Andrea Guardini ended his career at the age of 32 after his last two seasons with the Continental team "Jotti Vittoria", winning the sprint race in Vedelago at the 2012 Giro d'Italia and 24 at the Tour de Langkawi. He retired with a record of 24 stage wins.

Guardini's final professional success was a stage win at the 2020 Tour of Romania. His last race came at the Giro di Sicilia in late September.

"We were looking for a pro team and hoped it would be temporary at the continental level, but after the pandemic, all the teams kept the rosters they had," Guardini told Bici.Pro (opens in new tab).

"We had to jump through a lot of hoops to have a decent calendar. You have no idea how burdensome the cost of ongoing PCR testing is for a small team."

Verona-born Guardini turned pro in 2011 with Luca Sinto's Farnese Vini and quickly emerged with a bunch sprint win on the final stage of the Tour of Qatar.

His incredible speed earned Guardini 11 wins in his first year, but his limitations on the uphill were also evident.

This dichotomy was perhaps best illustrated in the final week of his 2012 Giro debut. After struggling for most of the race, he found comfortable terrain on the flats and short runs to Vedelago on stage 18, where he outpaced then-world champion Mark Cavendish. He was then sent off on the final stage, Stelvio, for being towed by a team car.

"Cavendish was angry. He had to do a little uphill intermediate sprint to keep the points jersey. But he used too much energy and I won in the end. I didn't crash that day, so I didn't have to ride to come back. But if I had finished that Giro, no one would have denied me my Maria Nera. God only knows how many kilometers I would have ridden from the back."

Guardini moved to Astana the following season to compete in the World Tour. He spent four years with the Kazakhstan team, winning stages in the Eneco Tour, Abu Dhabi Tour, Tour of Oman, and Langkawi, but his only Grand Tour appearance came in the 2014 Vuelta a España.

His next stop was a season with UAE Team Emirates in 2017, before moving to Bardiani-CSF, where he finally returned to the Giro. With fewer flat stages on the European calendar, Guardini found success in the Asian Tour; the COVID-19 pandemic meant that the Asian Tour dates were still limited, further reducing Guardini's chances of winning.

"I have a little bit of regret, but I'm not tearing myself apart like last year when I couldn't find the right thing," Guardini told Bic.Pro. And Guardini told Bic.Pro, "I'm not going to let that happen. Asia was shut down and it is about 60% of my calendar, at least 30 sprints a year suits me"

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Guardini could continue at the continental level in 2022, but the payoff for his commitment is small and he plans instead to become a cyclo-tour guide in the wine country of Valpolicella, north of Verona.

"When you run with the Continental team, you don't have a salary to pay for training camps. And if you do things at 70 percent, it's not worth it anymore," he said. 'You can't win, it's impossible. So now I feel ready to say, 'Enough is enough.'"