First, some classic Italian poetry: Monte Paschi Strade Bianche.
Is that not cycling music, can’t you hear the angels on Pinarellos sing, aren’t the lyric backroads of Tuscany already calling you like a siren podium girl?
The “white road” is Italy’s answer to the cobblestones of Paris-Roubaix and Belgium’s Tour of Flanders. It’s a damn good answer and the food and wine is superior.
We admit to discovering this glittering diamond only last year and tonight we’re cursing our relative poverty because if we had major google stock or invented velcro or just dug up a rotted satchel of forgotten drug money, we’d be on a private jet right now to Sienna.
This race is breathtaking even from a distance, a two wheeled postcard love letter to the beauty of Tuscany and the purity of suffering on a bike. Why is there no live web feed even on some Italian site? You can watching streaming bull riding and ping-pong but not a minute of Monte Paschi Strade Bianche. Which is one of those definative things that damns an entire culture.
When aliens blow up planet earth, one of their primary arguments will be no live coverage of spectacular race on white dirt roads in Tuscany. Even creatures from a hundred light years away know the dazzling brilliance of the Strade Bianchi. We brought this doom on ourselves.
The pictures are paintings, athletic landscapes, evocative dreams of suffering and beauty and sacrifice and power outputs. Only five years old, this race is fast creating its own mythology. It’s like witnessing the birth of Paris-Roubaix, seeing those first winners, sharing a part of the early magic. In 25 years there will be fat coffee table books filled with images and stories from the beginning days.
Twisted Spoke is entranced. Like the boys in Wayne’s World once said, “we are not worthy.”
i can't believe there are no comments yet! I had the good fortune to cycle in Italy three years ago. Right in that very region and it was superb! As is your turn with the word. So accurate. We can watch bull riding but not this thing of beauty. I must say I do enjoy ping-pong as well.
You've got one of the best cycling blogs out there. (definitive…see above)
Thanks Jayne, I appreciate the compliment. I have a ping-pong table in my garage and am a true neighborhood champ. Thanks for writing and keep reading. Matt
Great post. Alien comment is spot on.