Biniam Girmay will be tested in 2025: 'That challenges him to do everything well'

Intermarché-Wanty deliberately places Biniam Girmay's focus on Milan-Sanremo in the spring of 2025.

Background Leon Janssen Feb 12, 2025 | 2:33 PM

After his unexpected and great successes in last year's Tour de France, Biniam Girmay will be facing a new goal in 2025: winning a monument. The sprinter and classics rider from Eritrea is fully focused on Milan-Sanremo this spring. Sports manager Aike Visbeek tells In de Leiderstrui how and why Girmay wants to score in this race.

Three monuments

Girmay has already been in action this season in Mallorca, where he finished fourth in the Trofeo Ses Salines won by Marijn van den Berg . He will continue his season next week in the Tour of the Algarve and will ride three monuments this spring: Milan-Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.

Intermarché-Wanty wants to take another step this year with the 24-year-old Girmay. "It's now a matter of working very hard on the points where he was still lacking," says Visbeek, who sees that his leader has a strong base. "In 2022, he already came very far with a combination of racing and good training."

However, the distance between Eritrea and Flanders is a long one, Visbeek also knows. "If, say, Victor Campenaerts and Tiesj Benoot want to train really hard for a day in November, they ride into the Flemish Ardennes and ride the cobblestones full throttle. That is perfect training for the winter, but Bini cannot do that."

Hardness, flexibility and cadence

But how are they going to make Girmay a better classics rider at Intermarché-Wanty? "The development is mainly about gaining toughness in those races. Point two is his flexibility and cadence, which also partly comes from his training in Eritrea."

"Milan-Sanremo is three hundred kilometres, of which sixty kilometres are raced and you are in the wheels for 240 at fifty per hour," Visbeek continues. "Where Mathieu (van der Poel, ed.) now has the flexibility to paddle 250 kilometres, Bini did not have that yet. Those are the details we are working on."

Press Sanremo

All this should ensure that the best version of Biniam Girmay will appear at the start of Milan-Sanremo - in Pavia - on Saturday 22 March. "I think it is good that we put that pressure on Sanremo. That way you challenge him to do everything well", thinks Visbeek, who was team manager at Team Sunweb between 2013 and 2019.

"Last year, the Capo Berta was ridden very hard. The lead-out men fell through and many teams had to work with the Cipressa men earlier. Bini was in the wind a few times and that is ultimately the difference," says the Dutchman.

While the green jersey winner of the last Tour is working hard to become even better physically, he already made a big mental development last year. "Bini is more self-confident. He is also becoming more of a leader, more mature. In Hamburg (where Girmay came third behind Olav Kooij and Jonathan Milan, ed.) I saw that very well. There he said that it would be for him against those guys", according to Visbeek.

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