Italian DS Frassi on dark days at Israel-Premier Tech and fresh start at NSN Cycling

Speaking to bici.pro around the presentation of the 2026 Giro d’Italia in Rome, Frassi looked back on a late summer when demonstrations followed the team from Spain to Italy and France and pushed everyone inside the organisation into the centre of a political storm.

“It was very tough, no doubt,” Frassi said. “I was not at the Vuelta. My colleagues told me about the most intense phase of the protests and I experienced a lot of it from a distance, but we were in constant contact among ourselves.”

Even from Italy, he could sense the strain on those inside the race. “They told me there was a lot of stress,” he said. “Not being there, I could not fully understand exactly how it felt on the ground, even if you could see clearly on television what was happening. I was in Italy, and for me the real part started afterwards with the Italian classics.”

As the only Italian sporting director on the staff, Frassi quickly became the first point of contact for anxious race organisers. “I had my hands full,” he said. “Being an Italian director in the team, of course, the organisers called me. The first was Adriano Amici, because the real problem began with the GS Emilia races. Then, one after another, all the other races followed.”

“There was more stress, even if less than at the Vuelta, because in the end I was living it over the phone. What I felt most strongly was the fear from organisers that they might not be able to let the race go ahead, because the protests could stop everything.”

Harder to absorb was the feeling of being personally targeted for something they did not control.

“It was not pleasant,” Frassi said. “Sometimes I found myself, and we found ourselves, facing ugly gestures in the different races we went to. We passed under the finish line, and people gave us the middle finger, shouted at us. It was not a nice situation. They painted you as an indecent person when you are not.”

“More than stress, it was annoying,” he added. “Because what did we have to do with it? We were a cycling team. Yes, we carried the name Israel, but from a sporting point of view the owner has a great passion for cycling. Thanks to him, the team achieved great results in recent years, we reached the WorldTour. In the end, for a political issue, we were the ones paying the price.”

Through that period, Frassi said, the squad drew reassurance from team manager Kjell Carlström’s communication about where the project was heading. Out of those conversations came the decision to relaunch as NSN Cycling, with a new identity, Swiss affiliation and Scott as technical partner.

“He explained the idea of the new team, he showed us the NSN Cycling project and we understood that there was a clear, solid path in place for 2026,” Frassi said. “So it was a natural passage. Finally we were stepping out of the political storm and going back to talking only about cycling, which is what we wanted.”

The shift in mood was already evident at the team’s first gathering in Denia, Spain. “To be honest, there is a lot of enthusiasm,” Frassi said. 

“We were more than 150 people at the camp. That gives you an idea of the level we can reach in terms of performance, management, staff, sports directors and riders. We are really well equipped and very motivated, and definitely more relaxed than before. We are already focused on the new season. We want to make our race programmes and set our goals. In one word, we are happy.”

For all the talk of a fresh start, however, not every link to the past has been clearly defined. The connections between former owner Sylvan Adams and the current iteration of the team remain somewhat opaque. Although the team insisted that Adams was stepping back from his day to day role and would no longer serve as a spokesperson, Escape Collective reported that the Canadian Israeli businessman was present at NSN’s recent training camp in Spain.