovered.

The goal is to return to success, perhaps achieving it for the first time in a World Tour race: we are now certain that Martina Fidanza is not afraid to face everything head-on, dreaming both inside and outside the track. We can't wait to follow her...

from tuttoBICI March issue