Once upon a time there was the bike and there is still. And once upon a time there was the first Italian champion in the history of our cycling which responded to the name of Giuseppe Loretz And he spoke Milanese. The heroic pedal of a cycling that still perhaps was not cycling but a season of pioneers who moved and competed on two -wheeled vehicles that were more a bicycle hypothesis, was the first to put on the shoulders the tricolor shirt in 1885. Born in Milan in 1860 and employee of Pirelli took place in the Italian road championships of 1885, which then were called “Resistance Championships”, mounting a bicycle equipped with the tires produced by his company. He won on the Milan-Cremona-Milan route of 160 km, a feat that repeated the following year and that vanished with nothing, beaten in the last meters by Geo Davidson.

Stories of the past. Distant stories that remain alive and in these days they become a splendid exhibition in Alexandria city of bicycles in a retrospective dedicated to the bicycle that was inaugurated at the end of last month at Palazzo Monferrato. «Those reckless on two -wheeled machines. The age of the Bicycle 1870 – 1890 “borrows the title from a famous film of the sixties” Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines “, in whose cast also appears Alberto Sordi, to tell the dawn of European bicycle history.

And among the protagonists there is precisely Giuseppe Loretz With his cycling career that took place between 1878 and 1887, a period during which he participated in 53 races, winning 31 and ranking second on 11 occasions. In 1884 he won the first Italian track cycling championship, held in Turin as part of the Italian General Exhibition. The competition was held in Piazza d’Armi, on a clay track specially set up and called “Velodrome” for the occasion. The winner’s award was a golden bronze cup offered by Prince Amedeo of Savoy-Aosta. Loretz also won the national titles in the resistance specialties in 1885 and Tricycle in 1886. It was first in all as regards the tricolor and it can be affirming it since as regards the assignment of the title of “Italian champion” in others Sport, the first Italian football championship took place only in 1898, with the victory of Genoa. Therefore, the title won by Loretz in 1884 represents one of the first assignments of a national championship in the history of Italian sport.

Loretz’s professional career He saw him initially engaged as a technician at Pirelli & C. in Milan. Subsequently, he moved to Turin, he worked at the Schiaparelli Pharmaceutical company and the electrical cables of the German engineer, future tire factory Ceat, where he became manager. His passion for cycling led him to stand out in the fast competitions of the time, using means such as bicycle and tricycle.