Italian Martina Fidanza was seen as “an ideal match” for Visma-Lease a Bike and signed the younger sprinter to a two-year contract. Fidanza has spent the previous three seasons with Ceratizit-WNT Professional Biking and can transfer to the Dutch Ladies’s WorldTour squad to start out 2025.
The 24-year-old gained back-to-back phases at Lotto Thüringen Girls Tour this season, holding off seasoned veterans like Lucinda Model (Lidl-Trek), Barbara Guarischi (SD Worx-Protime) and Tiffany Cromwell (Cayon-SRAM) in bunch sprints. She additionally had three podiums in one-day races in late spring, together with a win on the GP Mazda Schelkens.
Fidanza is a confirmed winner on the monitor, having gained junior World titles for Italy in Staff Pursuit and Scratch races, and has two elite ladies’s World titles in Scratch and one in Staff Pursuit.
“Martina has already achieved some good outcomes. We consider that we will develop her right into a sprinter able to competing with one of the best within the WorldTour. We fastidiously analyzed the place we would have liked reinforcements throughout the staff within the brief time period, and Martina was the proper match,” mentioned Rutger Tijssen, staff supervisor, in a press launch. “The plan is for her to type our sprinting duo with Nienke (Veenhoven) subsequent season.”
Veenhoven is a 20-year-old Dutch sprinter who joined the Visma staff in 2023 and showcased her velocity on the Ladies’s Down Beneath Criterium with a victory plus a number of top-5s at one-day races together with Egmont Biking Race and Konvert Koerse.
Fidanza mentioned she needed to develop with the powerhouse staff for extra frequent journeys to the rostrum, but additionally be taught from skilled, multi-discipline teammates, particularly Marianne Vos, who will experience a fifth 12 months with Visma in 2025, and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, who transitions from a mountain bike focus again to a full highway programme subsequent 12 months.
“It is a dream come true. I’m tremendous proud to be a part of Staff Visma-Lease a Bike subsequent season as a result of I think about it among the finest groups on this planet. As well as, I drastically admire the staff’s method,” Fidanza mentioned in a Visma-Lease a Bike assertion.
“With Marianne Vos and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, I can be racing with two nice champions. I count on to be taught lots from them and I need to give them the absolute best assist in races. Moreover, I need to present over the following two seasons that I need to be a part of this staff.
“I hope I get to rejoice many extra wins within the coming seasons, however my final aim is to win a WorldTour race.”
In her first season at Ceratizit-WNT in 2022, the younger Italian was a part of three Ladies’s WorldTour occasions, finishing her first Giro d’Italia Donne after two different appearances, and had a robust end with ninth on the ultimate stage in Padova. In 2023 she got here near that WorldTour victory, ending second on stage 2 and third on stage 3 at Tour of Chongming Island.
Her older sister, Arianna Fidanza, at the moment rides for the Ceratizit-WNT Professional Biking staff, however doesn’t have a contract for 2025.
