Giro D'Italia by Colin O'Brien

Author:Colin O'Brien
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books

9

THE SHERIFF AND THE RIFLE SHOT

Francesco Moser and Giuseppe Saronni are like l’acqua e il fuoco, water and fire. If one said snow was white, before he had a chance to finish his sentence the other would be shaking his head and furiously declaring that it was black as the night. That’s assuming, of course, that you could get them to agree to be in the same room together in the first place. Because even now, three decades after they last raced one another, the animosity continues, and you get the sense that they derive a unique and perverse pleasure from taking shots at one another. To many tifosi, their rivalry epitomised an important divide in Italy’s society. Moser, the perfect expression of the country’s gritty, agrarian backwaters; Saronni, a son of Lombardy’s wealthy industrial heartland.

Francesco was born in 1951 in Palù di Giovo, a small town that overlooks Trento in the foothills of the Dolomites. One of 11 children, as a boy he’d accompany his father to watch the Giro whenever it passed, and grew up steeped in cycling culture because not one, not two, but three of his older brothers, Diego, Aldo and Enzo, were professionals. Aldo and Enzo both wore the Maglia Rosa for two days in their careers, the former in 1958 and again in 1971, and the latter in 1964. This area is the kind of place that lives and breathes cycling, and more recently it has given us Gilberto Simoni, Giro champion in 2001 and 2003, and Diego’s son Moreno, winner of the 2013 edition of the Strade Bianche. They’re a tough, competitive family, and while Enzo died in a farming accident aged 67, Aldo, now in his eighties, can still be found tending to the grapes in the vineyards of the family estate. In 1973, the year Francesco made his debut as a professional, all four where involved with the Filotex team: three as riders and Enzo as a directeur sportif. Aldo was 39, some 18 years older than the fresh-faced Francesco. His first bike, aged five, was a gift from Aldo, and after that, in the great tradition of so many siblings, it was hand-me-downs. Some were so big that he’d ride them sitting on the top tube, up and down the steep, seven-kilometre stretch to the schoolhouse, rain or shine. Moser started racing relatively late, aged 18, because of familial duty in the fields, but when he won the Trentino Regional Championships in July 1969, there was no looking back. Equipped with a motor that was as powerful as his pedalling stroke was elegant, Lo sceriffo, the Sheriff, as he’d come to be known, embarked on a professional career that would culminate with an incredible 273 wins, including three Paris–Roubaix titles, victory at Milano–Sanremo and the World Championships, and two wins at the Giro di Lombardia, not to mention countless other one-day road races and a slew of track events. He also won the 1984 Giro d’Italia, the same year that he set a new Hour Record.

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