Vintage cycling conquers cities: Milan relaunches the Eroica Café race

On the other hand, cycling is all about movement and competition, but always under the banner of sociability. One rarely pedals alone and often the outing is accompanied by a stop at the table, a good pasta and a sincere glass of wine. This is also the case with the Eroica di Gaiole that, as always, accompanies the effort and the enterprise with numerous refreshments to the sound of ribollita, tripe, beans, bread and oil, pecorino cheese and Chianti.

The Eroica itself has its roots in a bar. The inventor of the vintage event, Giancarlo Brocci, recalls how his love of cycling was born among the tables of the Barrino, one of the centres of Gaiole's social life, where on Monday mornings he would read the newspapers, from the Nazione to the Gazzetta, with the Sunday sporting exploits that then, in the 1960s, in addition to football, focused on two wheels, motor and, above all, pedal. The era of the Coppi-Bartali duel was over, but heroic cycling continued to cause discussion and divide the popular crowds, with the Anquetils, Gimondis and Merckxs, who made people dream with their rides on mostly Italian bikes. And in Tuscany, two-wheelers were an institution.

It was there, in the premises next to his father's pump, that Brocci's passion for a romantic, black and white cycling was born, made of sweat and feats, of legs always moving on the pedals and expert hands fine-tuning wheels and gears, of frames set up the night before the race. It is the same cycling that has been reproposed in Gaiole and then replicated in Italy and around the world, as a festival built around the intuition that cycling - with its history and stories, its culture of fatigue, its white roads and unique aesthetics - can inspire a different vision of sport that becomes a revival of the territories, of a slow and human-scale tourism, of a life made of hard work and achievements.

"I believe that in its DNA the Eroica brand expresses exactly all those values that any brand at this time is looking for: sustainability, listening, wellbeing, giving back, a sense of belonging. Giancarlo says that Eroica does not belong to anyone, but to everyone, in the sense that it is an Italian heritage. I am truly convinced of that,' says Totaro, whose goal is to bring those same values back into the Eroica Cafés: 'Those who come to us enter the Mecca of cycling, they are enraptured by a history and an Italian-ness that is hard to find.

The premises therefore seek to reproduce those values: the Milan premises house a private collection of historic Colnago bicycles, a universal symbol of the history of Italian design and sport. The cuisine is an expression of tradition and quality, made up of selected raw materials and recipes from the national gastronomic tradition and, at the same time, 'the employees must take on the responsibility of transmitting the brand, with kindness, a welcoming attitude and a willingness to help'.

It may be a coincidence, but the premises of Caffè Eroica are never the result of chance: if the Barrino di Gaiole was next to a petrol pump, the Milanese establishment on Viale Tunisia has taken the place of a car accessories shop and is located along the cycle path a few dozen metres from that Corso Buenos Aires which has become a symbolic - and contested - place of the new mobility of the Lombard capital. Via Tabacchi, a short distance from Bocconi, has next door a workshop belonging to an electrician with a great passion for bicycles, with a career as a racer also continued by his son. The next location will be in the heart of the CityLife green area, emblem of a more liveable and human-scale Milan.

Turnover is ready to take off. This year the contribution of the second Milanese outlet has been limited, having arrived just before the summer, but it still allows the year to end with a turnover of more than three and a half million euro, compared to last year's three million, with 'an Ebitda in double figures, which is very interesting for the parameters of the catering sector,' Totaro comments. If the timetable is adhered to, the opening of four to five new points in 2026 will guarantee an expansion of the business.

That this is a very special model is also confirmed by the clientele, which for a good fifth is made up of uniformed cyclists who gather here on Saturdays or Sundays before or at the end of their weekend outing. One third are tourists, including foreigners, attracted by history and word of mouth. For the rest are residents and families, parents and children, traditional patrons, but attracted by the fascination of the history of heroic cycling that one breathes in these places, of hard work and exploits, also ready to get on two wheels.