“Today’s cycling has nothing to do with mine”. Francesco Moser speaks

“We were twelve brothers. My mother had called three of us Aldo, Jacinta and Anna Lucia, after the shepherd children of the Fatima apparitions. They had all gone away. Three of the seven boys were already racing by bicycle. One was in the seminary, because he had chosen to be a priest. My mother did not want me to leave either. She was convinced that I would become a good farmer. I was fifteen. The countryside had been my whole life. Thanks to the expanses of the cornfields, we had grown up, and well, eating polenta from morning to evening”. Francis Moser, one world championship on the road and one on track, the Hour record, one Giro d’Italia, three Paris-Roubaix, two Giro di Lombardia, one Freccia Vallone, one Milan-Sanremo, 273 victories as a professional, preceded in the world only by Eddy Merckx and Ric Van Looy, recounts his extraordinary journey from the immaculate fields of Palù di Giovo to the winding roads of cycling, which would make him a legend. The most infinite that Italy has ever cultivated and revered, after Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali.

Did he eventually switch from a tractor seat to a bicycle seat?

“I started late, at eighteen. Aldo, Enzo and Diego I watched them race live. Anquetil, Van Looy, Gimondi, Merckx and Motta, on television. Just four years later, I found myself racing against them. I remember my first time was on a spring Sunday and the whole world was watching the sky or television, waiting for Neil Armstrong to land on the moon. I broke away, I had a puncture, I came back with the leaders, I detached them uphill, I was caught and, in the end, I finished fourth in the sprint”.

Moser won and obtained everything, races, stages, the Giro, world championships and records, but he only had one great rival, Beppe Saronni.

“From 1978 until I stopped, there was an even too heated dispute between us. There were very difficult moments, with the wind blowing like a storm. That rivalry has often transcended bounds. Neither of us gave up and we pretended in unison to be right and the reason was to be stronger than the other”.

One still has the image of the last time trial of the 1984 Giro in one’s eyes. When Moser enters the Verona Arena as winner, after extinguishing Laurent Fignon’s last chance.

“A day like this cannot be forgotten. At the Giro I got on the final podium several times. I won stages, wore countless pink jerseys, but getting to the finish, before everyone else, is an emotion that has no equal. I think it was the best victory. It’s one thing to beat everyone in the one day race. Another at the end of three weeks, with the imponderable lurking until the end. If you fall and don’t get up, there’s no appeal, even if it’s the last day”.

How has cycling changed?

“The organization of races and teams has completely changed. Today runners have all the comforts and all possible supports, but they decide little or nothing. With the radios they command them with a stick and you can’t go wrong. It used to happen that a rider would get into a breakaway and shoot, even though he didn’t have to. No one saw him anyway. Today you always have to be careful about what you are doing, because you can be sure there is someone watching you”.

Even you, however, always had eyes on you. The fans, the public, were protagonists of the races, almost as much as you. There was a part of Italy that ran together with you. And, like you, he went up, down, won, lost, fell and dreamed. Is that total identification and that magical relationship no longer there?

“I don’t want to say it’s necessarily a bad thing, but everything has changed. In my day, the day before the race was punching. People flocked to you, took pictures, spoke to you, cheered you on, asked you for the happiness of a shared victory. Today those moments of celebration and closeness are distant memories. The riders keep them away from that confusion, which was once the beating heart of cycling. Today everything is in order. Everything’s perfect. It’s all the same. Once upon a time, the gregarious raced with used tyres. Today, together with the runners, a truck full of bicycles leaves. We used the same bike for most of the year and took it home after the ride. At most we made the mid-season change”.

The land, the wine and the bicycle have been the magic circle of his life. Francesco Moser produces a very good wine. What vintage was it?

“We risked the worst, with that abnormal heat. Then it rained and they tell me it turned out well”.

What is your favorite wine?

“I like sparkling wine. My favorite has been the same for nearly forty years. His name is a number, interspersed with a comma: 51.151. That’s the distance I covered in Mexico City when I set the hour record. Other times. Same wine”.