IVREA
When you think of an athlete whose performance has entered the Guinness Book of Records, one imagines a human being whose inexhaustible energy and stubborn perseverance make him a model. Paola Gianotti boasts the title of 4 Guinness world record woman but her peculiarity, as a woman and as a sportswoman, lies not only in the incredible performances of which she was the protagonist but also in the deep commitment that, with those same qualities mentioned above, in raising public awareness on the protection of cyclists. Together with Maurizio Fondriest and Marco Cavorso, he is one of the souls of the association I respect the cyclist, a partnership that aims to spread awareness of the need to respect sportsmen on two wheels in public opinion.
On Friday, the Ivorian athlete started his Safety Giro, a stage race in which the competition is not against other cyclists but against the danger they face every day on the roads. The departure took place from Turin, the city that kicked off the 2021 edition of the Giro d’Italia, and then covered six stages of the pink race between Piedmont, Lombardy, Emilia Romagna and Tuscany. Gianotti will touch 50 municipalities in which he will put something like 240 signs inviting to maintain a safety distance of 1.5 meters between motorist and cyclist during overtaking. The ultimate aim is that, within the next two years, in each of the 7,904 Italian municipalities there is one of these signals. In 2019 Gianotti was the protagonist of the Giro di Paola, in which he anticipated all the stages of the Corsa rosa by placing them in all the municipal stage locations. The pandemic this year forced it to reduce its path to a few regions. Cartels will be inaugurated in the Vercelli area, in the Langhe and in the Parma area; large cities such as Bologna, Cesena, Faenza, Imola and Parma will install them on their municipal roads. Gianotti is categorical: «Every 35 hours in Italy a cyclist dies from a road accident. We must personally commit ourselves to avoid it. That’s why I chose the prestigious Giro showcase to spread our message. Walking along part of the streets of the race, I will be able to directly involve the municipalities in the installation of the meter and a half signs ».
In addition, Paola Gianotti also put her cycling performances at the service of other causes: on April 18, 2020, in full Covid emergency, she pedaled at home for 12 hours on rollers for a fundraiser with which she bought 10,600 surgical masks which she then donated to the Regina Margherita hospital in Turin and the Ivrea hospital. And the will and the ability to achieve the goals he sets himself go hand in hand with the need to share his path with others: his third book is coming out these days, written jointly with the coach Lorenzo Paoli, entitled ” The turning point”. A motivational text in which Gianotti shares with the reader strategies and tools to successfully engage in the pursuit of his goals and thus make a change in his life. –