Aru: Something was missing all year
There was a time when an Italian rider’s season came to an end on the finish line of Il Lombardia, but Fabio Aru still had promises to keep and miles to go when he passed the Arrivo banner in Como almost nine minutes down on Thibaut Pinot on Saturday afternoon.
Aru’s debut season at UAE Team Emirates saw him abandon the Giro d’Italia before an attempted do-over at the Vuelta a España fell flat but, rather than call time on a trying year, he has prolonged his campaign by riding the Tour of Guangxi, which gets underway on Tuesday.
On Sunday morning, Aru boarded a flight from Milan to Hong Kong, before catching a connection to Nanning and then taking a three-hour bus ride south to Beihai, a coastal city on the South China Sea, finally reaching his destination on Monday afternoon local time after almost 24 hours in transit.
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Later in the evening, Aru was among the three riders – Arnaud Démare (Groupama-FDJ) and local favourite Meiyn Wang (Bahrain-Merida) were the others – who made themselves available for the pre-race press conference. An understandably bleary-eyed Aru mustered as much cheer as he could when answering questions from the local media – "It’s my first time in China, I haven’t seen much yet," he smiled – before later discussing his reasons for extending a difficult season by six more days.
"I’ll tell you the truth, and it might seem mad, but even though it’s been a difficult season, the desire to race is still there, so I’m happy to be here," Aru said, mindful, no doubt, that his presence in China might have been interpreted as a form of penance imposed by his team for a year without a victory.
"I haven’t come here without the desire to ride. Of course, my condition isn’t the best. It hasn’t been the best in recent weeks, and it wasn’t at Lombardia, either. But from a physical point of view, it was important for me to finish with another race, to have this new experience, which could be useful for the future."
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