Certainly, they have already almost completely removed the refuge of the beloved Six Days. But it is still full here in winter, barely February has arrived, and please do not take away too much space with those road races under the sun of another fictitious world, the Old sacred Europe of cyclocross.
And it is here, more romantic, adorning nostalgia, that genealogy of feelings so characteristic of cycling.

We are here, and we have watched that talent without equal grow far too much, having already surpassed 31 years just a few weeks ago, that incomparable talent of Mathieu Van der Poel, we who had already become mature enthusiasts in the midst of his father Adrie's exploits, and we still preserve his "Kwantum - Hallen" jersey, on the road and on the grass...

We are here, yearning for hearth as if we were before the fireplace of "The Wolf's Den" or "La Castellana", in those winter Sundays when from our parts - winter also visits the South - among the crumbling walls and the Castle of Casertavecchia, the incredible Borgocross was disputed and was a popular celebration, the oldest cyclocross competition in central-southern Italy.

And that indomitable hope, leafing through a competition born in 1978 from the passion and intuition of Amedeo Marzaioli and Rosario Maglione, Michele De Simone and Angelo Letizia, Nicola Giaquinto and Giovanni Altobelli, under the aegis of SC Borgocross, and lasting uninterruptedly until 2008, and then resumed for a brief three-year period from 2015 to 2017, by MTB Caserta of Enrico Pella and Sandro Iovinella, of being able to host one day - a winter like God intended - a World Cup race right here with us, there at Casertavecchia. And not just an Italian championship or two, and certainly not just an interregional circuit...

We are here, intact desire for cyclocross, instead alone with a genealogy of feelings in command that has an image still far from the prevailing Italian reality - beyond the Borgocross which is its emblematic removal -, despite the successes of new generations: from Mattia Agostinacchio to Stefano Viezzi, from Kevin Pezzo Rosola to Filippo Grigolini, from Sara Casasola to Giorgia Pellizotti...

And it floods us, at Casertavecchia, where two wheels grazed the Cathedral and the backdrops of scenery without equal in the world, the thought of Mathieu Van der Poel who conquered on Sunday, February 1st at Hulst, his Netherlands, the eighth world championship jersey and thus surpassing the record of Belgian Eric De Vlaeminck, Roger's older brother, who had already tied at seven last year.

And even more so - genealogy of feelings, on the highest step of the podium - 30 years after the only world title conquered by his father Adrie, precisely in 1996, at Montreuil.

from tuttoBICI of February