In the last three and a half years Alberto Dainese has only won twice: at the Giro d’Italia 2022 and the Giro d’Italia 2023. There are plenty of sprinters who win dozens of races a year, but perhaps struggle to make their mark in the big events. Well, the Paduan of Team DSM does exactly the opposite, he wins little, but wins well.
Dainese is a man with courage, not only because he sprints at 70 km/h without reverential fears, but also because of the non-trivial choices he has made in his career, especially for an Italian rider, normally used to growing up in their own country. Alberto was one of the forerunners of the “emigrate to emerge” movement: in 2018 he headed to the SEG Racing Academy in the Netherlands, where he turned pro, after winning a remarkable European U23 road title.
Then he chose to join the big boys at Team DSM – the former Team Sunweb – which had never featured an Italian before, at most only the bus driver. Thus, his career began with a few more obstacles than that of most of his peers: in addition to the normal ups and downs of a neo-professional, Dainese had to immerse himself in a foreign and very structured reality such as that of DSM.
