Gianni Moscon has put his poor form in 2019 down to “overtraining” last winter.
The Italian seemed to find his legs in the World Championship road race in Yorkshire on Sunday (September 29), after a difficult season to date.
Team Ineos rider Moscon said he has reset after struggling through the Tour de France and feels he is almost back to his best.
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His resurgent form carried the 25-year-old to a fourth-place finish in Yorkshire, after he buried himself in support of Italian team-mate Matteo Trentin, who took silver.
Moscon told Italian newspaper La Gazetta dello Sport: “In the winter I worked like never before. Hours and hours on the bike and specific work. Then in Columbia earlier this year, hours and hours, I came back a corpse.
“I couldn’t recover because I couldn’t get 10 days away from the bike. My body was exhausted. At the Tour I was tired before even starting.”
Moscon finished his 2018 season strongly, winning two Italian one-day races in the autumn, taking a top-five finish at the Worlds and claiming the Italian time trial champion’s jersey, wrapping up with overall victory at the Tour of Guangxi.
He then had a rocky start to 2019, crashing at the UAE Tour and not performing in the Classics, having previously notched a top-10 finish in Paris-Roubaix.
Team Ineos took Moscon to the Tour, but he was mostly invisible as Egan Bernal carried home the yellow jersey for the team.
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Moscon said he weighed himself after the Tour and he had put on almost 10 kilograms, jumping from 70kg to almost 80.
But he recovered in time for the Worlds, where he was one of the main animators in the final.
Moscon is now down to race the Giro dell’Emilia and the Gran Premo Bruno Beghelli this weekend, often used as warm up races for those taking part in the final Monument of the season, Il Lombardia.
