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 levels 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 observe, having gained junior World titles for Italy in Group Pursuit and Scratch races, and has two elite girls’s World titles in Scratch and one in Group Pursuit.
“Martina has already achieved some good outcomes. We consider that we are able to develop her right into a sprinter able to competing with the very best within the WorldTour. We rigorously analyzed the place we wanted reinforcements throughout the crew within the brief time period, and Martina was the proper match,” stated Rutger Tijssen, crew 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 crew in 2023 and showcased her velocity on the Ladies’s Down Underneath Criterium with a victory plus a number of top-5s at one-day races together with Egmont Biking Race and Konvert Koerse.
Fidanza stated she wished to develop with the powerhouse crew for extra frequent journeys to the rostrum, but in addition be taught from skilled, multi-discipline teammates, specifically Marianne Vos, who will trip 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 Group Visma-Lease a Bike subsequent season as a result of I think about it among the best groups on the planet. As well as, I significantly admire the crew’s method,” Fidanza stated in a Visma-Lease a Bike assertion.
“With Marianne Vos and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, I might be racing with two nice champions. I anticipate to be taught so much from them and I need to give them the very best assist in races. Moreover, I need to present over the subsequent two seasons that I should be a part of this crew.
“I hope I get to have fun many extra wins within the coming seasons, however my final purpose 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, presently rides for the Ceratizit-WNT Professional Biking crew, however doesn’t have a contract for 2025.
