BUJA. Five years ago in Rio I touched Alessandro De Marchi, now the country with the highest concentration of runners in the region, who sent his twenty-year-old son of art (and legs of steel) Jonathan Milan to the Olympics. Jonny will leave on Sunday, in his suitcase he has already placed the flag with the eagle of Friuli that a provident mayor Stefano Bergagna had given him in the spring. And many dreams.
After all, the big boy, 1.96 cm by 94 kg, has a story to tell, better a story that began, a week or so less, about twenty months ago. His father Flavio was an amateur gentleman thirty years ago, once he stopped he also founded a cycling company in the town together with his friend Marco Zontone. The name? Simply the initials of the children. The Jam’s bike in ten days could thus bear the initial of an Olympic medal name. Because the “J” is strong. But until the end of 2019 he was just an under 23 with great potential and a vague future on two wheels.
His “boss” Roberto Bressan, an old fox also of the velodromes, ran in Team Friuli, senses its enormous potential, calls the track manager Marco Villa and tells him more or less like this: “I have a talent for my hands, try it in an international competition, if it goes badly, send it back to me ». Bingo. Milan unleashes horses, the “old men” of the chase quartet, on all that phenomenon that is Filippo’s name and Ganna’s surname, they take him aside and explain a couple of things to him. Sacrifice, team, work, results. They take him to the World Cup in Berlin at the end of February 2020, just before Covid, just to gain experience, but they soon throw him into the fray and so comes a bronze and even a fourth place in the individual pursuit.
“At his age, I wasn’t that strong,” confessed Ganna, one who won four world championship jerseys in pursuit and beyond. Then Milan brings four medals from the Europeans, while superPippo is in bed with Covid, and goes professional to Bahrain Victorious, with the Friulian ds Franco Pellizotti following him like a shadow, avoiding to squeeze him excessively. He runs Flanders, the Tour of Slovenia and little else. Naturally the boy is called up for the Olympics and, last week, he gives a paw to the Giro di Sardegna losing millimeters in the sprint only by a shark like Ackermann. “I want to dream big,” he says. Friuli del pesale and not only dream with him.
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