Many, looking at who has kept the flag of Solution Tech NIPPO Rali flying high at this start of the season, will not have missed the absence of Kyrylo Tsarenko. We too, having read some of his statements and knowing his intention to continue racing with the Tuscan team, were surprised not to see him appear either in the roster listed on the team's website or among the names registered on the International Cycling Union portal.

Intrigued by this, and seeing no news on the horizon, we decided to better understand the reasons behind all this and, to do so, we turned to none other than the team manager of the Italian ProTeam Serge Parsani, who explained to us with great calm what was behind the temporary exclusion from the Solution Tech roster of the promising twenty-five-year-old Ukrainian, who last year managed to rack up 5 victories and bring to the team more than a quarter of the total UCI points with which it concluded the season.

Serge, so what happened to Tsarenko?

"Kyrylo has some personal issues to sort out and unfortunately, until he resolves them, he cannot start racing. These are bureaucratic matters and, until they are cleared up, we cannot have him compete".

So you're waiting for him, right?

"Exactly, we're waiting for him: when he gets his situation sorted out, he'll start racing again. In the meantime, while we wait for everything to be resolved, he's continuing to train".

It's no small loss given that in 2025 he earned more UCI points than anyone else on the team. While waiting to have him available again, are you giving more responsibility to someone in your roster?

"In the winter we signed three or four riders of considerable value, so the hope is that, during the season, they can help us bring home some of these points that today, in my opinion, are ruining cycling".

As happened with Matteo Fabbro last season, can we expect perhaps some kind of mid-season signing from you from summer onwards?

"We'll see. The backbone of our team is good but everything will always depend on whether and where we manage to score points. Imagining we can earn them in World Tour races is unthinkable because we don't have invitations, so we'll try to focus on Pro Series races where, however, even in that case, with World Tour teams on the start line and rules that establish that there are also the 5 best ProTeams from the previous year and those invited by the organizers, there isn't much space. We'll try to participate in races where we'll have more chances to score points, but we must keep in mind that if we win a stage in a .2 race we get 7 points and if we win a stage in Sardegna it's as if we finished thirtieth at the Milan-San Remo. It's absurd, but we can't complain too much: the system works this way".

Compared to last year, getting into the top 30 will be more complicated given that there are two more competitors and many other teams have strengthened themselves.

"That's true, although, speaking of 2025, we must also say that we were unlucky because, in September, we lost both Rajovic and Quartucci who, since he crashed, hasn't raced again. Both of them could have brought us those points necessary to get us into the top 30 and instead, unfortunately, in the end we finished thirty-first. On this subject, however, I want to say that it would be fair, in my opinion, if when a team closes and exits the group, whoever follows it in the standings at the end of the season moves up one position. To be clear, with the disappearance of Arkea, at the end of 2025 we could have moved up to 30th place and instead such a scenario was not contemplated".

For other considerations of a general nature about the start, the prospects of Solution Tech NIPPO Rali and the controversial UCI points system, you can hear the voice of Serge Parsani in the interview released to Nicolò Vallone for the Easter Monday episode of our Bla Bla Bike podcast.

Photo credit: Sonoko Tanaka