With enthusiasm, eagerness to learn, and great awareness, Elia Viviani is preparing to begin his first season as a former rider.

The 36-year-old from Verona, who retired this year after 16 professional seasons that brought him 90 road victories and other incomparable honors (three world titles in Elimination and an Olympic gold in Omnium), will be engaged in 2026 both as sports director of the INEOS Grenadiers and as team manager of the National Team (track and road), roles that will represent two new intriguing challenges for him and that will undoubtedly characterize his year with stimuli, knowledge to assimilate, and lessons to learn.

Viviani will therefore launch himself into discovering multiple unknown territories in the coming season, and he will do so with humility but without reverence, moving with the idea of trying to immediately make his mark by leveraging the vision, clarity, tactical reading, and experience he developed in recent years to guide his teams towards a path of success.

We spoke with him in Monte Carlo during the presentation of the Vuelta España 2026, an event he attended alongside his new technical director (and former teammate) Geraint Thomas, exploring in detail a route that next August might also highlight a rider who is progressively finding his place within the English ranks: Egan Bernal.

Elia, what are your thoughts on the next edition of this Spanish stage race?

"It's a tough Vuelta, as always. There are two stages over 5,000 meters that scare everyone and probably 3 or 4 opportunities for sprinters. That said, it's a beautiful Vuelta that starts in Monaco, in a fantastic scenario we know well, and ends in a different place, not Madrid, but Granada. Taking place mostly in southern Spain, it will also be a very hot Vuelta, and therefore anyone who wants to win will need to withstand very high temperatures, different from those we encountered this year in the northern part of the country. It's definitely a race I hold dear because winning three stages, including the Madrid stage in the national jersey, was something fantastic for me, and it was the last grand tour I raced in my career, so it absolutely has a special value."

How and with what spirit does a sprinter approach a tough stage race like the Spanish one?

"Undoubtedly, in preparation, you lean a bit more into climbing because you know that to sprint, you must be able to get through the mountains. Then, if you're well-organized like we were this year and have good support, a sprinter can definitely make it to the end of the Vuelta, playing their cards in sprints that are often not crowded. It's a race where a sprinter can have several opportunities to exploit and, if adequately supported, can be very enjoyable. Personally, I've always liked it."

You found yourself participating in the route presentation alongside Geraint Thomas, but neither of you wearing the rider's jersey, but rather technical director and sports director of Ineos: how will you interact in 2026?

"What doesn't change is that we'll continue to do sports together, between running and bike rides, just a bit less professionally than we did until recently. For both of us, it was time to say enough: I confirmed this when I asked Geraint, looking at the guys lining up and starting races, if he missed it all, and his answer, like mine, was 'no'. Together now we'll face what is a new challenge for us. Obviously, we both have a lot to learn now being on the other side of the fence, and precisely for this reason, we haven't wasted time diving headfirst into this new adventure where, by continuing to observe and learn day by day, we'll try to give our best."

Staying on the Vuelta, we know it's the only Grand Tour missing from Egan Bernal's palmares. Now that you know the route, is there a common idea, a will to return to race this event to try to do something good?

"Egan, as you know, is one of the team's references, a guy who won the Tour and an inspiration for many riders. Certainly, the serious crash in 2022 put him in a position to face everything step by step, but in the meantime, he has returned to winning and last year, in my opinion, he had a solid season. At the beginning of 2025, he won the Colombian national championships where, both in time trial and road, it's never easy to win, then he broke his collarbone and had to stop, but subsequently, he raced the Giro d'Italia, finishing in the top ten in the general classification and took part in the Vuelta where he managed to win a stage. This confirms that Egan has regained a certain solidity, even if, as is normal, he still has some issues to work on. Like all professionals and great champions, he has clearly in mind what he wants, and in his plans, after returning to raising his arms in a grand tour, there is the desire to proceed step by step, first targeting a victory in a one-week race and then possibly thinking about a Grand Tour. Next year he will race one-week races in the first part of the season and then the Giro, after which the Vuelta could definitely be considered. We haven't yet evaluated his participation because the schedules are currently drawn up only to a certain point in the season, but given the calendar Egan will follow, it's possible he might participate."

To discover what Viviani told us about all the other topics discussed in the interview conducted in the Principality of Monaco, we invite you to listen to the upcoming episodes of our podcast Bla Bla Bike.