Tackle.
In cycling it means squashing like a sardine against the people trying to find available spots between hands, arms and bellies. Sometimes it’s art, I admit, a sort of calculation for winning at tetris. Ten people to overstep and bingo: ten points.

For sure Tortona and its wind that brushed away the clouds turning the sky clear was unexpected.
Looking at the streets where the napkins rolled away from the abandoned aperitif’s tables I would haven’t bet on so many people. There is Fausto Coppi in a picture that I’ve never seen, much more beautiful than many others, his skinny face and the sunglasses in his hands. Maybe it’s the only thing that really strikes me in this city, or maybe I am wrong, I got used to find the positive side. Maybe there is no side.

I don’t know, I have the feeling that cycling is trying to tell me something that I don’t understand. Looking to the people’s face fixed on the big screen, to the journalists with their chin leaning on the microphones, I wonder which revolution it’s asking me. Partly I know, partly not.
Gaviria is a monster at finding impossible ways. He wriggles towards the finish line in such a way that none expects. A way too easy tetris. Where did he learn? Not where, but how, that’s the point.

I hate those kind of finals, when the buses are kilometres away and I run around to decide where to stay, what to bring home. Everything, randomly, as always. There is a man with the hat and a heavy jacket that asks for autographs to those who pass through, he seems a child but he’s around seventy.
I look for my impossible way among the people to get into the podium area, I stay there ten minutes saying “excuse me” like a broken disc and moving arms, people still like statues under the sun.
I have so few pictures on my camera, it’s one of those times when I stayed in the wrong places. Typical. But there is a second, just a second when I feel that the instant’s chase is what keeps everything going, even if you come back home with your hands half empty.

I look at the waving flags. I can’t stay on the race, I can’t think at the tactics, at the seconds, at what is missed, at the mountains or at the time trial. Perhaps it’s inattention, perhaps it’s tiredness.
We should only find the courage to see a gap where the others see backs, maybe it’s that.

Translated by Martina Meroni.

Original version here → #GIORNIDIGIRO | TORTONA