An Heroic Quest. Montalcino and the “luck” of the bicycle

We pedal for pleasure, by conviction, by will, we still pedal for luck. Sometimes you pedal to seek your fortune. The riders did it, still do it, in the Giro and the Tour and in all the other big and small races. You pedal and you realize that luck is pedaling, it is all around pedaling, in the wake of a bicycle.

Carlo, who runs a trattoria in the hills around Montalcino, says, “that luck, the real one, is the bicycle, rather than the wine”. Because wine has been around for a long time, “but it was the luck of those who had the vineyards”, for all the others “and there are many, luck came later, it came pedaling. With The Heroic as an event, but above all independently of the Eroica as an event”. That of people who pedal “now there are always, all year round, even when one thinks: this is not the time to pedal”. It’s not the pedalers, the cycle tourists who think it’s not the time to pedal, because it’s always time to take a bike ride, whether it’s one day or a few days, whether it’s with the bags hanging on the rack or they’re in a room hotel or farmhouse.

They arrive, they see, they stop. “They taste what this land has to offer, and it’s a lot, a lot: cheeses, cured meats, vegetables, pici and wine, lots and lots of delicious wine, starting with Brunello di Montalcino, but then there are many others”, says Lucia, innkeeper of an inn that you come across while pedaling the 70-kilometer Eroica Montalcino route. “If you drive, you can’t drink, if you pedal, you’ll get one or two glasses. After all, you take an excavation, you don’t bother anyone. In two or three kilometers you disposed of everything. Holy bicycles”.

“The luck is that people pedal, they don’t have the problems that those who don’t pedal have, i.e. petrol, the stress of the driver. And the more they pedal, the hungrier they are. And we do this: we feed the people”, underlines Carlo. His restaurant has been open since 1938, first his grandfather, then his father, finally him and then his son, already in the kitchen. “About ten years ago it was thought to close. The money was just enough to live with dignity and to pay the salary of an assistant cook. Now, however, life is good. People arrive, stop, eat. She is happy. Cyclists are always happy”.

It’s good for people on bicycles. To itself, to the economy, the real one, of these territories, to the territories. “People are concerned about climate change, a battle against climate change depends not only on Italy but on the whole world. Getting around by bike is much better than getting around by car, and L’Eroica creates opportunities and goes perfectly with the promotion of wine and the territory”, the vice president of the European Parliament told Adnkronos Roberts Zile. He too was there, among the many – more than 2,200 participants – at theHeroic Montalcino which moved over the weekend between Montalcino, Buonconvento and further north and further south, further west and further east, up to Pienza and beyond, depending on the chosen route.

“I am happy, very happy, seeing so many people around the hills today, all year round, makes us understand day after day that events like L’Eroica are not just a bike ride, they are the way to give life to an entire territory thanks to the bicycle”, says Franco Rossi, president of Eroica Italia.