Poker of victories (and debuts) at the first season: the Active Handbike Team La Leonessa sponsored by MAK Wheels is already going strong!

No sooner had the new season begun than the (long) list of Active Handbike Team La Leonessa victories had to be updated four times. This is thanks to the poker of first places that arrived from Carate Brianza, where in the Handcycling Race organised by the Piccoli Diavoli 3Ruote company, which inaugurated the 2022 national handbike season, the Brescia-based company took part with 17 athletes and took no fewer than 6 to the podium, immediately confirming the extraordinary results of last year. First place went to the usual Simona Canipari, reigning world champion in the WH1 category, and three men: Giuseppe Uberti in the MH1, Omar Rizzato in the MH2 and Mirko Testa in the MH3, a category in which the 25-year-old athlete from Bergamo sprinted to victory over his rival Martino Pini, after a head-to-head race lasting 1 hour and 10 minutes, which was only resolved at the photo finish by just 80 hundredths. A victory that immediately repays Testa’s efforts, after the long winter training in the Canary Islands followed by the meetings with the national team, and launches a 2022 that will see him chase important goals both at Italian level and in international races, with the dream of grabbing a Paralympic pass for Paris 2024. Also on the podium were Mirko De Cortes, who finished second in the MH5 category, narrowly missing out on success, and Giannino Piazza, third in the MH1 category. Four debuts in the Active Handbike Team La Leonessa uniform were also worth mentioning: those of Franco Tonoli (excellent 5th place in the MH4), MH3s Fabrizio Falappi and Marco Dagnoni, and Marco Colombo, president of Active Sport, who took part in a race for the first time, after having followed many as an interested spectator.

Captain Sergio Balduchelli said: «I am most proud of the newcomers: they did a great job, as did all their teammates, from the first to the last. It was a great race, and the ideal way to inaugurate the new season». A season that will see the Active athletes involved in at least twenty events, in Italy, various European countries and also Canada, where in August Simona Canipari will try to defend the two gold medals (road and time trial) won in Portugal in 2021. «The commitments are more and more numerous and prestigious – says Balduchelli -, so to help the boys to make a further leap in quality we have recently decided to insert in the team a new technical director, Luka Kovic. He is a very experienced figure, who also works for the Slovenian national team and has enormous knowledge of the handbike world and all its facets. He will give us the extra edge we need to improve even further. Sunday 27 March, in Salizzole (Verona), the second race of the season for the Active Handbike Team La Leonessa, the last test before the opening stage of the Giro d’Italia, which starts in Bari on 3 April.