Martino Tronconi leaves the world of professional mountain biking and, after 12 years as an athlete, becomes the full-time manager of Cannondale MTB Pro Team, the professional team he created, which debuted in the 2023 season.
Source: press release
What moved everything was a passion that turned into a profession, then into a life in cycling. Martino started racing in 2012 as a Junior and grew to a competitive level in one of the main Tuscan mountain bike teams and then tried the road world as an amateur with Hoppla Petroli Firenze. A parenthesis of just one year with his return to mountain biking with four complete seasons on fat wheels, until 2022 when he gave life to his personal project, a team all of his own, built practically from scratch, in the dual role of rider and manager .
This new experience made him savor great emotions and gave him an extra push to continue to grow a completely new, more structured team, with which he built his future. For the whole of 2023 Tronconi was manager and rider, taking care of himself and the organizational work of the team which debuted in the 2023 season with the Norwegian Ole Hem and Nicola Taffaril, achieving two victories and nine podiums so far.
At the beginning of the first season with Cannondale MTB Pro Team, Tronconi had a very specific objective, which was to move up the ranks and bring a team built practically from scratch among the best Italian teams. A very demanding and stressful job as a general manager, but at the same time also rewarding. As the team grew, enthusiastically supported by various sponsors, at a certain point in his career he realized that the right time had come. An athlete would never want to stop running, especially if like Martino he is only 27 years old, but the opportunity to concentrate 100% on his project projects him full time towards his new role.
A career that lasted 12 years
Martino Tronconi made his mountain bike debut in 2012 in the Junior category and won early on. In just a few years he understood that if he really wanted to compete with the best he would have to do it with one of the strongest Italian teams. To allow this transfer, it was Stefano Gonzi who gave him the opportunity to be part of his 2015 lineup.
Martino quickly settled in and competed in his first international marathons, quickly making himself noticed among the younger athletes, acquiring valuable experiences from professional athletes, which were later transformed into victories and podiums.
After two years in the Soudal off road team, Martino took the opportunity to move onto the road with good results with Hoppla Firenze Petroli, one of the strongest Under 23 teams in Italy, a short period which ended at the end of the season with the decision of returning to the mountain bike scene.
Upon returning to the off road with Focus Bike Innovation, Martino achieved great results showing an important leap in quality, which led him to the national team to compete in the European Marathon Championship and the World Championship in Auronzo di Cadore with the blue jersey.
The sensational second place at the Hero Südtirol Dolomites, the ninth place at the Alpentour Trophy, the seventh at the Dolomiti Superbike and the numerous Top 10s in the most important races of the calendar brought him to the team of former marathon world champion Massimo De Bertolis, with whom he stayed for three seasons.
After a difficult 2019 in which he had to deal with an annoying injury, in the following year conditioned by the pandemic, he climbed on the podium three times and in 2021, in his last season with the Trentino team, he achieved a good season with an excellent racing record in stages in Spain, among which the third place finish in the Andorra MTB Classic Pyrenees stands out.
A personal team is the ambitious project that Martino creates in the winter and on his debut he is immediately on the top step of the podium in the first race. Three victories, a podium in a stage of the Swiss Epic, four Top 10s in the UCI marathons and the final fourth place at the Swiss Epic are the solid balance with which the new team lays the foundations for the Cannondale MTB Pro Team in which Martino Tronconi will end his days as an athlete and from 2024 he will play the crucial role of general manager.
Martino Tronconi ... And now it's time to say goodbye!
“The next ten days will be my last as a professional runner. It has been a long, tiring, incredibly beautiful journey but everything has its time and the time has come for the athlete to step aside and let man open a parenthesis of new life.
Two years ago, together with the people who immediately supported me, we gave life to a project which today is Cannondale MTB Pro Team. The team has grown, started to structure itself and will continue to do so in the near future, bringing with it all the resulting difficulties and inevitable complexity. I feel the weight of the responsibility of the investments that companies will make in the team, of respect for the athletes' careers and of making the growth of the project sustainable for the future, therefore it is right, necessary and incredibly stimulating to dedicate 100% of my day and my resources to this. I had a dream as a kid which was to be able to turn my passion into my job, to be able to reach the top and win, I achieved results that that kid would never have imagined.
I'm quitting without regrets, I won, I wore the shirt of my national team and I was able to share these emotions with the people closest to me who I thank from the bottom of my heart for accompanying me during this long journey."
