In the chaos of the bunch sprint, Noemi wasn’t sure where she finished at first. Once her soigneur confirmed she made the podium, the Swiss champion erupted into smiles.

“This feels incredible,” she said, stepping off the podium. “I still can’t really understand it. Of course you always go for the win and you always try to win but for me, this third place feels like a victory. It feels like a big win. A podium in a monument is incredible.”

The 23-year-old has started the season with a bang. She won the queen stage and the general classification at the Tour Down Under, placed third at Cadel Evan’s Great Ocean Road Race, and earned top ten results at Strade Bianche and Trofeo Alfredo Binda. At the start in Genoa, Noemi knew she had the full support of her teammates going into the race.

“A result like this needs a really strong team and we proved that today,” she said. “Everyone was super committed from the beginning and they gave me so much confidence. I’m super happy that I could pull it off for the team.”

“Mags was like my bodyguard today,” she continued. “She really stuck to me the whole race. I was caught up behind two crashes and had to come back, but she immediately waited for me, brought me back, gave me her gels, her bottles, and took my vest. She was like my bodyguard. And, that was super helpful, because having someone like this by your side, gives you also a lot of trust. And you know that if not everything goes 100 percent right you know, you have your teammates that will help you work it out.”

The squad came into the race with a clear plan: break it down into manageable pieces—and that’s exactly what they did.

“We made this plan with the team that we’d split the race into two different phases,” she explained. “The first 90k was just to relax, eat, drink, save as much energy as possible and then from 90k on, switch on. Treat it like a new race and now it starts. And that helped me a lot so I could really be a bit relaxed in the first part and then full focus in the second part. I took it like, first into Cipressa, then to the top, then the descent. Step by step. I think that helped me a lot.”

This third place finish marks a historic moment for our young EF Education–Oatly squad: our first podium finish in a monument. There is a lot to be proud of today. Congrats, all.