Francesco Moser turns back the clock to 1983, the year when the Trentino champion opened with victory at the Motovelodromo on Corso Casale. It was March 5th: "with that type of finish you had to do a double sprint, first at the entrance to the facility and then on the track, not that this was unfamiliar to me and everything went according to my winning plan. That success pairs with the Giro del Piemonte which came as early as 1974, one more reason to have a great feeling with this Region".

Thus spoke one of the four winners of Milan-Turin present among the memorabilia of the seventh art. The stylized profile of the Mole Antonelliana emerged from the Milan-Turin logo and settled within the symbol of the Piedmont capital. While guests at the celebration for the 150th anniversary of the race were allowed to look up, facing the Great Beauty (citation attempted) of the building, Enzo Ghigo, President of the National Cinema Museum and expected at Superga as a cycle tourist, took it upon himself to remind everyone: "notice that when Magretti won in 1876 cinema had not yet been invented".

It passed near the Basilica but arrived at Parco del Valentino the 1991 Milan-Turin went to Davide Cassani, thanks to a masterpiece of tactical intelligence, even though the interested party perhaps tends to downplay the endurance qualities demonstrated that day: "I was feeling particularly good, we were in October and my rival was Tony Rominger, certainly not a nobody. I still don't know how, with tooth and nail, I managed to limit the damage at Superga, coming back on the descent and then easily overtaking the Swiss rider in the sprint".

Yes, a sprint, like the one that in 2022 gave Mark Cavendish victory on the avenue of Corso Francia in Rivoli: "in my gallery of successes, if I look at this race's palmares I can only be proud, I exploited my qualities supported by Quickstep, beating Bouhanni and Kristoff in order". Ten years before the Brit, it was 2012, it was Alberto Contador's turn, someone who was almost accustomed to victories, but... there's a but: "do you know that at the foot of the Turin Basilica I achieved my only success in a one-day classic?".

Having said, or rather reiterated, that Diego Rosa was the last Piedmontese to win Milan-Turin, there was a time when Turin riders took center stage in this classic race, which went to Federico Gay in 1921 and 1924, to Giuseppe Graglia in 1931 and 1933, to Giuseppe Martano in 1937. A double in 1954 and 1958 for Agostino Coletto, then in 1961 Valter Martin outwitted his fellow countryman Angelo Conterno. One moment though: Franco Balmamion deserves the opening of a special parenthesis, because in 1962 his glide onto the Motovelodromo, arrived after the climb of Revigliasco, was a harbinger of anticipation, considering that just a few months later came the conquest of the Giro d'Italia by the Canavese native, repeated the following year. It turns out that nostalgia gives way to an almost unanimous forecast. If Francesco Moser distances himself somewhat ("I'm hoping for Ganna"), Cavendish chooses not to commit but both Contador and Cassani don't think twice. And they say Pogacar. At that point, yes, the standing dinner with noses in the air could begin.