CASTELRAIMONDO – How much cheering we saw along the track yesterday for Julius Pellizzari. But that's how it is when the child of the country is involved... That's the beauty of cycling and Tour of Italy. Lots of warmth also for the other Marche native in the group, Gianmarco Garofoli, but he is from Ancona and how much warmth there was for him already we had seen it this winter, while these Macerata streets were precisely Giulio's.
His Camerino was just nine kilometers from the finish. This is where he trains and where he began pursuing his dream of becoming a cyclist. And today, here he is (again) at the Giro d'Italia alongside an important captain, perhaps the most important of the entire Giro d'Italia.
Don't call it a fan club
But we want to tell you about this support through Sandro Santacchi, the coordinator of Giulio's “non-fans club”.
"He doesn't want it to be called a fan club," Santacchi explains, "because Giulio is particularly concerned with actions, not words. Let me explain: he sees the fan club as a way of presenting himself to the world with too much pretense. A bit as if he hadn't yet earned it... let's put it that way.
Maybe many of his colleagues would like it, but he doesn't officially like it. But we follow him anyway, at least where possible!
Put this way, it might seem like Pellizzari might be distant from them, but… hold on, everyone, that's not the case at all. On the contrary.
«Today (yesterday, ed.) when he passed by Sassotetto he looked at us and gave us a big smile. He saw this six-meter inflatable! He was happy… and so were we."
Sandro Santacchi leads a group of friends, essentially like many others in the villages of Italy. And he leads this group under the banner of his cycling club, the Blue Arrows from Camerino.
Grill and cycling
Yesterday, there were many at Sassotetto. Friends from the village, united by their passion for cycling and their love for Pellizzari, whom they'd watched grow up. Inflatables, yes, and banners too... but also grilled meat and wine.
«We just got back down. We had fun. Why are we all in love with him? Because he's such a beautiful person, in every way... He's always smiling, he's always available to everyone and at the same time he's totally focused on his goals. He's an exemplary professional. He leaves nothing to chance. But when he gets on his bike he's so mean... He's a beast."
«I, and not only I, have become close to him, first of all because there is a beautiful relationship with his special family. Because If Giulio is like this it's because he's lucky enough to have a wonderful family. We started following him when he was a junior; we're all cycling enthusiasts. It was a pleasure to watch this kid pedal, and you could immediately see he had what it took. And from there, little by little, everything grew."
Competent cheering
Earlier, when we told you that Santacchi is a cycling man, we meant it in the truest sense of the word. He also has a certain technical eye.
"We're seeing Giulio's cycling skills," Santacchi says, "and we haven't seen everything yet, because Giulio is growing. It has already made a great step forward since last year. In this sense, I was very impressed by the stopwatch he did in Tirana. Until last year he had never prepared well for this discipline and this year, being in a team where he takes more care, he immediately did well".
The beautiful thing is also the respect for the athlete: there's no intrusiveness. True support is "without demanding anything." We're not just thinking of Pellizzari's "non-fan club," but in general of the countless people who write on a piece of paper, a banner, or scribble on the asphalt along the road. The fan applauds when the group passes, and applauds even louder when their favorite player passes. In this case, the running boy, the enfant du pays, becomes the pride of a land.
"Had we heard from him before yesterday's stage? I'll tell you this," Santacchi concludes, "we promised ourselves that with the start of the Giro, Giulio would "turn off" his phone. It had gotten to the point where he had 400 messages every evening, and he's the type to reply to them all! So he preferred to do it this way so as not to affect his concentration. But he knew we were waiting for him. We'd been working on it for days to make him happy... and because we liked him too. Also because I don't know how many more times the Giro will pass through our area with Pellizzari as the protagonist. We'll have to wait for other astral conjunctions! In the meantime, we enjoyed this one."
