WATER AND FIRE – 24-hr Montello “Memorial Mauro Marcato” (April 17-18, Treviso-Italy)

by Sara Taglialatela

The 24-hr Montello is an ultracycling race held on Montello, a hill near Montebelluna in the March of Treviso, along a 33.5-km route with a climb of 460 metres and a descent of 464 metres for each lap. The race is an Ultracycling World Cup Trial, Italian Ultracycling Championship and this year it was designated by the UMCA as the European 24-hr Ultracycling Championship. In occasion of the second edition of the race, Fabio held on to the title of Italian champion by winning the Italian Ultracycling championship for the second consecutive year. Arriving first also among all the strong European athletes who participated in the race, he also won the European 24-hr Championship. In the Ultracycling World Cup Trial he came in second only to the excellent Australian triathlete Matthew Warner-Smith, who led a masterly race by jumping in the lead at the fourth lap and staying up front until the end with only one thought in his head: the number of laps Fabio raced in 2009. Fabio and Matthew met last year in July in Switzerland at the Radmarathon, and on that occasion it was Fabio who came in before Matthew.

I said water and fire because they are the elements that marked this race in some way in my mind. Water is the torrential rain during the night of Saturday the 17th. The roads became rivers, the descent toward Ciano a waterfall, and the bicycle wheels slid, making their already reduced traction even more unstable. A fact that continues to amaze me and make me shudder at every race: resistance, which is something solid, is built on the instability of balance, even maximizing the capacity to exploit that instability. Fabio raced against the water. Looking for an opening in the mass of water, which fell so compact that it created an elastic yet dense wall against one’s body.

A body warmed from physical effort that bangs up against a cold, icy body, made of the same substance as the snow that fell a week before on the race in the Prealps, the backdrop to Montello. Elsewhere, in the far off north, a similar phenomenon was taking place: the awakening of the powerful Icelandic volcano, under the glacier Eyjafjallajokull, is a collision between fire and water. The heat presses against the cold with a steadiness that is able to open a passage and free energy that seemed like it should dissipate under the pressure of the cold.

In the north of the planet the battle produces extraordinary atmospheric phenomena capable of upsetting air traffic, in the south of the planet the same battle made Fabio race 660.5 kilometres with about 9000 m of climbs in 24 hours and also made him set the best race time with one lap finished in 55 min. 54 sec. at an average speed of 35.95 kph (22.35 mph).