As by art of birlibirloque, some coloring here, some bikes over there, an emblematic skyscraper in the Skanderbeg square, frantic public works, excessive, with always a nuance of italo horterism, a few drops of magical realism, drivers to the neapolitan and equally homeric traffic jams, and a president of the enthusiastic government of the Italian ways, the Gray Tirana Dark, medieval habits and fascist architecture, churches and mosques requisitioned and turned into sports center, which imagined the world in the closing years reading Ismail Kadaré, Refulge and shines, pink posters on the black two -phase of the red flag, which is green in the traffic lights.
It is the turn that Albania invades by bicycle, such as Mussolini’s troops in the 30s. Italy is the model, Meloni’s Italy that exports immigrants and refugees and also its cycling passion. And Albania will be a few days the Italy of the Balkans, distant promises of entrance to the EU and Venetian castles on their beaches. And Tirana, a Rome already with pope and with cyclists of the visma, yellow bares, challenging the bicycle traffic jams, and laughing at the immobilized, on the way to Skanderbeg, gigantic scenario, at the height of the gigantism of space, converted into a disco, fumes and making lights, in which I dance happy Egan Bernal with his wonderful mail The one of the Café de Lucho Herrera, white with geometric tricolor stamped, double yellow, blue, red.
“Ay, Italy,” says Amoroso Edi Rama, socialist and gigantic, more than two meters, former basketball player, former capital of the capital and Albanian prime minister since 2013. “when I was very young, in 91-92, when Albania opened, I went to Paris and the first foreign newspaper I read was the Gazzetta dello Sport. Before we were completely isolated. Albania was like the North Korea, the sea was empty, there was nothing that moved and the only way to connect with the other world were Italian radio or television. Italian sport, football, basketball, cycling, helped us to always be aware that on the other side of the Adriatic Sea there is life, there is another life. It was a different world and we were filled with the illusion that perhaps we could one day go to another place. To another real site. ”
Rama continues, more Italian than the Italians, white shoe, suit without a tie, and excited, and take chest because he has no driving license, because in life he only drives his bicycle. “Seeing Albania included in all this is like a fairy tale,” he rises. “I talk about things that I have lived, I talk about things that I have read, that I have heard, which seems to happen centuries ago and only stopped happening 35 years ago.”
35 years ago the turn was won by Gianni Bugno, Rosa from the first to the last day, and now a journalist in a motorcycle in the middle of the squad to speak three weeks of what the whole fans want, of the duel for valleys, mountains and chronos between the old Primoz Roglic (35 years), a thousand battle wounds in his career, and the young Juan Ayuso (22), the Spanish hope for the turn and beyond.
Ironies of history, the fairy tale From the Giro in Albania, it starts on Friday of the port of Durës, of the same spring perhaps of which in August 91 the vlora sailed, charger that arrived full of Cuban sugar and distributed kidnapped with 21,000 people on board, Albanians who had believed the fairy tale that Italy was the paradise and when they arrived in Bari, 10 hours of jour Reality, for them, as for all migrants, it was hell. Maltrate, beaten, deported, Albanians themselves and their children now receive smiling in the Ferris port of Italian tourists who saturate their cheap beaches. And its cultural spearhead, the cyclists of the turn.
Without Tadej Pogacar, which transforms everything into one against all, the Albanian roads (three days: one of counterreloj, on Saturday, and two of varied roads, Friday and Sunday) and in those of the Transadriatic Peninsula (18 days, of Lecce, in the Apulia, to the Aosta Valley), a unique generational range will be deploy In the Far 14; Richard Carapaz, in 19; Egan, in 21; Jay Hindley, in 22, and, in his same Red Bull, atomic, Roglic himself, the four laps, Maglia Rosa in 23.
With so much rosacea among the 184 participants, known the route and history of the race, the extreme tacticism to which calcium seems to condemn the entire made in Italia Deportivo, no one would surprise that in its mountains stampe the aggressive crazy cycling of the postpandymia generation and take power the attentism of efficiency: a single blow, as late as possible, and enough, perfected by Roglic in his victory over Geraint Thomas in 2023 (until the last kilometer of the last true stage did not move the slovenian) and put into practice before him by him by Nairo. Even Hindley, who fought from Landa and Carapaz, always glued the three, in the last kilometer of the last ascent, the marble, the 22 white roads of Siena or the counterreloj de Pisa, also encourages this development.
Something like this is expected, who with Roglic and his style already saw them (and lost) in the recent Volta to Catalonia. And he speaks of the team, the UAE of all wonders, in which, like him, Igor Arrieta (22 years) 32 years after his father debuted (at 21) in the turn to help win Miguel Indurain. And they will also be Adam Yates, Isaac of the Fabulos Toro, Brandon McNulty, Rafal Majka Sabio… “Roglic is the favorite, but we are undoubtedly the strongest team of the race and we aspire to the maximum, which is to win,” says Ayuso, who arrives in Albania directly from Sier one day and in the tyrrhen; “It is the year that I have won the most races and we are only in April. In this turn that has many stages with great hardness in the beginning of the stage and then the last part is flat or slightly less hard ports, having a good team so that they can run ahead, and then if you start they are waiting for you, it is very important.”
