Browsing through the roster of names chosen by XDS Astana to participate in the Tour of Turkey, a 2.Pro event, it immediately stood out that two of these belonged to their own development team. Also at Hainan, for a stage race in the same category, the Kazakh team had selected two riders from the Devo squad, essentially reaffirming with the same choice their confidence in the qualities and competitiveness spread throughout their youth department, one of the best this season.

Indeed, by the numbers, the team of Alexandr Vinokourov's development squad is the one that has accumulated the most UCI points this year and the one that currently boasts the best ranking in the team standings, results that are the fruit of both victories (3) and continuous placements achieved (4 second places) from January to now by their representatives who, almost inevitably, have earned them calls and opportunities repeatedly from the World Tour team.

Faced with this frequent recourse to Devo riders even at high-level events (a practice far from taken for granted among top-tier teams), we wanted to better understand how the young riders in the light blue jersey are managed internally and, taking advantage of Dario Cataldo's presence on the XDS Astana team car at the Tour of Turkey, we turned to him to delve deeper into this topic and more.

In XDS Astana you rely heavily on the Devo riders: what is the relationship between this squad, which by the numbers is the best development team for UCI points this season, and the World Tour formation? How do you manage the young riders?

"The fact that ours is the best Devo in terms of UCI points, I think, is a consequence of the good work and good selection we made, but in any case this is not the data that interests us most. What we concentrate on more is being able to observe the young riders well during preparation, in races and especially evaluating how they integrate with the World Tour formation in races like this one, for example. Here we can better understand if any of these young riders has the potential to be a leader and achieve certain results, but also who, in the absence of that winning spark, can still become an excellent rider. We know well, in fact, that this sport is not made only of riders who win and, in this so extreme cycling, this is a very difficult aspect to notice if you don't observe the young riders up close. The usefulness of having our own Devo team lies precisely in this".

Among the Devo team riders of XDS Astana that you've had the opportunity to observe closely, who has surprised you the most in recent months?

"Scalco, present here with us in Turkey, we've already seen in other races that he's truly an excellent rider, not only for the results that show what engine he's equipped with but, precisely, for how he moves in the race and how he works with his teammates. It was a pleasant surprise to have in hand a young rider so mature from this point of view, so I believe he represents a beautiful hope for the future".

He, like the other Devo riders, what does he ask of you? And what do you try to transmit to them?

"As far as I'm concerned, I try to transmit the experience I've acquired during my years as a rider, especially regarding aspects that are less obvious. Young riders today, thanks also to the internet and technology, are very well informed and already know much more than we knew at their age. What they cannot access with the tools they have at their disposal today is what can be learned and obtained through racing experience, and it's precisely this, for example, that I try to give them. Sometimes, it happens that in this exchange, naively someone among them, when you try to explain something, responds at first glance "I know" but this can happen when the more mature vision of a person clashes with that of a younger one: however, by taking time and calmly illustrating to them how and why certain things happen and thus placing them in front of certain realities in racing, I find their response to what you say is positive and I notice that it leads them to evolve. This is something that gives me great satisfaction".

It seems to me that you need quite a bit of patience with riders of this age.

"That's always needed. I think that each of us has thought at least once "if as a teenager I had had someone with experience in a certain field at my side ready to explain something better to me, perhaps I would have avoided making certain mistakes". For this reason, I always try to put myself in their shoes and, even when they don't ask me, I try to give that input that I think could prove useful to them".

 To find out what Dario Cataldo told us in the remaining part of the interview he granted to our microphones, we invite you to tune in to our BlaBlaBike podcast episode coming out Monday, May 11.