“The entrance to dogs and Italians were forbidden,” they wrote in the first post -war period on the shop windows in Belgium, where many immigrants of our house worked in the mines. But then a Tuscan cyclist came, stronger than fatigue and pain, who redeemed them
1949 is a phenomenal year that changes cycling forever. On March 19, Fausto Coppi dominates Milan-Sanremo on the new arrival of via Roma, who will thus turn into the road to the myth, and that day the champion opens a season that breaks down every frontier: he will conquer the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France for the first time, a company never succeeded in anyone. He will do it with two companies. Cuneo-Pinerolo in the pink race, the stage of the stages, 192 km of escape and Gino Bartali, second, at 12 ‘. It is the day of the phrase “There is a man only in command, his shirt is biancoceleste, his name Fausto Coppi”. And then in France, where Coppi reaches a detachment of 36 ‘from the French Marinelli first with the phenomenal chronometer of La Rochelle and the escape to the Alps with a finish line in Aosta, then with the chrono of Nancy on the eve of the hypothesis at the Parco dei Principi of Paris. But 1949 is also the moment when the Italians break down another wall in the race symbol of Belgium: the Giro delle Flanders, with the first of the three consecutive triumphs of Fiorenzo Magni. Everything stems from an idea of the Dutch journalist Karel Van Wijnendaele, on the occasion of the foundation of the newspaper Sportwereld: The first edition takes place on May 25, 1913, departing at 6 in the morning in Gand, arriving after 330 km in Mariakerke, on the outskirts of Gand, after 12 walls, all on Malmesse roads, with the exception of some cycle paths. In 37 at the start, the first winner is the Belgian darling Paul Stando, 25 years old. The Great War interrupts the race from 1915 to 1918, Dean works for Belgian espionage, hides the documents on the bicycle, but during one of his travels he is arrested by the Germans: only the armistice saves him from shooting. He returns to run after the war and in 1920 he also conquered Paris-Roubaix, the first of the 22 runners of history capable of hitting the brace in the two monuments on the pavé.