Despite being called old by his Omega Pharma-Quick Step team-mate and captain Mark Cavendish, Alessandro Petacchi regained enough strength and motivation under the wings of the Belgian squad to claim career’s 98th victory at the Grand Prix Cerami this season.

Following a successful week spent on fine-tuning their lead-out train in Turkey, the 40-year old sprinter heads to the Giro d’Italia with a major tasks to share broad experience and protect general classification contender Rigoberto Uran, but he does not role out the possibility of adding to his tally on the same occasion..

“I feel better now. I’ve taken a good care of myself and I’m ready for the Giro,” Petacchi told Tuttobiciweb.

“The idea for la corsa rosa is to work for Uran. For sprints there is just me and Iljo Keisse, at most he can receive a helping hand from [Julian] Vermote. We’ll see, perhaps I’ll happen to do one or two sprints.. In fact, however, I was chosen because of my experience and the support I’m able to provide our captain Uran with.”

“For sprints in the Giro, Kittel’s Giant [Shimano] will be the team of reference and everyone will be keen to crush them. We will try to do this too, and we’ll see the outcome.”

Petacchi emphasized, however, that sprint stages at the Tour de France are main interest of the Belgian team, as Omega Pharma-Quick Step intends to build their roster for the French grand tour around Mark Cavendish.

“But I repeat, sprints are objects of our special interest at the Tour de France, where we’re all are going to work for Cavendish who keeps on calling me ‘old’, but joking aside, I want [to ride with] him at the Grande Boucle. With Mark and our train we’re going to do great things,” Petacchi concluded.