Serenity and lightness. This is what you perceive at first glance when meeting Stefano Oldani at the Tour of Turkey, a race in which the twenty-eight-year-old from Milan is currently competing wearing the jersey of what has become his team for the 2026 season after two years with Cofidis, namely Caja Rural-Seguros RGA.

Rather than speaking of a "team," however, listening to the class of '98 rider, it would perhaps be more appropriate to use the term "home" because here Oldani has truly found that warm and welcoming atmosphere typical of domestic settings that, deep down, he hoped to discover this season in Spanish territory.

"I'm doing really well at Caja Rural, the environment is very family-like, we have a lot of fun at the races... it's something I was looking for and I'm happy to have found it" said confidently to our microphones the winner of the Genoa stage at the 2022 Giro, highlighting how it was precisely the internal climate of the Iberian team that struck him in these first months.

"Here everyone lives the races in the right way and then there are many strong riders like Berwick or Molenaar who maybe aren't very well known but who, in reality, are very talented. Gaviria? He's a joker and, in general, a nice person" continued the Milan-based rider before framing the 2026 season he has competed in so far positively.

"Certainly arriving in good form at Tirreno-Adriatico was the first objective but, in general, the idea was to start the season in the right direction and I must say it's gone quite well" clarified Oldani, analyzing his first four months of the season.

"At the Tour of Two Seas, even though it wasn't exactly a race suited to my characteristics, I finished thirtieth in the general classification, so we set our sights on the Ardennes where I was aiming and I managed to arrive there well, putting in a good performance at both the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and the Amstel Gold Race. Obviously, these are particular races where the level is very high and for a smaller team like ours it's a bit more difficult to stay in the top 20-30 positions all day, which makes the difference there. In the end, however, we defended ourselves well and I finished seventeenth which, clearly, isn't a super result, but it's still a decent performance because to be there you need to have a certain level of fitness".

Continuing in the wake of these performances, Oldani therefore headed to the Presidential Tour of Turkey, after which, as he himself revealed to us, he should participate in the GP du Morbihan before taking a break and subsequently putting himself in a bubble for possible participation in the Tour de France, a race that he, like several others in the team, clearly aspires to compete in.

"There are about ten names on the list of riders vying for a spot at the Tour. In stages, based on the commitments we'll have before the Grande Boucle, we'll go to altitude in Andorra and there, also evaluating the results obtained up to that point, we'll understand who will be selected and who won't. Someone might already be more certain than others, but overall everything is still to be defined and it's better not to commit ourselves" explained Oldani, for whom the wildcard for the Tour, like those for the other prestigious races the team participated in during spring, rests on solid foundations.

"On paper we might be a small team but the reality of the matter is that even here, in the end, we work a lot and well, there's a lot of professionalism and, perhaps precisely because of this, we've received a lot of important invitations like those for the Amstel, the Brabante, the Liège and especially the Tour which is the most important race in the world. The latter, in particular, with the start from Barcelona, I think is a great reward for the work done by the team"

Putting it on a personal level instead, participation in the Tour would be a great recognition for Oldani for what he has shown in the first half of 2026, but to know whether the Milan-based rider will be the object of such a reward or not, we'll have to wait for the days of the national championships in which he, for the umpteenth time in his career, will take part without teammates.

"It's always very complicated to participate in national championships. In the past, apart from one or two years with Alpecin where I wasn't alone, I've always done them and, between logistics and temperatures, management has never been simple" admitted with great honesty an Oldani who, only once the tricolor parenthesis is archived, will know whether for the first time in his career his July will be entirely in yellow.