Varese, wedged between the three lakes, such as Maggiore and Varese itself, is a green land, a borderland, pregnant with cycling, cycling culture. Close to everything, far from nothing, between Switzerland and Italy, Milan in sight, the first Alps, there...
That's where Ivan Basso was born and grew up: "Cycling has always been part of my life". And no wonder, he was told from the beginning about Alfredo Binda, the first great of the times, he knew about Claudio Chiapucci, he grew up with him, his adventures, back in France, in Italy.
When he was a child, his father took him to the Vigorelli, the mythical Milanese velodrome. That day Francesco Moser was on the poster because he was racing against the hour record. "That day I knew that cycling would never be the same for me again. I witnessed that feat firsthand, I remember everything as if it were yesterday, but especially the noise of the wheels."
A cyclical, rhythmic, hypnotic noise. A buzzing sustained by the ephemerality of the moment, a kind of dull fluttering that stuck in his memory, like that afternoon in the arena of Verona, in the middle of the crowd that proclaimed Francesco the winner of the Giro d'Italia.
That finish took place in 1984, an edition marked by the bitter rivalry he had with Laurent Fignon, a rivalry that fed legends, stories and all kinds of suspicions.
Ivan was there. "That was like going to the final of the Champions League," he says.
Francesco Moser figures in the Giro's list of winners, like Ivan Basso, although this one twice. 26 years after the success of the giant of Giovo, the Varesino lived his best moment ever: riding in pink through the arch of access to the Arena of Verona, crossing the catwalk and celebrating with his two sons the second Giro d'Italia in his list of winners.
A legend of Italian cycling
Ivan Basso, two Giros, best young rider in the Tour, dozens of victories... he is a legend in Italy: "We are very fond of icons, of perpetuating memories over time. Today riders like Pantani or Coppi are more alive than ever. Athletes are sacred and people love those who carry the name of Italy very high".
A champion gene that never leaves you, it always goes with you. "If cycling taught me one thing, it's to be ambitious, to always want to win."
What's more, "I miss that pressure - he continues - that always accompanied me when I competed, the echo I miss that pressure, even though it seems paradoxical. My life changed when I won the world championship -Valkneburg 1998- and since then everyone has been watching what I was or wasn't capable of doing".
Today, Ivan Basso works side by side with Alberto Contador in the progress of the Kometa-Xstra Cycling Team, a way of "giving back to cycling what it has given us".
And what has cycling given Ivan Basso?
"I am the person I am because of cycling, I take advantage of what it has given me every day, always going out to win, giving the maximum at every moment."
Global ambassador for Gobik
This nonconformism is prolonged in Gobik. Ivan is the brand's new global ambassador, alongside Alberto Contador and Julien Absalon.
"I know Gobik Alberto. He told me about his clothes and introduced me to the people of the company, the harmony arose immediately. It's what I'm looking for, a winning brand" says Ivan Basso who adds that "they want to enter Italy and I'll be there, because the bet is worth it, it's as I say winning, with no margin for failure. I know the owners and they are the first to roll up their sleeves, to be here, there, at all the events".
He concludes: "To be an ambassador for Gobik is a great honor, I'm sure they had other options, but they chose me, it's as if they gave me the key to their house in a market as important as the Italian one".
A market that is not easy, but "neither is winning the Giro d'Italia. We go out without fear, with a lot of ideas and respecting our opponents.
A new cycle begins, a stage in which the pressure that he misses so much returns, that gasoline that he needs and that "has to be managed naturally" because he feels that he is in the winning team.
Texts: JoanSeguidor's Notebook
Photos: David Ponce and giroditalia.it
