It will be said, in a self-evident way, that races reveal talents if they exist (adding, with a hint of bitterness, that appointments on the calendar are needed like bread), However, even a single edition of the time trial held in Piobesi Torinese, which took place in 2011, was enough to mark the beginning of the bond between Filippo Ganna and races against the clock.

For the record, the then first-year junior rider for Pedale Ossolano finished leaving behind Mattia Viel (Madonna di Campagna) and Federico Burchio (Rostese). What had been widely understood from races and track training, the special wattage of the boy from Vignone, on that June 11th of now 15 years ago, a Saturday dedicated to the Bracciale del Cronomen, found full confirmation along the 7.1 km course, covered by the winner at an average speed of 46.388 km/h.

Ganna threaded the pearl of Piobesi into the necklace of six seasonal victories that was closed at the top of the Ghisallo, when a breakaway proved fateful, gifting a second win to the rider from Verbania, already a winner at the foot of the iconic Sanctuary as a junior. Let's take another illustrious precedent from Pippo's explosive rise and have it told to us by a contemporary of the champion from Verbania.

We climb into the Turin Prealps and come across Davide Ostorero, second-place finisher at the 2012 Italian junior time trial championship, behind today's key asset of Netcompany Ineos. “That year, out of eight personal victories, three came against the clock, including a double on Piedmont roads, but in the absence of Ganna, the weekend before the national championship” - recalls the former Rostese rider, originally from Coazze, where a certain Pirandello used to spend his holidays. And where, to stay with Ostorero's cycling inclination, there are certainly no shortage of climbs.

“Today I practice cycling only for pleasure, when work (family business in the air conditioning systems sector, ed.) allows it. There is no regret for what could have been and wasn't, even though there was a sharp detachment phase from when I stopped. If I look at that finishing order in Caldonazzo, Trento, which sees me second with Edoardo Affini behind me, I say well done Davide, even though I'm aware that in the years to come I was unable to meet expectations according to my plans. And to think that as a junior I thought I could finalize the important performance shown as a junior even more. From that two-year period at Castanese and Aspiratori Otelli I naturally remember Ganna's rise, but also the emergence at excellent levels of Sobrero, with whom we would meet on Saturdays to go racing”.

With the sequence of Italian time trial titles that began 14 years ago in the Trentino mountains and continued to the present day, Ganna's aura of invincibility was surrounded by a rare event in 2013, when the rider from Ossola was forced to settle for third place in the national championship race won by Seid Lizde, who, while not fully revealing his potential, had important seasons as a teammate of Filippo himself (who achieved the feat the day after that bronze at Montemagno, in the Luigi Bocca Memorial).

The planets would realign at the 2014 Italian time trial championships, when the winner of the Under 23 Roubaix was already pedaling towards the Empyrean. Or something like that, you get the idea: Ganna things. Returning to Ostorero, he closes with an observation and a memory: “with the Piedmont quartet I raced with Ganna as a junior and junior but at the nationals we always arrived second. As for the national championship where I finished second, I confess that in the pre-race I heard a lot of talk about Affini but I didn't know him. Even today, considering Edoardo's career, having put him behind me is a source of pride”.