An audience of 16 million on BBC and ITV and almost as many online. An absolute boom for the European football title won by the English girls for the second consecutive time. The English watched and celebrated, as if they had won with the men's team, something that hasn't happened in a lifetime, since 1966. 65,000 celebrated along the Mall where the girls paraded.

A success for the team, in a country where the men's beautiful game struggles to win. The match with Spain was the TV event of the entire 2025. Women's teams play in real stadiums: Arsenal, which secured the Champions this year, plays at Emirates, with its 60,000 seats. A royal and real celebration, not a fiction, not a rhetorical exercise about how beautiful women's football is and then essentially interests almost zero. No, in England it's all true, as it has been for years in the Netherlands and almost all Nordic countries, as well as in Spain and France, less so in Italy. Obviously, we're better, they are the provincial and unsuccessful ones who don't understand a thing.

And then, what do we care about sports in the feminine form: football, cycling, basketball - less volleyball because there's somewhat a reason to follow it - is only masculine. It wasn't prescribed by a doctor: everyone chooses what they want. Sure, but what a shame. What a shame to see the royal celebration for the European queens on the red double-decker bus from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace, stopping under the royals' greeting balcony. What envy to know they have 310,000 girls playing football and 2.7 million are at least registered in a football society when in 2021 they were less than half. Sarina Wiegman, the Dutch coach who has won three European championships (one with the Netherlands, two with England) had a virtual meeting with Premier Starmer to request more funding for women's sports. The audience is there, the interest too, the results are evident to everyone. The government announced the creation of a task force to coordinate funding, researchers, and federations to replicate, in the next ten years, the growth not only of women's football but of all sports. I don't see the same here: no buses touring cities and no cheering crowds. You'll say: big deal, we didn't win. Just thinking about it, I fear the counterproof.

AGAINST THE FLOW. Are we sure we care about safety? I hope so, I believe so, I hope that a concrete sign will also come from the UCI, a cultural shift to end this sickening "radio yes, radio no" dance that has thoroughly bored us. It seems evident to me that radios are not a disturbance tool, but a help for safety on increasingly complicated and dangerous roads, not certainly and not only for the more or less good asphalt, but because today from Italy to France, from Belgium to wherever you want, the roads for riders have become authentic war routes, with roundabouts and narrowings, cat's eyes, bumps, and speed bumps that make them similar to minefields.

How many times have we wondered: how could they have fallen there? Then you go to verify and realize there were two speed bumps that the riders didn't expect and that unseated them from their bicycles. If they had radios at the Tour of Valle d'Aosta, despite the organizers having given preventive information in the morning, perhaps, I say perhaps, poor Samuele Privitera would have told another race fall with a smile on his lips.

Instead, we're here crying bitter tears, and the idea of the Cycling Federation and its Federal Council, which from June 1st authorized the use of radios in races starting from the junior category in both regional and national races, is an important step in my opinion. Now there will be those who will jump out of their chairs and call me a sellout to power, and I will do nothing to change your mind, well aware that this is an impossible mission. Perhaps it's easier to contrast and limit damages in our sport with concrete actions. This provision goes in this direction, as do the words of President Cordiano Dagnoni: "I believe that generally we must use the available technology when it allows increasing the safety of our cyclists". Banal? For the record, the UCI went in the opposite direction: and going against the flow is dangerous.

HE BEAT TADEJ. He attacks too much. He's excessively greedy. He's ravenous. He's selfish. He's not telling the truth. These are a series of comments that have accompanied and accompany Tadej Pogacar. Then, at the first breakdown, the first cough, the first sneeze and knee blow (a effusion in the last five days from a handlebar hit), here the human Taddeo is no longer liked. He's nervous. He's moody. He's unpleasant. He's intolerant. He's an accountant. He's too calculating. These are the comments of another minority: thank God.

It was a hard Tour, very hard, pedaled at a crazy speed, and Tadej won it by running a bit more like Vingegaard, while the Dane chose from the first stage to run more like Tadej. The more composed Slovenian: reactive, but less exuberant. Notice, this year he never threw himself among the sprinters to try a sprint. The Dane, on the other hand, always ran on the world champion's wheel, trying to put pressure on him with some attacks here and there. The result was evident: Pogacar got very tired, but the Dane was always in reserve. Taddeo arrived tired, Jonas exhausted. If we want, the difference was seen in Paris: the beaten one took it easy and arrived four minutes late; Tadej, instead, fought until the end, just for the show. Just to hear Wout Van Aert tell Jonas: "You see, I can say I beat Pogacar, you can't". Curtain.

Editorial from tuttoBICI August issue