"Mirco Has The Breakaway Numbers, Giovanni Has Three Sprint Days, And Andrea Will Become The First Maltese Rider To Start The Corsa Rosa" — Polti VisitMalta Names Maestri-Led Wildcard Giro 2026 Squad
Sunday late-evening Sant'Elpidio a Mare. Six days from the 9 May Nessebar Grande Partenza, Polti VisitMalta close out the wildcard tier of the Giro d'Italia 2026 startlist with the most explicitly opportunism-led brief of the eight teams in the eighteen-WorldTour-plus-five-wildcard field. The Sunday-evening team-confirmation press release confirms eight riders built around Mirco Maestri's road-captain breakaway brief, Giovanni Lonardi's priced sprint hand on the three pure-flat days of the first ten stages, and the first Grand Tour start in the history of Maltese cycling for 22-year-old Andrea Mifsud. The wildcard slot, awarded by RCS Sport on Friday alongside Bardiani CSF 7 Saber and Unibet Rose Rockets, is the team's third consecutive Corsa Rosa start since the 2023 rebrand from VF Group-Bardiani CSF.
Maestri at 33, in his eighth career Corsa Rosa start and his third as Polti VisitMalta road captain, returns as the explicit breakaway-rotation hand and the team's tactical voice on the road. The Italian's 2024 Stage 18 Sappada breakaway second behind Simmons remains the deepest result the team has produced at the Giro since the 2019 Stage 16 Stelvio second of Ciccone, and the Sunday-night brief is for Maestri to take the breakaway slot on the Stage 8 Naples-Foggia rolling day, the Stage 14 Foppolo-Castione transition day, the Stage 17 Sestrière queen-stage breakaway script if the GC group lets a thirty-rider front group go clear by 10 kilometres, and the Stage 19 Verona time-trial-eve climbing-stage breakaway. Four priced breakaway days at 50/1 outright the stage and the road-captain hand on every Polti VisitMalta breakaway selection of the three weeks. Maestri has been the team's most consistent break rider on the spring calendar — sixth at GP Industria & Artigianato in March, fourth at the closing GP della Costa Etruschi, eighth on Stage 4 of the just-finished Giro di Sicilia — and the post-Sicilia Sunday-evening EV model puts him at 0.4 stage wins across the three weeks, the second-highest of the wildcard tier.
Lonardi is the day's tactical headline. The 30-year-old Italian sprinter, who took his career-best WorldTour result with a fourth-place finish on Stage 7 of the 2024 Giro behind Milan, gets the team's priced sprint hand on the three pure-flat days of the first ten stages — Stage 2 Nessebar-Burgas at 12/1, Stage 6 Naples flat at 14/1, and Stage 9 Foggia ITT-eve sprint at 16/1. Three priced sprint days at long odds with the brief framed publicly as "the closing-200-metre wheel". Lonardi's spring numbers have been the cleanest of his career — second on Stage 2 Tour of the Alps in April behind Mihkels, third on Stage 4 of the just-finished Giro di Sicilia, fourth at the Trofeo Calvia — and the team's internal Sunday-night EV model puts him at 0.3 stage wins across the three weeks. The maglia ciclamino points jersey is priced 50/1 outright as the explicit secondary target.
Mifsud's selection is the day's headline outside the racing pages. The 22-year-old from Mosta, who joined the team's development feeder programme in 2023 and turned pro on a two-year contract in November 2024, will become the first Maltese rider to start a Grand Tour in the history of the country's federation. The selection was the closing decision of the Sunday-morning team meeting in Sant'Elpidio a Mare, taken in preference to a more experienced selection of Luca Rastelli on the explicit understanding that the brief is a development-block exposure rather than a result-protection slot. Mifsud's spring calendar — 23rd at Coppi e Bartali, 31st at Trofeo Laigueglia, 14th on Stage 2 of the just-finished Giro di Sicilia — reads as the cleanest neo-pro indicator the team has produced since Gabburo's 2018 selection, and the Maltese federation's Sunday-evening release framed the moment without hedging: "Andrea will become the first Maltese rider to start the Corsa Rosa, and we will be there to support him through every kilometre of the three weeks."
The supporting cast is purpose-built for the breakaway-rotation Plan A and the Lonardi sprint-train Plan B. Mattia Bais, the 28-year-old Italian who took the maglia azzurra mountains classification at the 2022 Corsa Rosa, takes the medium-mountain breakaway slot on the Stage 11 Pesaro reduced-bunch verdict and the Stage 15 Asiago verdict-block-opening day. Ludovico Crescioli, the 24-year-old Italian neo-pro who took his first WorldTour-equivalent result with a fifth-place finish on Stage 4 of the just-finished Giro di Sicilia, gets a free brief on the Stage 8 Foggia hills day and the Stage 13 Cesenatico bunch-sprint lead-out. Thomas Pesenti, the 23-year-old Italian climber who finished 18th at the 2025 Tour des Alpes-Maritimes, takes the third-week mountain-stage breakaway hand on the Stage 16 Mottolino-Bormio queen stage and the Stage 17 Sestrière. Andrea Pietrobon, the 26-year-old Italian, takes the Stage 21 Roma processional sprint lead-out for Lonardi. Diego Pablo Sevilla, the 28-year-old Spanish climber on his first Giro start, completes the squad as the road-captain succession brief if Maestri abandons.
Sport director Roberto Reverberi, in the Sunday-evening Sant'Elpidio a Mare team-confirmation press release: "Mirco has the breakaway numbers, Giovanni has three sprint days, and Andrea will become the first Maltese rider to start the Corsa Rosa. We are not going to the Giro to chase the maglia rosa — that conversation has been closed by the eighteen-WorldTour startlist. The conversation is two breakaway slots that we are competitive in, three sprint days that we can place a top-five on, and a development-block exposure for Andrea that the Maltese federation has been waiting twenty years for. The brief is the cleanest we have entered a Giro with since the 2023 rebrand."
The wildcard slot itself is the day's sport-political subtext. RCS Sport's Friday-evening wildcard announcement that handed Polti VisitMalta a third consecutive Corsa Rosa start sat alongside Bardiani CSF 7 Saber's eleventh consecutive invitation and the Grand Tour debut of Unibet Rose Rockets — the most-debated wildcard window of the post-2024 reform era. Polti VisitMalta finished 23rd in the 2025 UCI team rankings, the highest non-Pro-Conti-cap-eligible side in the rankings, and the merit-based slot was effectively a formality once Cofidis declined the automatic invite that their UCI ranking would have entitled them to. The Sunday-night announcement closes the team-confirmation phase of the 2026 Giro market with the cleanest wildcard-tier brief any of the three discretionary picks have produced.
Six days from Nessebar, the Corsa Rosa twenty-three-team startlist is now formally closed. The Sunday-night Polti VisitMalta announcement, taken alongside the Sunday-evening Tudor Pro Cycling and NSN Cycling team confirmations and the Sunday-night market consolidation that has Almeida at 2/1 and Pellizzari at 14/1 as the two-card top of the GC book, completes the team-confirmation phase of the 2026 Giro market. The next two-day cycle will be priced inside the Stage 1 Nessebar TT race-day briefings.