A memory. It remains only a memory, the "pink" race Varazze-Sanremo. For 7 years, from 1999 to 2005, the city of the Savona Levante was the world capital of women's cycling, a perfect combination with the event container "The City of Women".

Tomorrow, instead, the race will only graze Varazze, since the start has been moved to Genoa, a forerunner of the passage of the men's "classic".

«The Pink Spring was an authentic world championship at the start of the season - recalls Carlo Delfino, a Varazze doctor, a well-known cycling historian and author of several books on the subject - it was the then mayor Giovanni Busso and later the councilor Giuseppe Torelli who believed in the project proposed by the technical manager, lawyer Carmine Castellano, with whom Varazze boasted a solid friendship. Some local enthusiasts formed the organizational soul of the "Spring" for 7 editions. These were years when women's cycling was taking its first important steps and, on the same day as the Milan-San Remo, 150 girls would start from Varazze, including many international champions from 36 nations, Olympians, winners of Giros and Tours. From the "City of Women" to the "City of Flowers", 2 days of celebration would light up: hosting the start, with the "punching" complete with mimosa, was an opportunity to make tourist facilities work. More than 400 presences were estimated, just counting athletes and staff. And the beauties of Liguria would be shown, making the territory known. Unfortunately, obscure sports politics games and rivalries interrupted this race, which, had it continued to exist, would already be at its twenty-seventh edition, much more important than the Paris-Roubaix or the Tour of Flanders, always in the women's version».

After 20 years of pause, last year there was discussion about the need to propose this race as a World Cup event. «It was thought that the Varazze administration and Savona regional councilors would come forward to have Varazze as the starting point, in the sign of a continuity with the primogeniture - continues Delfino - instead Genoa took possession of the start probably by virtue of the financial endowment deriving from the titles "Genoa capital of sport" and "Liguria European Region of Sport". Some argued that from Varazze to Sanremo the route was now too short, while from Genoa it would exceed 150 km. Yet, to lengthen the mileage, it would be enough to make the race do a lap of about thirty kilometers in any area of the hinterland, from Madonna del Salto to Manie, from Loanese to the Albenga plain, involving the territory even more. Unfortunately, we will only see the "Sanremo women" pass by, between a cloud of color and rain, heir to our "Pink Spring", the race invented by the City of Women and soon forgotten».

from Il Secolo XIX by Giovanni Vaccaro