Trot, Gelormini wins the Elitlopp in Stockholm – Corriere.it

«Winning the Elitlopp trotting in Stockholm is a dream I had as a child: as a child I didn’t watch cartoons, I watched trotting races on television…». Sixty years after Sergio Brighenti in 1964 with Pack Hanover, almost half a century after Giancarlo Baldi with Timothy T in 1974 and 1975, and twenty-one years after Giampaolo Minnucci from Rome, the last Italian driver to score with Varenne in the most prestigious European speed race on 1,600 meters, an Italian driver — the 31-year-old Piedmontese Gabriele Gelorminiself-made and from scratch as an “emigrant” in France — wins the Elitlopp at the Swedish racecourse in Stockholm: first qualifying the French horse in the place of honor in the battery Hohneck entrusted to him by trainer Philippe Allaire, and then winning the final for almost 1 million euros in a super time of 1’08”9 per km with a sumptuous «guided» for courage and precision.

The number 1 anti-superstition

The courage of «Gaby» Gelormini, when choosing the starting numbers among the 8 qualified horses, is to choose (with a lot of tongue out as an anti-superstition sneer) the number 1 behind the autostart, so uncomfortable and unhappy on the Stockholm track to have proverbially become a sort of curse for all the great drivers who up to that moment from number 1 had only launched trotters then “exploded” in ruinous breaks at a gallop and disqualified like last year (and still today in battery) the Swedish winner of two years ago Don Fanucci Zet.

Glacial precision is the one with which Gelormini, overtaken at the reins of his Hohneck by the deadly Swedish starter Onas Prince, brakes a millimeter before hitting him, follows in the slipstream for a couple of seconds, and then surprisingly immediately attacks him to flank him and pass it again already at the first cornergaining that consistent advantage which on the finish line allows him to escape — with a dizzying final fraction of 1’06” per km — from the feared speed of the Swede San Moteur and the French Go On Boy, horses finally inseparable even at photo finish, with Onas Prince fourth again, fifth the French-Dutch outgoing 2022 Etonnant champion, and sixth the Italian Vivid Wise As (already second two years ago), finished strong but late with driver Mathieu Abrivard.

The consecration of a climb

For Gelormini, “the emigrant” is the success destined to change his life, making him enter the Olympus of world drivers after the fourth place in the Elitlopp 2021 with the French trotter Gelati Cut who had won the battery, after the second place in Paris in 2015 in the Gran Prix d’Amerique with the French outsider Voltigeur de Myrt, and after the second place in Naples in the recent Lotteria di Agnano Grand Prix, where with the native Capital Mail he narrowly failed to escape the favorite Vernissage Grif (the blond son of Varenne today in Stockholm too nervous to consume all his energy even before the heat without being able to qualify for the final with his coach-driver from Emilia Alessandro Gocciadoro).

Gocciadoro rages in the other Grands Prix

And the first to warmly celebrate Gelormini from the side of the track today is Gocciadoro, until then a nightmare for the Swedes and French as he was the undisputed ras of the day of the Grand Prix in Stockholm, with a series of successes (sometimes incredible due to the seemingly impossible final comebacks ) in the various side trials reserved for trotters divided by age, sex and distance. Gocciadoro rages with Zeudi Amg among the older females, Vaprio in the «mounted» test, Bengurion Jet in the sub-clou of the «Sweden Cup»”, but the most iconic victory ends up being the one in the «Breeders Course» for 3-year-old mares with Esmeralda Bez: raised by the Bezzecchi family, the bearer of the banker Gaetano Miccichéstill last of 12 competitors entering the finish line, “takes off” outside of everyone when Gocciadoro takes advantage of the slope of the parabolic curve until it swoops down victoriously with a final rush to the last breath on the Swedish Kitty Hawk (driven by famous New Zealand driver Dexter Dunn) and on the pure Italian Eteria and Esperia Font, all finally enclosed in the space of a muzzle in a photo finish destined to enter the showcases of trotting museums.

Alain Delon’s friend

The success in Elitlopp of the 6-year-old French standardbred horse Hohneck (whose great-grandfather Cocktail Jet the hippophiles remember victorious in 1996 in the old San Siro racecourse in a memorable edition of the European Grand Prix) therefore crowns the golden age of the onor trainer Philippe Allaire, fresh from the 2022 championship of the French coaches with over 3 million won by his students. Philippe is the 64-year-old son of Pierre Désiré Allaire, the great friend of Alain Delon who passed away last October at the age of 88 and nicknamed “the goldsmith” for the skill with which for decades he chiseled the preparation of world trot monuments such as Une de Mai or Fakir du Vivier, before being banned from French tracks for one never clarified contestation of fixed races that relegated him for years ruefully trying to scrutinize the races from a hillock outside the Parisian racecourse of Vincennes.