TURIN – Meetings, readings and dialogues to pay homage to the Tour de France through the pages of books. On the occasion of the extraordinary departure of the Tour de France from Italy and as part of the ToRide initiatives of the City of Turin, dedicated to cycling and the values that this sport embodies, the Turin International Book Fair awaits the passage of the yellow two-wheeled race by organizing the literary festival “Tour in Turin”curated by Federico Vergari, journalist and editorial consultant of the Book Fair for the sports and comics sections, and by Marco Pautasso, general secretary of the Book Fair and manager of the Off Fair.
“Tour in Turin”, meetings to pay homage to the Tour de France
From Thursday 27th to Sunday 30th June at Palazzo Madama and at the Motovelodromo eight meetings dedicated to cycling and its stories will see authors, journalists, experts and bike enthusiasts as protagonists, awaiting the arrival in Turin of the third stage of the Tour de France on Monday 1st July: Fabio Genovesi, writer and chronicler of the Giro d’Italia, with the lectio on the Tour de France Tutti Primi on the finish line of my heart (27 June); Marco Pastonesi, journalist and author of Pantani era un dio (66thand2nd), twenty years after the disappearance of the “Pirate” (27 June); the Eurosport commentators Luca Gregorio, journalist, and RiccardoMagrini, former professional cyclist and now commentator, authors of Vicini alle clouds. The great climbers of modern cycling (Hoepli), from Pantani to Pogačar, from Contador to Van Impe (28 June); Omar Di Felice, extreme ice cyclist and writer, with stories about his adventures as an ultracyclist (June 29); the Cicliste per caso collective with the book dedicated to Alfonsina Strada, who participated in the men’s Giro d’Italia exactly one hundred years ago ago, in 1924 (June 29); the journalists Gino Cervi, Andrea Schiavon and Herbie Sykes and the writer Gian Luca Favetto with the recent book The Last Time Pantani (Mulatero Edizioni) to remember the “Pirate” through more than thirty voices and testimonies (30 June); the FIAB Torino Bici & Dintorni association with the book Discovering Piedmont by bicycle (Edizioni del Capricorno) on the many cycling itineraries from the Canavese to Lake Orta, from the Pinerolese to the plain between Novara and Vigevano (28 June). A special moment on Sunday 30 June, at the end of “Tour à Turin”, will remember Gianni Mura, one of the most appreciated and followed Italian sports journalists, who passed away in 2020, an attentive observer of cycling competitions, with readings taken from his journalistic articles collected in his book The Red Flame. Stories and roads of my tours (minimum fax). Free entry while places last. Reservation recommended on salutopiu.salonelibro.it. Info: salonlibro.it – [email protected]
With the new “Tour à Turin” project, the International Book Fair further consolidates its attention towards the field of sports narration and the collaboration with the City of Turin, to enrich the major sporting events that take place with debates and themed meetings. in the Piedmontese capital. “Tour à Turin” is in fact part of the rich bouquet of initiatives that the Book Fair has created for the world of sport, starting from 2021: the Gianni Mura sports fiction prize, aimed at contemporary fiction books that best describe sport , its values, its stories and its protagonists; the Olympic Hall during the Salone in May, to present books, novels and essays on sport for adults and young people; the Fuoriclasse podcast, now in its third season with 25 active episodes dedicated to the sport of yesterday and today, its epic, its unique and exemplary stories, its characters and shared values; the Fuoriclasse Live schedule, the series of talks on tennis and its protagonists and on sport in general, organized on the occasion of the Nitto ATP Finals 2023. Addresses: Palazzo Madama, Piazza Castello, Turin / Motovelodromo, Corso Casale 144, Turin
“Tour à Turin”, the calendar of events
Thursday 27 June
5pm – Motovelodromo
Presentation of the book Pantani era un dio (66thand2nd, 2014)
By Marco Pastonesi
Gian Luca Favetto moderates
In almost ten years of professionalism Marco Pantani has won just over thirty races, yet the “Pirate” has conquered the history and people of cycling as no one has managed to do for a long time. In 2014, the tenth anniversary of his death, Marco Pastonesi reconstructs Pantani’s career by collecting the unpublished testimonies of those who knew him closely: his fans, sports managers, friends from the piadina shops. A polyphony of voices that restores the Romagna from which he has never separated, the mountains that have consecrated him as a myth, the climbers of the past to whom he was heir, and the weaknesses of man: doping, told from a perspective that dismantles clichés about the phenomenon and drugs.
7pm – Palazzo Madama
All First on the finish line of my heart
Lectio by Fabio Genovesi on the Tour de France
Fabio Genovesi is the cultural voice of the Rai commentary on the Giro d’Italia, he collaborates with Corriere della Sera and its weekly magazine la Lettura. He was born and lives in Forte dei Marmi. He has published short stories, novels, biographies, essays, screenplays and translations by American authors. After his debut with two now cult books, Morte dei Marmi and Versilia Rock City, he experienced gradually growing success with the novels Esche vive, Chi manda le wave (with which he won the Strega Giovani prize and arrived among the five finalists of the Strega Prize), The sea where you cannot touch it, I will fall dreaming of flying and The giant squid.
Friday 28 June
5pm – Motovelodromo
Discover Piedmont by bicycle
Presentation of the volume By bike in Piedmont
Edited by Edizioni del Capricorno and FIAB Torino – Bici & Dintorni
A collection of new cycling routes, suitable for all ages, to discover Piedmont at the pace of the bike. From Canavese to Lake Orta. From the disused foothill railways of the Pinerolo area to the plain between Novara and Vigevano. From the checkered sea of the Vercelli rice fields to the Alessandria plain. The Piedmontese routes of the AIDA Cycle Route, a route that crosses Northern Italy from Moncenisio to Trieste. White roads and secondary streets that cross countryside, naturalistic oases, art, history and architecture treasures.
7pm – Palazzo Madama
Presentation of the book Near the clouds. The great climbers of modern cycling (Hoepli, 2023)
With Luca Gregorio and Riccardo Magrini
A joint effort by the Eurosport commentators, based on the emotions that ten cycling climbers aroused with their climbing feats. The climb is, in fact, the intrinsic soul of cycling. In the collective imagination, when we talk about the great stage tours (Tour, Giro d’Italia and Vuelta), the memorable feats were signed by the great climbers. Stories of successes and attacks, of imagination and courage in cycling, from Pantani to Pogačar, from Contador to Van Impe, to pay homage to the figure of the climber, who makes fans jump on their seats every time he sprints up a climb. The volume contains a preface by an exceptional fan: Mauro Corona.
Saturday 29 June
11am – Palazzo Madama
Presentation of the book Cyclists by chance. Italy by bike in the footsteps of Alfonsina Strada
With Silvia Gottardi
Moderated by Elisa Gallo
In collaboration with Ediciclo editore and Vitamina C
Alfonsina was the first and only woman to race the Giro d’Italia in 1924, and is considered a pioneer in gender equality in the sporting field. She became the muse and guided the journeys of female cyclists by chance. 3,700 km cycled in Italy, meeting stubborn and free women like Alfonsina Strada, who lived their lives in silence and almost in the shadows, or others, like the partisan Angela or Annalisa Durante, victim of the Camorra, who entered head-on into the history. All are the example and embodiment of Alfonsina’s idea of going straight to pursue one’s passions, without betraying the deep desires that animate us. Preface by Lorella Zanardo and illustrations by Giulia Neri.
5pm – Palazzo Madama
The world seen by an ultracyclist.
Meeting with the extreme cyclist and writer Omar Di Felice
Moderated by Marco Bo
In collaboration with B+C publisher
Former professional cyclist, Omar Di Felice is an ultracycling champion. In his books Pedaling in the icy silence. Extreme cycling and happiness (Rizzoli, 2020) and Arctic. Watch the changing world with me (Baldini+Castoldi, 2022) recounted his extreme cycling adventures in the Nordic countries and how he managed to challenge the ice and frost on his bike, to raise awareness of the problem of the environmental crisis. These include the 1300 km on the Arctic Highway in 2018 and other undertakings, such as the one in Alaska and Iceland in 2019, the one in the Gobi desert in 2020 and the one on Everest in 2021. Up to an exceptional undertaking: over 4000 kilometres, a temperatures below -30 degrees, from Kamchatka, through the Lapland region (Russia, Finland, Sweden and Norway), Svalbard Islands, and Iceland, to land in Greenland, Canada and Alaska, going beyond the dividing line of the Polar Circle Arctic.
Sunday 30 June
11am – Palazzo Madama
Presentation of the book The Last Time Pantani Gone (Mulatero Edizioni, 2024)
By Gino Cervi, Andrea Schiavon, Gian Luca Favetto, Herbie Sykes
It was a Saturday evening in February when we were all reached by terrible news: Marco Pantani was dead. Twenty years have passed since February 14, 2004 and that wound continues to pulsate. Just as the wound caused by the devastating flood, which less than a year ago erased lives, projects, stories and memories, is still too open. On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the disappearance of the “Pirate”, the authors asked over thirty people who lived Pantani’s epic, or the stories of cycling and sport in those years, to go back to that Saturday evening, to tell us their Pantani starting from 14 February 2004. It is a collective diary that aims to bring back to Romagna the love of one of its most unforgettable children. The book will help raise funds for grassroots cycling societies and solidarity projects that the 2023 flood took everything away from.
5pm – Palazzo Madama
Inside Gianni Mura’s Tours
Selected readings from the book The red flame (minimum fax, 2021)
Organized by the Turin International Book Fair, in collaboration with minimum fax
The red flame is the flag that at the Tour de France signals the start of the last kilometre, the moment of the desperate and decisive sprint or the triumphal parade of the rider who imposes himself by detachment, the emotional culmination of the race. In almost twenty-five years as a correspondent, first for the Gazzetta dello Sport from 1967 to 1972, and then for Repubblica from 1991 onwards, Gianni Mura (who passed away on 21 March 2020) told the story of the Tour and made it epic, poetic, news of faces and landscapes, of foods and village anecdotes. In the pages of one of the most followed Italian sports journalists, pupil, friend and heir of Gianni Brera, the solitary and sad escapes of Ocaña, the deaths of Simpson and Casartelli, the greedy victories of Anquetil and the generous and bold ones of Chiappucci, parade the reign of Miguel Indurain and the eternally missed promises of Jan Ullrich, the rebirth of Lance Armstrong, triumphant over his opponents and his illness, and then the time of Pantani, the sudden and imperious interpreter of a lost and fossil cycling.
