“I call them the gymnasiums of daring, almost to mock Corrado Guzzanti when he made the famous sketches (within the program” The Scafroglia case “) called” Fascists on Mars “, which later also became a film. These daring gyms for me are those dry climbs, if possible in or near cities, where all amateur cyclists, like it or not, compete at the end of the day, from spring to autumn, to prepare for the longed-for weekly outing. Stuff of 2,3,4, up to 5 kilometers, but with considerable slopes, even exaggerated, that someone knows curve by curve, curve by curve, meter by meter, where you try to file the second or where you see it grow (and then inexorably decline, after the summer holidays) their condition, from the beginning to the end of the year. The San Luca Bolognese, opening act of the 2019 Giro, immediately comes to mind, with a frightening Primoz Roglic, but also a worthy closure of the Giro dell’Emilia, the Turin climb of Superga, which, for some years, has determined the winner of the Milan-Turin, via Bonomea and Scala Santa in Trieste, but also the mythical Muro di Sormano, the various Genoese ramps, The ascent of Val Mara, in Ticino, which leads back to Italy through the Val d’Intelvi, and a beautiful climb that I did in Sanremo on the occasion of the Milan – Sanremo, the one that leads to San Romolo (even if this ascent is longer and less hard). More than anything else, the latter should be remembered because it was the first stage of the 1987 Giro, perhaps one of the most beautiful and controversial, that of the internal duel between Visentini and Roche, and one day I will tell you the version of my friend Davide Boifava, who was the DS of the two at the Carrera at that time. My Friuli is also full of these ‘gyms’: one of them, the closest to my Spilimbergo, is the so-called via Bolzon, from Casiacco to Vito d’Asio, a kind of lift between the green of the forest and the asphalt ramshackle, but certainly the best known around Spilimbergo and San Daniele del Friuli is the climb to the Ragogna mountain.

This year it would have been included in the Giro d’Italia 2020, in the Udine-San Daniele stage and will have to be covered three times before facing the final stretch in the ham town. There has been a lifetime of the San Daniele Cup for amateurs, but a beautiful edition of the Italian championship was also held in 1991. On the web, giant pixel videos and comments by the couple De Zan and Adorni, you can still find the images: a Gianni Bugno in a monstrous version that runs away leaving behind him the other fugitives, Chiappucci, Chioccioli, Fondriest and Davide Cassani (who knows if the blue coach still remembers it, I have to ask him). From the Tagliamento side, the climb is nothing special, but from Muris di Ragogna it is a real spiral staircase; those in the area are all there to challenge each other, even without wanting to, just one bike in the distance that you may be able to reach, if you put a little more, if you still have it. The 2018 Giro also passed, but that time it was too far from the finish line and above all the finish line was called Monte Zoncolan, something that deserves a separate discussion soon.

Certainly you don’t get high, not even 500 meters, but the view from the Muris mountain is worth it, and the history of the place is also worth it, in the center of the last defense on the Tagliamento, after the Caporetto route and before the rescue on the Piave, during the First World War. The soldiers of the Bologna brigade, blown up by the commander of the 33rd division, General Carlo Sanna, the bridge over the great river, found themselves with no escape route and resisted for a whole day, receiving the honor of arms from the advancing Germans. You can find the whole description of the battle in the small but precious museum of San Giacomo di Ragogna, just below, but cycling up to the top, where you can still find many refurbished war posts, has a very special flavor.

After all, the beauty of cycling for a cyclist or cyclist is also this: enjoying the passage that, instead, the professionals in the race hardly see, in the midst of the chaos of the fans, and, in some cases, in full competitive trance. . ”

Franco Bortuzzo