For those who follow cycling, the beginning of each year brings back a Fausto coppi, to his death in the Tortona hospital on the morning of January 2, 1960, struck down by malaria contracted on his last tour in the Upper Volta in Africa and inexplicably not ascertained by the doctors on his return to Italy. But this year, as well as being the 59th anniversary of disappearance, is also the one in which the centenary of the birth of the Campionissimo will be celebrated, which took place in Castellania, a small town in the province of Alessandria on 15 September 1919. We can be certain that, as was the case in 2014 on the occasion of the one hundred years since the birth of Gino Bartali, that the figure of Coppi with his unforgettable white-blue jersey of the White will accompany the great events of the new cycling season that is about to begin.
A season that promises to be full of great challenges among today's big names, starting with the UAE Tour, the new competition that replaces the Dubai Tour and the Abu Dhabi Tour by combining them. The race on the WorldTour calendar which will be broadcast with seven stages from 24 February to 2 March will see at the start the best cycling can offer today, a stellar cast with the winners of eleven grand tours: it will be the first summit clash between Vincenzo Nibali, Chris Froome, Tom Dumoulin and the world champion Alejandro Valverde. will also be thedebut official in the cycling of the McLaren, historic brand of Formula One, which has acquired 50% of the team Bahrain-Merida, the team captained by Nibali owned by Prince Shaik Nasser Al Khalifa. The new partnership lands in the world of two wheels in the year that will be the last for Team Sky as they leave cycling after a decade of extraordinary triumphs that have led Great Britain to dominate the world by winning six Tours (4 with Froome and others two with Geraint Thomas and Bradley Wiggins), a Giro and a Vuelta always with Froome.
Nibali and Froome will meet again in the Tour given the decision of the Briton to give up on the Giro – which also saw him triumph in a big way last year – to focus on the objective of the fifth Tour, a success that would place him on a par with the victories of the greats of the past such as Merckx, Hinault, Anquetil and Indurain, who returned to being the holders of the record for the final yellow jerseys after the annulment of Lance Armstrong's seven victories for doping.
Nibali, while dreaming of returning to Roi Nibali as the l'Equipe titled the day of his success in Paris in 2014, has the trio in the Giro d'Italia as his first goal. He will have to deal with one of the most uncomfortable customers these days for anyone who wants to win a big stage race: that Tom Dumoulin, pink jersey in 2017, two second places in the Giro and Tour in 2018, an exceptional time trialist who hardly gives up even on big climbs. Diverted to the Tour and Vuelta Nairo Quintana, looking for revenge after the disappointing 2018, the Movistar for the Giro will focus on Valverde and Mikel Landa, a couple to follow, the world champion a fighter born capable of winning anywhere, the Basque one of the strongest climbers around, but both with the Achilles' heel of races against the clock which often decided the fate of the final classification more than the mountains. To complete the list of favorites in the pink race there will also be Simon yates, the English winner in the last Vuelta who was about to win last year's Giro too if he hadn't collapsed in the stage that crowned a legendary Froome. Yates does not wait for May to return to the Giro to "finish a job that – as he said in a recent statement – I left unfinished".
For the Giro, the Team Sky after Froome and Geraint's refusal to participate in the pink race, he bet all his cards on the young Colombian, the twenty-one year old Egan Bernal, great climbing skills, winner of the Tour of California. As for the Tour, Froome and Geraint will start as equals, both captains of a battleship that is looking for its seventh Tour in ten years of activity. It will be the race to designate the leader. Easy to say but for Dave Brailsford, Sky team manager, July promises to be hot in managing the two fellow rivals. .
But rivalries have never hurt cycling, since the days of Coppi and Bartali or Merckx and Gimondi or Hinault and Lemond. The protagonists have changed with the large capitals of the sponsors who have swept away the traditional bicycle houses, from Bianchi toAtala, From Legnano to the Frejus and many others, also revolutionizing the geographical hierarchies with nations that have grown from being marginal on the world cycling scene to the point of becoming dominators: this is the case of Great Britain in the grand tours or Slovakia with Peter Sagan, acrobatic world champion for three consecutive years, favorite of the great spring classics and the next world championship on the flat circuit in Yorkshire.
Everything has changed, but the emotion of the enterprise remains to link today's cycling to that of Coppi, the essence that makes the greats of every era current and eternal. It is no coincidence that Froome's extraordinary attack in the Bardonecchia-Jafferau stage of the last Giro recalled Coppi's legendary gallop in the Cuneo-Pinerolo stage of the 1949 Giro.
