Guarnieri, cycling is like life: no one saves themselves alone.

There's a time to run and a time to stay, in life as in cycling. It's a moment, lasting a millisecond in a stage, that allows you to win or lose a race, and in a career it can be a day, an episode, a wrong choice. For Jacopo Guarnieri, 34 years old Groupama-Fdj, the choice to stop running away and start staying came in two momentsAt his pro debut, when he tried to join two breakaways but felt "like Fantozzi at the Coppa Cobram." Then when he tried to take on the role of a team's top sprinter, he realized he couldn't excel. And so, he chose to stay, next to his captain, who for four years has been called Arnaud Demare.

Together with Marangoni

He told his transformation in an evening at the Bikefellas of Bergamo by Title “The Unbearable Lightness of Escape” introduced by the Bidon editorial team who presented their latest book “Escape Routes”. In a sort of time trial for two, with the unpredictable ex-pro Alan Marangoni as a support, Guarnieri told of his escape attempts.

«The first time in De Panne. I was racing for Liquigas – he said – and I found myself in the breakaway, so The team leader verbally abused me, ordering me to get back to the group to help our sprinter., Chicchi. I did it, but in sprinting, I hit Cavendish and took down Leif Hoste, the local idol.

I told myself I'd never break away again, but I did it again a few years later, again in Belgium. It was a breakaway made up of "crazy" riders, and in fact the group caught us with 100 kilometers to go. There, I said to myself that my place was to remain in that maternal womb that is the group».

Helping those who are stronger

Just a few sprints on my own to understand one thing: «My place in the world – he explains – was to help those who were stronger than meThere comes a point in your career when you have to decide who you are and what you want to do. It takes great self-honesty. Now, I regret not having made that decision sooner, because I feel a great emotion in helping DemareI am privileged because I am her last man, the one who sees him closest when he raises his arms to the sky at the finish line and the first one to be able to hug him». 

The tension of the gregarious

At this point, Guarnieri's gaze and voice crack, almost moved, he abandons the joviality that distinguishes him and that made the evening as lively as a group sprint, and plays the role of the model gregarious, which he is.

«The domestique is the symbol of cycling – he observes – beyond all rhetoric. You are a gregarious person from the first to the last kilometer, There are moments of the race that seem boring on TV, but in a group you always have to push your way through, the tension is very highI think about when you have to carry water bottles. In a group, there's an unwritten rule that when you climb back up from the team cars at refueling, you shout "service" and get a preferential lane on the sides, but they don't always let you through. And if you're going uphill and you can't serve your captain, you've lost."

Nobody saves alone

But being a gregarious is much more, it is also living with your captain outside of racing, getting to know each other, understanding the difficulties as a man and as a rider and doing everything to remedy themGuarnieri is also a gregarious player on the Bikefellas sofa when he prefers to exalt Demare's human qualities, highlighting how he is someone who always thanks and takes all the blame when things aren't going well.

Or telling about his last victory, when it was Marangoni himself – his teammate at Liquigas – who helped him more than just supporting him in the race and collecting "the shoe covers that I had decided to take off on a terrible day" staying close to him during a period in which relations with the team had foundered.

"This is the spirit of the domestique, this is cycling", which we like so much because it is a metaphor for life: no one saves himself alone.