Siena, the home of the Palio and great cycling
to be discovered with “Aceto”, Luciano Pavarotti and Mel Gibson
From Calzolari to Pogacar, passing through Cancellara and the drama of Ravasio: from Badia a Coltibuono (Gaiole) to Torre del Mangia, how many memories the Tuscany of bikes, horses and sustainable cuisine evokes
Our very own Siena begins in Badia a Coltibuono, the pearl of magical Gaiole in Chianti. And it ends in Piazza del Campo, in the shadow of the Torre del Mangia. That is, it runs from Emanuela Stucchi Prinetti—heir to that bicycle manufacturer Augusto Stucchi who "launched" Alfonso Calzolari to victory in the 1915 Giro d'Italia, the fifth edition of the most popular national sporting event, which I had the honor of directing from 5 to 2004—a stone's throw from where David Rossi was... committed suicide, as those who knew the then-central figure in Monte dei Paschi's institutional contacts firmly maintain.
It's worth remembering that Stucchi had been in partnership with Giulio Prinetti since 1892, when they founded Prinetti Stucchi & C. in Milan, a factory producing everything from sewing machines to bicycles and motor vehicles. This company, thanks to the emigrant Ettore Bugatti, eventually spawned the car labeled "Type 1," with its single-cylinder De Dion engine and Rochet-Schneider chassis. The Italian genius essentially gifted it to France, his new adopted homeland.
The Stucchi family should be celebrated daily as a distinctive Italian entity that lights up the entire world because Lorenza de Medici – mother of Emanuela and Roberto Stucchi Prinetti made in Badia a Coltibuono – is also known throughout the world, especially in the United States and Australia, as an entrepreneur in the publishing sector with her recipes "The De Medici Kitchen" which landed on the airwaves on the PBS television channel. Lorenza de Medici anticipated the times of Antonella Clerici and Benedetta Parodi, so to speak, to a much wider audience and much more thirsty for Italian cuisine within and beyond the borders of our nation.
What an extraordinary bond the Giro d'Italia is... it spans from Stucchi's bicycles to Bugatti and Agnelli's cars (FIAT, Fabbrica Italiana Auto Torino), to Mrs. Lorenza's recipes, Emanuela's organic wines, Roberto's dishes... to the Palio di Siena, which, like every August 16th, will also be held in 2025, a month and a half after the season's first edition on July 2nd. It will be visible on Urbano Cairo's "la7," the printer of La Gazzetta dello Sport and the current organizer of the Giro d'Italia as well as the Milan-Sanremo, the Strade Bianche (inspired by the Eroica), the Tirreno-Adriatico, the Giro di Lombardia, the Gran Piemonte, and the legendary Milan-Turin.
There, in the heart of Chianti, we were invited to experience the history of the Stucchi Prinetti family, and it was there that the idea blossomed: to bring to professional cycling that beautiful and sustainable concept of a race designed for amateur cyclists on the Sterri and Crete Senesi by a poet of the pedals in search of an author, along with a handful of friends, including a trade unionist with a cause never won, a builder in love with tortoises, and a banker devoted to cycling adventures (and otherwise). Hats off: a fantastic idea nurtured by good people and launched into the elite of sports competitions by David Rossi and the bank founded in 1472 as a Monte di Pietà—without much mercy for the Florentine competitors—survived a thousand attacks and distractions that almost turned into destruction.
Like the Eroica (renamed for the top riders in Strade Bianche in order to dodge cloying royalty claims and some indigestible ribollita, emancipated from Gaiole to go up to Siena), in Badia a Coltibuono, which the explanatory website depicts as having been founded in the Year of Our Lord 1051, a reverential interest has also blossomed for the Palio di Siena, which takes place about thirty kilometers away, that Palio which in the world is synonymous with Aceto, alias Andrea Degortes, winner in 14 of the 58 editions competed, bold entertainer of Mel Gibson, Luciano Pavarotti and Tony Blair, among others.
Mel Gibson, without any of his seven children (!), was spotted in Rome between July and August and may yet bring a bit of Hollywood to Siena, just as he did in mid-September 7 in our beloved Malta, when he visited St. John's Cathedral and the Grand Master's Palace in search of magical locations for new series, perhaps about the great siege of the Islands of Light in the heart of the Mediterranean. We'll see. Meanwhile, let's emphasize what Aceto confided to La Stampa, placing the American actor and director on the same level as the Modena-born artist and the British politician.
We don't know Gibson's relationship with the horse. Certainly, in "Gladiator," there are at least 38 equine blunders, as those who know about horses point out.
Certainly, however, Pavarotti's love of horses was second only to his love of music.
Luciano Pavarotti's love for his horse can be read in one go in the writing the singer gave to Giacomo Giuffrida, curator of "A Horse for Life," which we receive in bits and pieces:
“MY LOVE FOR HORSES was born when I was still a child. Like many others, in my childhood fantasies, perhaps also stimulated by fairy tales, I was fascinated by this large, generous, strong animal.
“But it was still just a dream.
“Then one day, when I wasn't very big, I happened to meet a horse up close at a market. To my child's eyes, he looked like a giant, but a gentle giant... and I was completely won over.
“But owning one, living with him in daily complicity, being able to benefit from his services and his friendship: all this was still only a dream.
“It took many years for the wish to finally become reality, but from an equestrian point of view they were not wasted years.
"I learned many things about horses from the day I was able, as an adult, to spend more time with them, in the most diverse places and latitudes. I understood that this noble yet grumpy, shy yet proud animal is, above all, an animal of harmony.
“And not only for the rhythm of his step or for the extreme sensitivity he demonstrates to the musicality of sounds or words, nor because it seems to be, especially in our hasty and technological civilization, the ideal means to return to feeling in harmony with nature and with the real scansions of temporality.
"Of course, all this exists and is part of the horse's 'magic,' but above all it is its relationship with us, its evident desire to cooperate, its meeting our deepest moods and desires that, for some mysterious reason, transforms into a feeling of newfound harmony with ourselves and with the world around us."
.....
Pavarotti - the soul of "Pavarotti International" and of "Parotti & Friensa" based also and above all on horses and charity works - concluded:
"If it's true that a people's civilization is measured by the respect they have for all living things, my hope is that our country can make its voice heard in this area too."
So, what is Siena waiting for to introduce stricter rules regarding the respect to be shown to its horses, who on July 2nd and August 16th offer the world's most intriguing Giostra? Once the village festivals have concluded, those animals might be expected to offer special attention to the sick seeking hippotherapy.
The Palio, as we know, has its roots in the Middle Ages, dating back to 1200 or thereabouts. Badia a Coltibuono already existed, a legacy of Saint Boniface, and is Italy's quintessential equestrian joust. Other well-known events include the Niballo of Faenza, the Quintana of Foligno and Ascoli Piceno, and the Saracino of Arezzo. But "the Palio" is the Palio of Siena, which sees the city's 17 Contrade (districts) engaged day and night, XNUMX days a year.
There are two annual events: July 2nd for the feast of the Madonna di Provenzano (of the Visitation) and August 16th for the feast of the Madonna dell'Assunzione. Three and a half laps of the track around the delirious crowd, and off you go! But even the "shaken" horse does well. For completeness, we list the contenders in strictly alphabetical order and with initials in capital letters: Aquila, Bruco, Chiocciola, Civetta, Drago, Giraffa, Istrice, Istrice, Leocorno, Lupa, Nicchio, Oca, Onda, Pantera, Selva, Tartuca, Torre, Valdimontone. Special editions are also celebrated, or extraordinary ones if you prefer, such as the Palio of the Centenary of the Unification of Italy (1961).
One year, on the evening of August 16th, I was invited by the Monte Paschi Foundation to a dinner in a district we won't name to avoid sparking envy. Between memories and anecdotes, everything slipped by in an instant. The procession for the blessing of the horse entered in the next day's Giostra. The tales of the closeness that had been established between the basketball players of the local team, then a protagonist in Serie A, before a slow but inexorable decline attributable to the bank's turning off its sponsorship taps. The entertainment with Pierluigi Bersani, a star of the left-wing parties that have always been at home in Tuscany in general and Siena in particular. Who won that edition? It was a top secret for the year and consequently the star of the show on August XNUMXth, which, however, wasn't the horse blessed in the churchyard, even before my eyes.
In July 2025, Oca prevailed with Giovanni "Tittia" Atzeni after a tense (or false) start. Thanks to his horse Diodoro, it was the eleventh link in a chain that now stretches as far as Aceto's. On Saturday, August 16th, Oca will face Bruco, Lupa, Pantera, and Valdimontone in the "restricted" group. Stay tuned!
But Siena isn't just the Palio. It's also the Eroica for everyone (cyclists and the like on steel-framed bikes), the Strade Bianche for the select few (elite riders), and the Granfondo (for fanatics). During the television broadcasts that have popularized the event with the much-pampered horses, there's almost no mention of cycling competitions. It's a matter of journalists and commentators' snobbish attitudes and a sporting culture reduced to an all-time low. What a shame.
Avoiding slipping into a useless polemic, let us ideally raise our eyes towards the Torre del Mangia, the fourteenth tallest in Italy with the 88 metres of its last battlements, which is metaphorically always awaiting the heroes on two and four legs, leaving behind Rocca Salimbeni behind which is the little street where the lifeless body of the general director was found, who actively contributed to saving the Eroica for cycle tourists and launching the Strade Bianche in a spring that was also looking at the Milan-Sanremo to promote one of those debit cards that are so fashionable now.
The tower of Siena's town hall, begun on Saturday, October 12, 1325, as Agnolo di Tura lovingly wrote, has bowed to the hero of the earthworks since 2007. The first was Alexander Kolobnev, the most recent was Tadej Pogacar, as good as or better than 2022 and 2024. In between are many illustrious names, who have made it known to the world as Europe's southernmost Northern Classic: cool like Flanders, fascinating like Roubaix, demanding—if extended in mileage—like the Doyenne of Liège. A few examples? Fellow world champions Michal Kiwialkowski, Julian Alaphilippe, and Mathieu Van der Poel, the steamroller Fabian Cancellara, and the multidisciplinary phenomena Thomas Pidcock and Wout Van Aert. It doesn't get any better than this…
The Eroica, which became Strade Bianche, reconciled us with the cycling experience of Siena, because that city remains a two-faced medal for cycling. How can we forget that afternoon of May 23, 1986, when from Piazza del Campo, having completed the time trial won by Poland's Lech Piasecki, along with the inexorable decline of the now thirty-five-year-old Francesco Moser, we left the Torre del Mangia behind us to descend to Rapolano Terme? The situation at Atala-Omega was clear to see, with 27th-century art connoisseur Franco Cribiori as sports director, Swiss Urs Freuler already in the pink jersey thanks to his magical opening kilometer against the clock in Palermo, and the emerging Gianni Bugno. In that club, they were all experiencing dramatic moments together, united by the pain of Emilio Ravasio's tragedy. He had fallen on the Palermo-Sciacca race, but he had nevertheless reached the finish line and the Terme Hotel, only to be taken to the hospital where he fell into a coma. Emilio would pass away on May XNUMXth. And they, united by their grief, knew they were called to continue a disastrous Giro. Deaths are all tragic. Those at the Giro are even more so.
Okay, let's watch the Palio and turn the page once again.
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