The spring races are anticipating this, not to mention imposing: soon the time for the big stage races will arrive and we will have to choose whether to support the Slovenian or the Dane, with strong acrobatics of a mental, sentimental, historical and geographical nature. We will train him well over the last few years.
I remember when (1959, prehistory) I followed as a journalist on the first of my 29 Giri d’Italia I played the game of being a nonconformistand strengthened by a decent fresh competitive past as a swimmer and good school attendance in middle-distance athletics, as well as strengthened by the freedom and trust that the newspaper granted me, I wrote that the preponderance in the stage races of cyclists from the otherwise vast and noble Italian-French-Belgian village, with sporadic interference from other Dutch, Spanish, German, Swiss, Swedish and even Luxembourg Europe, was also due to the fact that in many very sporty countries the best youth devoted themselves to other disciplines.
I wrote, to make myself look good with the practice of non-conformism, as has always happened in the best or even worst history of humanity, which when the fabulous physiques of the Californians (a US state overall, but very emblematic) sin case they were transferred to the bicyclewho was very American-New York in his early days on the velodrome, would have been the end of the miraculous, romantic, fakirsque, sensational but also pathetic cycling of the Euro scorpion fish, aesthetically and athletically exalted only when they were placed on the velocipede, above all the immense Campionissimo with his fragile bones and his “pointed” chest, bird-like.
I was perhaps even forcefully forcing hypotheses, predictions and comparisons, seeking and sometimes finding the shock, also because the lineage of the famous singing journalists was dying out, elderly people handicapped by the frenzy of competition, of editions for the written press in full circulation after the war, with the work becoming increasingly difficult, especially for those who were accustomed to calmly pontificating in writing interpreting the arrival orders, after having fled in front of the runners, leaving the solemn mid-stage restaurant just in time. I had a certain success which I attributed with false modesty to non-conformism: perhaps I even followed the motorcycle race by being sprayed (lustral rain, I wrote) by the clouds of runners’ pee, perhaps I tried to take certain pills with great caution to understand what it felt like to doped, by drug addicts. I wasn’t alone, of course, we were a brazen bunch of registered greens, the fact that we wanted to tell the story of the runners in action was almost shocking, and captivating for the readers. I remember that for my first Giro I nevertheless made a strong and useful hypocritical profession of humility: at the starting rally I always went to pay homage to the most dean of deans, the most singer of singers, “good stage, director” I said to him, and he said “thank you dear, I’m reading to you” (obviously he didn’t know who I was).
Staying with the Giro, it’s true that they have followed one another in the last or – better yet – penultimate times winners from Colombia, Ecuador, Russia, Canada, USA, England, but it always seemed sporadic, occasional, often random. Instead, the Slovenians and the Danes have already established a sort of domination. And to say that the Slovenians are few cats, in case one could have supposed, after the diaspora from Yugoslavia, a strong arrival of their large Croatian neighbors, who have long femurs, always useful for their great performances in basketball and water polo. The Slovenians were perhaps promising in downhill skiing, Denmark historically relied on only one great runner (Ritter, just to name one, world hour record). Now Pogacar, Roglic, Vingegaard etc. they are persistent names at the top (and speaking of persistence Sagan, Slovakian/new, didn’t win the Giro and the Tour but he also marked a lot for Italian cycling).
Let’s say that thanks to cycling you learn a lot of new, interesting and varied geography. Waiting for the first African (but there are signs) and, especially for us Italians, for some of our Albanian neighbors.
from tuttoBICI in April
