The race of seven climbs this time will have eight. As if seven weren't enough to marble the legs and erase the riders' breath. But just as Paris-Roubaix seeks more cobblestones and Strade Bianche explores more gravel, the Coppa Caduti di Reda, nicknamed the race of seven climbs, has found and added another stab.

Sunday, April 6th marks the 49th edition of the Coppa Caduti di Reda, also valid as the Stefano Cornacchia Memorial, Giro della Romagna, and Il Cappello d'Oro Trophy, reserved for under 23 elite riders. A race so beautiful it's worth four. Starting at 1 PM, with a 155.9 km route and an elevation of almost 1900 meters, after the first forty flat kilometers, the route becomes an electrocardiogram of effort. Under effort will be the 200 riders engaged in this category classic, in a land that tastes of passion, tradition, and adventure, the human comedy of cycling.

These are the roads of Vito Ortelli, who in the first twelve races as an amateur collected twelve second places, but on the thirteenth he finally won, and would have won much more, even against Bartali and Coppi, and in Faenza he had a shop as sacred as a church. These are the roads of Aldo Ronconi, who started pedaling to go to work as a carpenter, who at his first Giro d'Italia was baptized "è paruch", the priest, and that nickname would stay with him his entire life, and he too had a shop where, upon entering, it would be appropriate to make the sign of the cross. These are the roads of Giuseppe Minardi, called Pipaza, or Pippo, to whom Coppi, who had won everything in life, confessed to envying one victory, a stage at the 1953 Giro d'Italia, the Naples-Rome stage, arriving at the Olympic Stadium on May 17th, inauguration day, eighty thousand spectators not only for the Giro but also (especially) for Italy-Hungary in soccer (0-3). These are also the roads of Renato Laghi, a domestique, one of those for pulling, for effort, for mountains, who one day, on June 9th, 1977, at the Giro d'Italia, got a free pass and invented a victory so sweaty, so suffered, but so beautiful it would fill his entire existence.

Monte Carla (three times), Monticino, Vernelli, Cima Rio Chiè, Cima Agello, and Biagio Antico: cycling is exalted when the road takes off and then plummets, when people preserve their historical and geographical heritage, when the winner is not a single rider but the entire race.