Seven months remain until the first cycling world championship in Africa, which is scheduled to take place from September 21st to 28th (I use the conditional because it's evident that ongoing wars in the region are putting the world event at risk). Let's assume everything remains as planned: seven months away, but the news is that some athletes will be missing: all young athletes - girls and boys - from Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands, no small matter. Three nations that, in cycling terms, have their weight, history, and tradition, especially today, and I'm referring particularly to the Danes.

The reason is the high travel costs and hotel prices that have skyrocketed - reportedly due to the UCI blocking several accommodations through its agency and imposing prices worthy of "A Thousand and One Nights" (and Arabian tales aside, we're talking about a thousand euros per night...). In short, they talk about promoting territory and tourism, but then immediately think about making money, and the world championship risks becoming an event for a select few, for those nations that can afford it. For the rich? Yes, let's say it, for the rich. If a year ago rooms were 250 to 300 euros per night, now you'll find them more than double that price.

Seven months away, but there's a well-founded fear that many small nations will be absent from the world event, lacking the economic strength to cover travel expenses even for the most important race: the professional category for men and women. Want an idea of total costs? We're looking at 400 to 550 thousand euros per delegation. Significant, dizzying costs that force many Federations to make deep budget cuts: some more, some less, but everyone is working on it. No one excluded.

Seven months away, and there's a serious risk of leaving behind those countries once defined as emerging and who, now that they've emerged, might also drown. The problem is that there are many of them, including us, struggling to stay afloat.

THERE ARE WORDS. There are words that help us live when it seems we are dying. There are words that help us understand when thoughts become murky and gloomy, devoid of a light that might somehow indicate a path. There are words that must be expressed with the modesty of those who do not pretend to explain, but only to understand. "Hi Sara, you were a gift," are the words used by mom Marianna Piffer. "We must also understand him, who destroyed a life, but also his own," added dad Lorenzo, referring to the seventy-year-old retired carpenter from Rotaliana who ran over and killed poor Sara.

There are words we would not be able to pronounce or think, but there are those who can, with the purity of a broken life. There are people who spend words of hatred, generating pain upon pain, but there are those who can transmit love, hope, and comfort even when the only way out seems to be the one leading to the gates of hell. Despair that generates despair, rage, and hatred. The exact opposite of what has accompanied these stories: the love for the bicycle.

Sara knew this well, who on May 13th of last year pursued a victory to dedicate to seventeen-year-old Matteo Lorenzi, who had died after being hit by a van just days before: she pursued it and won. Her parents and siblings know this well, who will continue to follow races and ride, as she did and as she would have wanted. Michael Antonelli knew this well, who died from the consequences of a fall in the Florence-Viareggio race in 2018, and Giovanni Iannelli, who died during the Molinese Circuit in October 2019, just like Tommaso Cavorso, who died at just 14 years old in 2010, hit by a van.

We know well that it is necessary to work together to make our roads safer, drivers more responsible, and cyclists more aware. But our races also need to be saved, which risk being stopped because to the pain of deaths are added immobility, fear, and flight, because one can no longer risk what one has to guarantee the regularity of a race. And here is where it is necessary for the Federation and politics to step in, to try to do something more, to provide safety for everyone: riders, presidents, organizers, and race directors.

We know well that never more than now is there a need to sit at a table to try to raise the bar of our duties, of what is necessary to ensure that the dreams of all the Saras and Michaels, Giovannis, and Tommasos are no longer shattered. What must prevail is the thread that united them and which is certainly not given by death, but by that unconditional love for the bicycle that accompanied them in life.

In a terrible moment like this, where the only way out seems like a blasphemy, it is the honey-sweet words of mom Marianna and dad Lorenzo that comfort us. We cling to them, well knowing that perhaps they would want to cling to us, using words with the taste of a cookie that bring us back to the true flavor of life and humanity. We think of them, of their dead children, of those who killed them, putting at their disposal all our will to live to ensure that these deaths cease.

Let us make our passion, our determination, our desire to change the current state of things prevail, securing our children, with the rigor of those who want to change something, without forgetting the key word. One word alone, so beautiful and balsamic for our hearts: love. Love for the bicycle. Love for those who love this precarious sport, perpetually balanced between a blasphemy and a prayer, a tragedy and a word with the taste of a cookie we ate as children, pedaling on our steel horse freed from the grip of those little wheels that held us to the ground, before taking flight.