A river of emotions, snapshots, days of passion and days of waiting, of changing scenarios, of changing climate, of spectators who applaud, struggle, smiles and grimaces, pain, falls and returns, hugs and (few) gestures, of colors, of shirts, shoes, helmets, bibs pinned on the back, of judgments and impressions. It is the career of Fabio Aru, the last in order of time among the Sardinian professional riders.
Now the Knight of the 4 Moors has stopped, leaving Sardinia again without a representative in the pro group. We hope for not too long, even if on the horizon we do not see who can take its place (at least numerically). Maybe not on the World Tour, but at least in a Professional or Continental line-up, as long as he has a contract. The few Under 23 or Sardinian elites in the group (including another Aru, Lele, also from Villacidrese) do not seem close to the big leap. Whoever succeeds, know that, to be up to Fabio Aru, he will have to deal with numbers that are difficult to match. Very difficult. Here are some, indeed several.
Service status
Fabio Aru's professional seasons are ten, even if 2012 only starts on August 1st. The debut takes place on Wednesday 20 with Astana in the US Pro Cycling Challenge or Tour of Colorado, Durango-Telluride stage of 202 km: 76 ° at 12'42 ”from winner Tyler Farrar, first over Alessandro Bazzana and Damiano Caruso. The Sicilian is one of the three riders present at both the first and last race of Fabio as a pro. The others are Americans: Lawson Craddock and above all Joe Domvbrowski, who two months earlier had denied him the joy of winning the Giro D'Italia Under 23 (then GiroBio) on the Gavia. His teams are instead three: Astana, the most important, with which he runs until 2017 and gets the best results; then the UAE Emirates for three dull seasons, finally the Qhubeka-Assos (later Qhubeka-NextHash), the team that gives him a smile and a good competitiveness. In these seasons he has 583 days of racing and runs over 93,000 kilometers. As a pro he competed on bicycles of four brands: Specialized, Argon 18, Colnago and Bmc.
Yield
Aru enters the world of pros from the front door. Astana chooses him impressed by his Under 23 results with Olivano Locatelli's Palazzago: two Tours of the Val d'Aosta, a Tour of the Valle Cuneesi, the Toscana Terra di Ciclismo in the blue jersey. 2013 is settling down (but he wears the white jersey at the Giro and is 4th at the Giro del Trentino, winning the Youth classification), in 2014 it explodes: in Montecampione, where Pantani had broken away from Tonkov, he obtained his first victory, at the Giro d 'Italy. It will be the first of 9 overall: 8 in the World Tour, 1 in the Italian championship of Ivrea 2017. And there are also 8 out of 9 victories by posting. Fabio always arrives alone at the finish line, with one brilliant exception: in 2014 in Monte Castrove de Meis he goes in the company of Chris Froome and beats him in the sprint. In 583 days of racing he obtained the Top 10 136 times: practically one every 4.3 races disputed, without forgetting that for the most part we talk about World Tour races. For 12 times he finished second. He wore the leader's jersey of the Grand Tours: red in Spain (six days, taking it home in 2015), yellow for two days at the 2017 Tour (three days also in the climbers' polka dot jersey), pink for one day at the 2015 Giro Three times on the podium of the great stage races, twice fifth. He won the best Junior jersey at the 2015 Giro with the widest gap in history: an hour and 51 minutes over Davide Formolo. In the world rankings he was number 8 in 2015. He closes his career in 168th place.
Attachment
If there is one thing that was missing in Fabio Aru's career, it was the chance to race in his Sardinia. In 2017 a crash in Spain prevented him from being at the start of the Giro di Italia from Alghero. This year, his team gave up the Italian Cycling Week thinking that Fabio was competing in the Tour, then things went differently. He chose to leave the Vuelta because it is the stage race he has run several times (6) and in which he has covered the most km: over 18 thousand against the 13,500 of the Giro d'Italia and about 12 thousand of the Tour. His favorite races remain, however. the Milan-Turin (twice on the podium in seven participations) and, among the Classic Monuments, Lombardia, which finished twice in the Top 10 (and one 11th) out of seven participations. Five appearances also at the Volta a Catalunya and at the Italian championship, which he won in 2017 in Ivrea. The country in which he raced the most, however, remains Italy with about 38 thousand km covered in the race, against 29 thousand in Spain and 21 thousand in France. In his career he has stuck the number on his back in 23 different nations from Asia (China, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Kazakhstan and Israel), America (Argentina, Brazil, USA and Canada) and of course Europe. Finally, with the blue jersey he made his debut as a Junior in cyclocross and was called up in the Under 23 National Team (winning the Toscana Terra di Ciclismo) and in the Senior National Team for the Ponferrada 2014 World Championships and (giving up) Innsbruck 2019, the Rio 2016 Olympics. (6th) and the 2016 European Championships of Plumelec.
This was Fabio Aru. Next.