On the new issue of our weekly interview with the last Italian runner, in 2008, to have conquered the world championship shirt in the online test. “The coach Ballerini had predicted it, and on the eve I fell asleep imagining how it would end. I hope that in Rwanda someone will take my place, but I like to be remembered”
To see it pedaling on the roads that slip between the cartocks of the Cartizza (where – they swear and certify – you drink the best prosecco in the whole area of Valdobbiadene, Veneto, the ground of origin of the noble wine), Alessandro Ballan still seems a professional runner. Physicist pulled with shiny, toned leg, form form of 75 kilos for 191 centimeters in height: in the eye, for this forty -five year old and thin, time seems to have stopped. “But that day of seventeen years ago I did not reach 70 kilos: the scale said 69 and a half”. “That” day was the same as tomorrow, September 28: in Varese the in -line test was ran to the cycling World Championships, just as this time will happen to Kigali, in Rwanda, and to win it was him, Ballan. The last Italian to succeed. Since then, for our national team, the darkness. In the hope that someone rekindles the light, this is the story of a day that, to every world championship that passes and sees us from the top step of the podium, becomes less and less history and takes (alas) the outlines of the legend.