HERE WE GO AGAIN... (THE LAST ARTICLE WRITTEN FOR US BY GIAN PAOLO ORMEZZANO)
TUTTOBICI | 31/01/2025 | 08:20 di Gian Paolo Ormezzano Gian Paolo Ormezzano passed away on December 26th. A few days before, a week before Christmas, with his usual enthusiasm, he sent us his article for the January issue. This is the article. The last one. Goodbye GPO and "w us". I think everyone reading here has heard about Edoardo Bove, a Fiorentina footballer who collapsed on the field, with serious heart problems, clinical recovery, and perhaps athletic comeback. His live TV drama was spectacular, even though he was immediately surrounded, hidden, and almost suffocated by teammates who erected a dramatic human wall around him, some quietly crying, some visibly desperate, some nonetheless trying to help. With an ambulance as a co-protagonist. Special wishes to Bove, of course, and if he returns to the field, all the support for him, but a question: are we sure we have given cycling, cyclists the same type of moved and supportive participation in similar moments, in terms of drama, intensity, fear, support, prayer, etc., as those experienced for Bove, with all of us ideally around him? The fact is that - talking about Italy - cycling, as a competitive sport to football in terms of popularity and popular idolatry, has been suffering, and this has been going on for years, from a sense of inferiority. Cycling understood, let's be clear, as road (in-line, time trial, and stage races), track (where there are too many races with abstruse formulas) and challenging cross for special bikes. And that's it, the rest is nonsense. A very personal memory, particular, where interpretative nuances also counted and count. Turin, Gianni Savio presents his professional team put together especially for the Giro d'Italia, after his usual, wise, and competent collection of honest but often forgotten pedaling athletes, of talented but tired athletes, and of champions still current but now dismissed from fame. Godfather Michel Platini then at Juventus.The team's key man was the Belgian Freddy Maertens, twice world champion in professional road cycling, beating Moser in a sprint once, Saronni once. Speeches etc., Platini, a huge personality even in the presentation, I would say in his self-concession, who as a presence overshadows Maertens, who, humbly, asks him how his football is going and avoids talking about himself. I, who somewhat officiated in help to the RAI colleague Giorgio Martino, felt truly uncomfortable. What were we doing there? Now I feel uncomfortable if I have to explain, explain cycling in the face of the physical dramas of a Remco Evenepoel: almost a sense of shame in participating in them, as if accusing a sport of being inherently too dangerous. A cyclist crashes during a race against an unauthorized car, he suffers, meaning he pays with serious injuries, from the sudden opening of a truck door. This Evenepoel... In short, he seems to be someone who goes looking for trouble. More than recognition of all he has already won, even on a world and Olympic level and in the full Pogacar era, it seems to count what he might have won without accidents. How reckless, how unlucky... A bicycle death live, that of twenty-five-year-old Fabio Casartelli, who fell on a Pyrenean descent during the 1995 Tour, gained relevance even if not especially for the fact that from then on the movement accelerated to make helmets mandatory (he, like almost everyone, did not always wear one), and that cyclist more than becoming a martyr had the honor of appearing as a pioneer, protagonist and victim of a human sacrifice for many, for everyone. Little is remembered of the vain resuscitation operation: yet those were three hours full of intensity. Think about it, let's think about it. Every death weighs absolutely, but if one dies doing sports, the "thing" has a special weight. Saying that because of Bove's drama we rediscover ourselves in debt of emotion/feeling for Evenepoel - among other things with a surname difficult to pronounce smoothly, this also counts, crazy but it counts - seems strange, but it's not entirely wrong. The fact that cycling is a sport full (we were about to write "rich" instead of "full"...) of risks and that it has, how should I say?, gotten us used to its dramas should not count, but meanwhile we hope with these lines to have "collected" one more alarmed and thoughtful person. To the dangerousness of cycling, to motorism ruling the roads, a decline in youth registrations is attributed, with alarmed parents and frightened little children: another discussion, but not a "different" discussion. Softly, I would say naturally, Rik Van Looy has died at 91, a great champion, the Coppi of in-line races and daily stage race finishes (even better than Merckx). I remember that L'Equipe dedicated an entire front page to trying to establish a hierarchy of greatness between the two, Fausto and the very, very Flemish Belgian. Van Looy was not a climber at all, the perfect title was: "Between Coppi and Van Looy, a mountain". But here I talk about Van Looy also if not especially to say that too many newspapers have dedicated too few lines to his passing. More should be dedicated to semi-unknown football players. And here we go again...
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