It will be a day of sorts historic, Tuesday March 24th, 2026, for Naples and cycling, to which that city of passions and that world remains devoted. Indeed, it will be signed, after a long and industrious effort, the protocol of understanding between the Italian Army and the Cycling Federation of Campania led by Umberto Perna for the use of the glorious velodrome of the 'General Antonio Albricci' Military Stadium, located in a Naples as authentically popular as that of Vasto.

After a quarter century of oblivion or thereabouts, the pedals return to that cement track, long, very long, 600 meters and more, recently subjected to a courteous refurbishment, where memory marries without recourse to divorce the epic of a more authentic era, both for Naples and for cycling. The sprint returns and the solitude of Fausto Coppi, at the 1954 and 1955 Giro della Campania, when the enthusiastic crowd on the track, overflowing, could not reach him and touch him, like a saint beyond the profane, such was the multitude. Marino Basso and Willy Planckaert return—do you still have references to them?

It returns to the Arenaccia, pupils of the sun even though that Wednesday, June 12th, 1968, it rained as a mocking god commanded, Eddy Merckx and his first Giro d'Italia victory, not yet having turned 22. At the Arenaccia, which from next Tuesday recovers this and so many other stories, that Wednesday Naples illustrated a story from beginning without end, that of Merckx as champion in Italy. Because in Naples one was never a foreigner, not even imperfectly, not even Roland Van de Rijse, the Belgian cyclist who arrived last that day. First in the sprint that afternoon, in any case, was Guido Reybrouck, a faithful charioteer of Eddy Merckx.

Who in Naples, at the Arenaccia, promised without qualification that he wanted to return again. And thanks to the institutional agreement finally in force from March 24th, 2026, certainly with the imprimatur of a much more official reason.