"You can't do an Eroica without hugs..." Giancarlo Brocci said this some time ago, when the pandemic stopped everything and everyone to a certain extent.
Yes, it couldn't be done... Because Eroica is a simple world and hugging is a spontaneous gesture that embodies much of the essence of this challenge on "mainly" dirt roads.
Hugging each other is love and happiness, it's finding yourself, feeling part of a family that meets to celebrate a party. It's a word of mouth that doesn't need words... Seventy, one hundred, two hundred kilometres; it doesn't matter. The important thing is to be there: this too is simple. The important thing is to rediscover the ancient values of a sport that is now increasingly exasperated, complicated, electronic and runs the risk of losing itself. Eroica is a journey through time in search of lost simplicity. Daughter of childhood passions, of the sporting duel of the century between Bartali and Coppi, of a people’s sport that couldn't be more popular. Of simple but authentic champions with big hands, wrinkles and cyclists' faces, kids from large families who had to tighten their belts, they were strong and muscular, they knew nothing about science or diets.
Eroica is bikes, shoes, jerseys and caps as they once were. They are people, friends who meet, get back together and remember that this is the simplest way to share a passion and strengthen their ties. It is white roads, sweat, a few glasses of Chianti and even a bowl of ribollita soup.
Eroica is timeless, in the sense that you finish when you finish and that’s fine, better even. Always. Because here you don't take shortcuts, you actually queue up for a stamp. Here you stop, start again and stop again. No hurry. Eroica is an ode to slowness in a life that wants us to go faster and faster. Here, however, everyone has their own pace.
It’s a people of passion who love fatigue, who have understood how to take back time, it’s places, traditions and history. It is not easy to get off and stop in a time when everything is done for us, when others think for us, when even intelligence has become artificial.
L'Eroica in its simplicity is the station of simple living, a recipe as easy as a slice of bread seasoned with oil, a small ancient world that preserves past values: you travel in a group, you spend time together and you ride as if the past were the present, indeed as if it were the future.
It is a village that pretends to be sleepy, it is the smoldering charcoal on the grill, the avoidance of anything that is single-use, the hamlets that smell of cycling and move between hubs, bolts, old wheel rims brought back to life, between stories and tales where the pedals are just a pretext to stop time.
Time doesn't matter. Time doesn't pass on the dusty roads of the Eroica. Here, they have found a way to stop it. Sounds simple...And indeed it is.
