Month: October 2019

October 29, 2019 / Carlton Reid / Blog

Move over Mallorca, Cambrils is Coming

Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

Tuesday 29th October 2019

GUESTS: Cycling club secretaries from Svarta Haesten cycling club, Lecarrow Lazers of Ireland, University of Bristol Cycling Club, and Redford and District Cycling Club recorded out on the road in Costa Dorada or at the Cambrils Sport Village.

Jaume Rue of Cycling Costa Daurada.

Music is Mussara by Carles Ribot.

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TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:39
That croaking came from a large reed-covered pond beside a tumbledown church in the ghost village of La Massara in the high hills of Catalunya, 55 kilometres from the seaside resort of Cambrils, and 1000 metres above the Costa Dorada … Cataluyna’s gold coast. The music is by Catalan musician Carles Ribot, from his spooked-out folk-rock album Massara.

The tumbledown church at the abandoned village of La Mussara. The frogs are in those reeds. Somewhere.

I’m Carlton Reid and in this episode of the Spokesmen Cycling Podcast, brought to you in Assocation with Jenson USA , I’ve not just been pointing my microphone at frogs, I’ve also recorded club cyclists, breathing heavily as they climbed on a short fam trip to Spain. Two members from each of 14 clubs were invited out here in mid-October by the holiday company Cycling Costa Daurada based out of the Cambrils Sport Village, an hour south west of Barcelona. When the club cyclists went home I stuck around and did some solo exploring, riding an Argon 18 on some spectacular hair-pin bends to get to the ghost village I mentioned at the top of the show. I had La Massara to myself, except for those croaking frogs. The village was abandoned in the 1960s and is believed by some to be not only haunted, but also other-worldly. There are multiple reports of people disappearing from the locale in mysterious circumstances, and not only during those times when fog bubbles up out of nowhere. Close to the entrance to the village there’s a boulder which local legend says is a portal into a parallel universe. It’s not the only legendary place I visited last week in this beautiful part of the world. On the day after somehow surviving the ghosts, ghoulies and potty portals I rode up another serpentine climb to reach the fairytale fortress village of Siurana. Again, I had the place to myself. That’s the thing about this part of Spain in the off-season: it’s so incredibly quiet. It’s still warm and sunny, but there are only 9,000 people living in the whole of the UNESCO world heritage region of Priorat. The roads are wide and butter smooth, but there are very few cars to spoil the party, or the view. And even when motorists do pass you they make sure to leave plenty of space, thanks in part to Spain’s 1.5 metre passing law, signs for which are peppered along the roadside.

David Berling 3:24
This is a dream come true for me and Anders because we never been on climbs like these. We thought climbing were short and hard, but this is this is the best.

Anders Madin climbing to the “Hermitage of the Mother of God of the Road”

Carlton Reid 3:33
That was David Berling from the Svarta Haesten cycling club of Stockholm in Sweden. He was on this fam trip with his bushy bearded buddy Anders Madin. The club has 28 mostly male members, and I asked David how many of them would likely come on a winter or spring trip to the Cambrils Sport Village. Anders also explained why the Costa Dorada sunshine would be so enticing to shivering Swedes.

David Berling 4:02
I think probably like seven or eight or and maybe they a few of us will bring our families because we that kind of come. So this is said this would work pretty well with the with the family type of riding that we do.

Carlton Reid 4:16
Yeah, kids can stay back in the pool. Everybody’s happy. Yeah,

Carlton Reid 4:20
yeah. And then mum and dad can go

Carlton Reid 4:23
riding up the hill.

Carlton Reid 4:26
And what time of year are you thinking of coming?

Anders Madin 4:31
I think would be the beginning of the season, maybe March April, when it’s still snowing, harsh weather in

Unknown Speaker 4:41
Stockholm.

Olly Beresford and Sam Tiller 4:49
I’m Olly Beresford. And I’m Sam Tiller. And we’re from the University of Bristol cycling club. So we’re out here in Spain for a two day tryout session with, with this bike company here. Yeah, we’ve had a really, really nice day today. So the first day is a longer ride about 125 kilometres with some nice climbs, I think we had six in total beautiful gradients really, really nice. So nothing really steep, like we have in Bristol, which is which is good. I definitely prefer the longer shallower stuff. But I know some people prefer it the other way around.

Carlton Reid 5:27
And then no traffic because we were going down those descents and we were we were lapsing in the fact that we were kind of going on the wrong side of the road, because we hadn’t seen any cars. So we’re just naturally just drifting across and taking the whole word for the ride. And that’s amazing to have.

Olly Beresford 5:43
While I was at I was we were talking to each other on the way back into Cambrils where we’re staying. Just saying that imagine if you had 25 people in a group in Britain like that would just be chaos on the

Olly Beresford 5:54
roads like people just trying to storm past you, like crashing into people. So I mean by that is I mean a part of Spain really and even large parts of France, the roads much quieter than they have in the UK. Just definitely reasons come see the roads

Carlton Reid 6:10
I recorded Olly and Sam in the sport village, but I also recorded riders as as we climbed the local hills. Sorry for a little bit of wind noise here. As I talk with Mary and Ashley, the Secretary and Assistant Secretary of Ireland’s Lecarrow Lazers Cycling Club

Carlton Reid 6:23

Ashley O’Gara 6:26
I am Ashley O’Gara. I am with Lecarrow Lasers cycling club and we’re based in the centre of Ireland, near Athlone. We’re heart of an organised trip where they hope to promote Cambrils to the Irish as a cycling destination. Some of the clubs are coming already, our club hasn’t been, and we’re basically here just trialling it. And as far as last three years, we’ve gone on cycling trips to other destinations such as Wales and Scotland. And we’ve gotten approximately 24, 25 members to come. But unfortunately there’s about six or seven women that’s it.

Unknown Speaker 6:58
Very male dominated.

Carlton Reid 7:00
Ashley was out here in Catalunya with Mary Lennon, the friend who got her into club cycling in the first place.

Mary Lennon 7:08
We have to have a look at costs and viability of getting 20, 25 members out here and all of that kind of stuff. We tried to kind of keep it to two to three days over a weekend so it’s reasonably you know, affordable because some of our members will be couples so and some will still have young kids and stuff like that so you want to make it that it’s accessible to everybody.

Carlton Reid 7:33
Of course the young kids are gonna be kept at home because Ashley was telling me this is gonna be an adult-only event.

Mary Lennon 7:37
Oh yeah, it’s adults only, but you kind of want to make it that you know everybody can access it. That is not just for people that have loads of time on their hands or loadsof money.

Carlton Reid 7:47
So what’s what’s the things you’re actually looking for on this ride? Are you looking for just rides like this, where there’s lots of variety. Are you looking for, like, extra destinations that non cyclists can go to what, what’s your criteria?

Mary Lennon 7:59
We tend to look for, you know, a nice ride that’s suitable for different abilities. We’d have some very strong members who love hills. We’ve others, like myself, that can get up and have something that’s accessible to different levels and bit of a challenge, but you know, not so, so much that people don’t enjoy it.

Mary Lennon 8:20
And you know, we can tend to have 120 and 130 km cycle rides on our trips.

Roger Pennington 8:25
I am Roger Pennington, and I’m with Redford and District Wheelers cycling club.

Carlton Reid 8:30
Roger, we’re standing here, we’ve had a beautiful lunch after after that few climbs, we’ve got a few climb still to go. Is this convincing you to tell your club, yeah, we’ve got to come here chaps?

Roger Pennington 8:44
Yeah, definitely. With the experience I’ve had, with the smooth roads, lesser traffic on the road and the climbs, I think it compares very well to Mallorca but without the traffic and a massive amount of cyclists that you get in Mallorca.

Carlton Reid 9:00
So Mallorca is where your club has been for a number of years?

Roger Pennington 9:04
Yes, many years, yes.

Carlton Reid 9:06
You’re kind of now you’re used to the roads there and you want somewhere different is that why you’re thinking here?

Roger Pennington 9:12
Yep we want to change because we know the roads so well and it’s the same old every year so we want some where different

Carlton Reid 9:20
The piece I’ll do about this trip on Forbes.com will be headlined something like “Move over Mallorca, Cambrils is Coming.”. The Cambrils Sport Village has recently hosted pro teams such as Bahrain Merida, and Wiggins Le Col, and I think more teams will migrate for their offseason training from Mallorca to the the Costa Dorado. There are 1000 kilometres of lightly traffic roads and plenty of photogenic hairpin bends. Here’s me from the top of one of them.

Carlton Reid 9:51
You know those Top Gear kind of roads, sinewy, serpentine? Well, I’m on one of them at the moment. And you probably hear a few cars coming past but there’s not that many cars in this region at all, but they are coming to this particular road. So if you’re familiar with Sa Calobra in Mallorca, places like that, well, it’s another one of those. It’s a really twisty, twisty road and it’s going up to the abandoned village of La Massara. And here comes a car. Now I’ve seen about four cyclists so far this morning, and the car drivers been pretty good, they’re not going crazy. I’ve seen four cyclists, I was the first one up because I got up pretty early. I wanted to get out here. I can see the Mediterranean off in the distance and it’s golden off in the distance there. And of course, that’s why this particular region is called Costa Dorado, which is Gold Coast. And that’s because of the Mediterranean across there which at the moment is looking really, really golden off in the distance and I can see the flat land,

Unknown Speaker 11:01
the Catalan flats. So you got to do about at least

Carlton Reid 11:07
15 miles out from the coast to start coming up hill, and the gradients are really quite gentle, which is why these these these twisty roads are so twisty because in the UK and in other parts of Europe, they would go up the hill, really quite steep angle, but here it’s probably about 6% at most. So it just goes round and round in these wonderful, wonderful hairpin bends. And I’m going to go now to the abandoned village which is a village that apparently is quite popular on Halloween because it’s got a an abandoned church. They abandoned it in the 1960s this particular village, La Mussera. The road the kind of the hill that goes on above it is La Mussara so the village is La Massara. And it’s been abandoned since 1960s. So this graveyard is meant to be quite spooky and people come up here on on Halloween. So let’s go to La Massara and check it out.

Carlton Reid 12:27
La Massara was forcibly abandoned in the early 1960s. Its population had declined from 3 hundred or so in the late 19th century to just 36 in the 1950s, some of whom clearly still yearned for the place because the tiny cemetery — quite the draw on October 31st — has some relatively recent burials. The hardy villagers who lived here way back when were known by others, disparagingly, as “frogs”. The ground wasn’t ever as fertile as further down the mountain, and the high village was infamous for its mists. A regional ditty went:

Hanna Reid 13:04
Mother, if you give me a husband/Don’t give him to me from La Mussara/There is always fog there/And I don’t like the soil.

Carlton Reid 13:14
I captured audio of croaking frogs, but others who visit – at night, when it must be a lot spookier – say they have recorded the sounds of things that go bump in the night. As you’d therefore expect, La Mussara is a hotspot on Halloween. And it was the village’s other worldliness that attracted Catalan musician Carles Ribot to visit. He wrote a folk-rock album about the paranormal paranoia that surrounds the village. I played part of a track from his Mussara album at the top of the show and will close with it, too.

Carlton Reid 13:48
Carles hasn’t recorded an album about the mountain village of Siurana, 30 kilometres from la Mussara but if that place — tiny, high but very much not abandoned — had to be accompanied by a soundtrack I’d use something dramatic and aerial, like say, Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. Dramatic because Siurana is spectacular — it was built on the edge of a cliff FFS — and aerial because, did I mention? it’s built on the edge of a cliff.

Carlton Reid 13:48
Here I am sitting on a slab of rock at the periphery of this vertiginous village, just after taking a spectacular drone shot of the place, which you can see on the-spokesmen.com

Carlton Reid 14:34
I can’t quite believe I’m by myself at the moment because I have got this stunning view over an old church looking down into a massive valley with a huge huge rock overhang. This is actually a this is the town of village of Siurana and it’s actually a beacon for rock climbers. So when I was climbing up here this morning, lots of camper vans camped out and they weren’t tourists, they were here for the the climbing around here. So the rock faces are just wonderful. The views are just stunning. And yet there isn’t anybody else up here. I think it’s I’m here quite early. So I left Cambrils in the dark. And I left about half past seven because I wanted to get the boring 10 miles out of the way quickly and get up here in some nice light. And it is beautiful. Here, it’s it’s quite chilly. It’s nice in the sunshine, but it was very cold on some of the descents. But this particular town is literally on the cliff edge. And it was a fortress town, the Moors, the Saracens, the Arabs basically, when they had this part of Spain and this part of Catalonia, this was their last stronghold in the 1150s, or something like that, and they held out to here. And then apparently, there is a hoof print in the rock. No doubt that’s been chiselled in by people wanting to get tourists here, but that’s meant to be the hoof print of the Moorish queen who didn’t want to be taken by the the Christian knights who had besieged and were taking over the town. So she leapt off the cliff face with her horse and that is where the horse is meant to have thought, hang on, I’m not jumping over there as soon as it realised where it was going and they fell to a rather obvious death. Today, Siurana is a sleepy place — well, it was when I visited it, I guess it gets busier in peak tourist season — and I was here early enough for many of the climbers to be still asleep in their camper vans. By the time I left all were awake and I saw dozens of climbers on the 200+ routes hereabouts, one shouting when he lost grip, and enjoying the echoes he made in the valley below. Now riding without arm warmers and a jacket I legged it back for lunch in the Cambriles Sport Village. Afterwards I spoke with Jaume Rue, founder of Cycling Costa Daurada, and asked him why he had invited club cyclists to the resort.

Jaume Rue 17:44
The main thing is to have a new clients and new groups to to come in Cambrils Park in the in, in the region Costa Daurada, whatever because you know some some of the some of the groups

Unknown Speaker 18:01
Some of the all groups that we have, they want to change in in of the destination so it’s necessary at this moment to to have a new a new clients and new new groups.

Carlton Reid 18:13
So maybe people who would have gone to Mallorca?

Carlton Reid 18:17
Like pro teams?

Jaume Rue 18:19
Exactly, the the, the majority of the of the clubs and the groups of the country they go to Mallorca before and they want to change of destination for for his trip next next season.

Carlton Reid 18:37
Thanks to Jaume Rue there of Cycling Costa Daurada, and thanks also to Victor Goitia, the cycling product manager of Costa Dorada tourism who extended my time at the Cambrils Sport Village so I could get out and find my own stories. Permission to play the Mussera music was given by Carles Ribot. Links to his work, and links for Cycling Costa Daurada and details for Cambrils Sport Village can all be found on this podcast’s show notes which, as always, can be found at www.the-spokesmen.com If you want to know more about La Mussara make sure to check out my spooky story on Forbes.com due to go online on Thursday October 31st, Halloween that is. All of my Forbes stories can be found at www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid This was show 228 of the Spokesmen Cycling Podcast and it was recorded on Tuesday 29th October 2019. Here’s my co-host David with a short message from our show sponsor.

David Bernstein 19:48
Hey Carlton, thanks so much. And it’s it’s always my pleasure to talk about our advertiser. This is a long time loyal advertiser. Its Jenson USA at www.Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen, I’ve been telling you for years now years, that Jenson is the place where you can get a great selection of every kind of product that you need for your cycling lifestyle at amazing prices, and what really sets them apart, because of course, there’s lots of online retailers out there, but what really sets them apart is their unbelievable support. When you call and you’ve got a question about something, you’ll end up talking to one of their gear advisors and these are cyclists. I’ve been there, I’ve seen it. These are folks who ride at lunch, who go out on group rides after work because they just enjoy cycling so much. And and so you know that when you call, you’ll be talking to somebody who has knowledge of the products that you’re calling about. If you’re looking for a new bike, whether it’s a mountain bike, a road bike, a gravel bike, a fat bike, what are you looking for, go ahead and check them out. Jenson USA – they are the place where you will find everything you need for your cycling lifestyle. It’s Jensonusa.com/ thespokesmen. We thank them so much for their support and we thank you for supporting Jenson USA. Alright Carlton, let’s get back to the show.

Carlton Reid 21:10
Thanks, David, and that’s a wrap for today’s show. Like the Gino Bartali story on the previous episode, today’s show was more engineered than our roundtable ramblings, and, to be frank, more time-consuming. If you like this editorial approach, make sure to give the show a shout-out on Apple Podcasts or leave a comment on the show notes at the-spokesmen.com The next episode, due out early next month, will be another travelogue, this time from a Belgian cycleway in Germany, a what-did-you-just-say show that will be accompanied soon by a piece in The Guardian. Meanwhile, get out there and ride.

October 8, 2019 / Carlton Reid / Blog

Gino Bartali’s Secret WARTIME Heroism & The Cycling School Inspired By It

Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

Gino Bartali’s Secret Heroism & The Cycling School Inspired By It

Tuesday 8th October 2019

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS:

Holocaust survivor Paul Alexander

Canadian journalist Aili McConnon, co-author of Bartali biography, “The Road to Valor”

Gino Bartali’s granddaughter Gioia Bartali

Yuval Markovich, Bartali Youth Leadership School

Dr. Ilana Tischler, director-general, Ben Shemen Youth Village, Israel

Former pro cyclist Ran Margaliot, co-founder of Israel Cycling Academy and Bartali Youth Leadership School

TOPICS:

A 77-year-old secret, a new, cycling-based boarding school that commemorates it, and the kick-off for a 180 kilometre bike ride that retraces its roots.

This episode of the Spokesmen Cycling Podcast is about Gino Bartali’s 1948 Tour de France victory, his secret wartime rides to smuggle fake IDs for Italian Jews, a new Israeli cycling-based boarding school launched in his honour, and the Bartali 180 commemorative cycle ride from Florence to Assisi, retracing Bartali’s mid-1940s training-cum-smuggling route.

TRANSCRIPT:

1948 Tour de France music 0:01

Carlton Reid 0:16
This is the story of a 77-year-old secret, a new, cycling-based boarding school that commemorates it, and the kick-off for a 180 kilometre bike ride that retraces its roots.

Welcome to episode 227 of the Spokesmen Cycling Podcast brought to you in association with Jenson USA, I’m Carlton Reid, and the audio you heard at the top of the show was from a period Italian film about the 1948 Tour de France won by Italy’s Gino Bartali. On the day before the climb which clinched it, Bartali was staying at the Carlton hotel in Cannes when he was called by the future leader of Italy’s Christian Democratic Party and told he had to win a stage or two because it would prevent the outbreak of bloodshed following the attempted assassination of a Communist politician. “I will do even better than that,” promised Bartali. “I WILL WIN THE WHOLE TOUR.”

That Bartali’s against-all-the-odds victory possibly prevented an Italian civil war would be an amazing claim to fame, but more recently, something even more amazing came out about Bartali, a secret that the devout Catholic had kept to his dying day. During the war against Hitler, at great risk to his own life, and that of his young family, Bartali used his fame, and, indeed, his bicycle frame, to smuggle documents that saved perhaps as many as 600 Italian Jews from the gas chambers. We don’t know the exact number, because – for obvious reasons – no records were kept. Despite being one of Italy’s most famous sports personalities, the subject of countless newspaper and magazine articles, and in his later years, a pundit on Italian TV, Bartali never talked about his war heroics, not even with his family.

In this special episode of the Spokesmen Cycling Podcast, I talk to Canadian journalist Aili McConnon, co-author of a Bartali biography. I also speak with Bartali’s granddaughter, as well as a bicycling Holocaust survivor, a bunch of Hebrew and Arabic speaking school kids connected by their love of cycling, and the former pro cyclist who brought all of these folks together in Italy last month.

The Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi at the end of the Bartali 180

I met them all at the inaugural Bartali 180 which is a new commemorative ride planned to be held annually to celebrate the great man’s deeds. The one-day ride – 180 kilometers if you do the full distance – uses Tuscan roads that Bartali would have trained on close to his home near Florence, and it follows his smuggling route to the monastery city of Assisi which he would have ridden many times during the war, braving Nazi and fascist patrols to ferry counterfeit identification papers for people fleeing what would have been almost certain death.

Paul Alexander 3:40
On this day, the seventh of September 2019, 80 years ago, the Second World War was four days old.

Carlton Reid 3:59
That’s 81-year old Paul Alexander, a Holocaust survivor sent to England as part of the kindertransport, a pre-war rescue effort that separated 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from their parents in Nazi Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland , placing them in foster care.

Paul Alexander 4:19
It was a war in which close to 20 million men, women and children around the world lost their lives, including 16 million of my own people

Paul Alexander 4:42
The cost of this horrible war would have been considerably greater had it not been for heroes like Gino Bartali, who, at great risk, put the lives of others before their own lives and they enabled countless people to survive the Holocaust. My connection to the Bartali ride is coincidental but it is a very significant event in my life. I’ve always loved cycling since I was a child.

Carlton Reid 5:32
Paul was speaking in the Palazzo Vecchio, or “Old Palace” in the medieval centre of Florence, and he was one of those to launch the Bartali Youth Leadership School on the day before the start of the Bartali 180.

Paul Alexander climbing the final stretch from the town of Assisi to the Basilica of Saint Francis without battery assistance

Paul Alexander 5:45
We are eternally grateful for the opportunity for having done this wonderful ride.

Carlton Reid 5:49
Paul rode the Bartali 180 on his Pinarello electric road bike, and I rode next to him on the steep climb up from Assissi to the Basilica of Saint Francis – his power had run down by then (Paul’s not St Francis’) and yet he climbed without battery assistance. Also on that climb was Aili McConnon and earlier she told me how she and her brother revealed Gino Bartali’s secret.

Paul Alexander with Aili McConnon at the Bartali memorial at Terontola station

Aili McConnon 6:21
You know, many in Italy, really, up until most recently haven’t talked about what happened during the war. So we started thinking, you know, what did Bartali do during the war? We found a small mention in a Florentine newspaper that he’d helped the Jewish community we said, well, that’s interesting, you know, was he a part of the partigiani was he a part of the resistance, what was he doing? And tracked down his son and reached out to him and you know, he gave us a little bit of a nugget of the story that, yes, he helped the community, he carried documents. And I think it was at that point we realised that this is sort of the story of a great sports hero, but then also a humanitarian.

Carlton Reid 6:56
Gino the pious, as he was nicknamed by contemporary newspapers, is lauded in Italy as a legendary sports champion, famous for his fierce rivalry with Fausto Coppi. Then, and even today, many Italians identified as supporters of either Coppi or Bartali, there was no middle ground and no love lost between the factions. Since the gradual unraveling of his secret from 2010 or so, there has been a non-sporting reason to favour Bartali as the more historically significant of the two but Gino the Pious never spoke about his wartime exploits.

Aili McConnon 7:32
The reason why he helped, or at least my best understanding, came from his widow, Adrianna Barteli, who was alive when we were researching the book, you know, and she said that, you know, he was so aware of the immense contribution so many Italians had made and, you know, many had been tortured, many had been killed, you know, and he thought he did his part, but he didn’t want to overshadow you know, those who have done so much during the war. So, I think, you know, he was happy to be known for his cycling accolades, but did not want, you know, his cycling fame, you know, consequently to, you know, then make him into a bigger war hero, and, you know, some very regular people who did so much but wouldn’t be you know, as widely publicised, because they’re just everyday citizens

Carlton Reid 8:27
I asked Aili whether Bartali’s secret story – fighting fascists – had resonance today.

Aili McConnon 8:34
It is, you know, very, very concerning, you know, the sort of pockets of anti-semitism that you see popping up around the world and, you know, the fact that you do have a choice, and it certainly would have been much easier, much more convenient and safer for him not to do anything. You know, he was certainly risking his own life, his family’s life, you know, and yet he kind of stood up to do what he felt was right.

Gioia Bartali kick-starting the Bartali 180 ride at the old synagogue in Florence

Gioia Bartali 8:54
Because of my grandfather, he, he think … sorry, for my grammatical verbs is …

Carlton Reid 9:04
That’s Gioia Bartali, Gino’s granddaughter, and as I told her at the time, her English is far better than my Italian.

Gioia Bartali 9:13
He don’t say any words with the son and with his wife. Okay? Because if you make good to other person, you take it in his heart.

Carlton Reid 9:34
Gioia was also on the Bartali 180, which, as well as continuing next year as an annual ride, was the launchpad for the multi-faith Bartali Youth Leadership School, a new, cycling-focussed boarding school that opened its doors last month.

Gioia Bartali 9:51
I am very happy because we don’t forget my grandfather, I think it is a beautiful project.

Carlton Reid 10:00
The school, based at the longstanding Ben Shemen youth village in Israel, has started with six students, ranging in age from 13 to 16.

Yuval Markovich 10:11
It’s very fun to live together.

Carlton Reid 10:15
That was Yuval Markovich, a 14-year-old from a village on the Israeli side of the Gaza Strip.

Shimon Amir 10:20
My name is Shimon Amir. I am 16 years old, and I am from Gush Etzion.

Carlton Reid 10:28
The kids got mountain bikes on the first day of term, and before, during and after their academic studies they ride together in the Ben Shemen forest close to the school, which just so happens to have a 32 kilometer singletrack mountain bike trail snaking through the trees. Interestingly, these aren’t all Jewish kids: there’s Adan Ziadane, a 15-year-old from a small town near Nazareth – her father didn’t want her to leave home, but, bravely, she insisted. And there are kids from Israel’s Druze community, a close-knit Arabic-speaking sect. The plan is for the kids enrolled at the Bartali Youth Leadership school to use cycling as a way to bridge cultural divides and celebrate diversity, imbibing life skills such as self-discipline and teamwork. The kids are also taught the importance of caring for others, the same sort of selfless humanity practiced, in secret, by Bartali. Despite varying abilities, they stuck together on the Bartali 180, riding as a team. In the Palazzo Vecchio I learned more about the boarding school’s campus from its director-general Dr. Ilana Tischler

Dr. Ilana Tischler 11:41
The village was established in 1927 by Dr. Siegfried Lehman who came from Europe with a group of kids to Israel. He looked at three main goals: quality education, love to the land of Israel and values of work and pluralism. And since then, till today – we’re talking 92 years – we have quality education, we have love to the land, we are an agricultural farm, and work and we have pluralism: we have Jewish students and non-Jewish students. We have excellent students, and we have learning disability students, so we accept each child as long as we can give him the right venue to succeed. And the six children are here participating in this event are three Arab and Druze kids and three Jewish kids. These six are in different groups in Israel that we know they like to cycle we know they practice, and in order to become champions, they will need like an American college support, you know, enough practice, enough academic support, enough sleep, the right nutrition, sports psychologist, whatever you need in order to make them professional sports cycling.

Carlton Reid 12:56
And some pay, like the full amount, and then some got like scholarships that sort of thing?

Dr. Ilana Tischler 13:04
Our village is supported by the Israeli Ministry of Education, and the tuition is determined by the income of the parents 50% of our children do not pay.

Bartali 180 riders greeted at the end of the ride by Assisi mayor Stefania Proietti

Carlton Reid 13:16
The founder of the Bartali Youth Leadership School is former professional cyclist Ran Margaliot, who was also the co-creator of the Israel Cycling Academy, the Pro Continental team which has recently taken over the Katusha-Alpecin squad, bumping it up to WorldTour status, and therefore becoming a shoe-in for the world’s major stage races. Wadee Asakly, a 13-year-old from the Druze village of Maghar, wants to ride in the Tour de France, he tells all who will listen, and his dream is perhaps now more achievable thanks to the support and coaching he’ll get from Margaliot and other ex-pros at the Bartali Youth Leadership school. Former Team Saxobank rider Margaliot never got to ride in the Tour de France.

Ran Margaliot 14:01
My own life dream when I was young at their age was to ride a Tour de France one day, you know, I thought this is the greatest thing a cyclist can do and no one from Israel has ever done that. And I got somehow this crazy dream in my head that I’m going to be the one who will do it and then somehow break a path for next generation. I chase that dream for some years. We didn’t have any, you know, real support system in Israel back then for cycling; cycling was not a major sport in our young country. So I had to travel to Europe at a young age, and you know, learn, you know, everything by myself. And obviously, I had many, many people who supported me along the way. And, you know, I always find small teams to rider with, but I had to learn it all. And I made it you know, to a certain level, but I wasn’t good enough and will never achieve my dream to race the Tour de France.

Ran Margaliot lending a helping hand at the end of the Bartali 180

My, my second, the second version of my dream of making the Tour de France and if I couldn’t make it myself as a rider, so I going to start to Israel’s first pro cycling team, we gonna make it with the next generation.

That was the end of 2014. We’ve launched the project of Israel Cycling Academy, which nowadays is one of the largest in the second tier of the sport.

You know, my original reason I wanted to become a cyclist and Tour de France myself and the reason I started the team was not what was needed to to make this team successful anymore, you know, and what I saw as a young 16-year-old guy coming from Israel dreaming to be in the Tour de France is that by doing so I will be able to inspire other young cyclists and by inspiring those cyclists I was aiming that maybe they will be able to follow a similar path that I that I’ve I’ve had that they will be able to experience what I felt that cycling did for me, you know, it completely changed my life, I owe everything to cycling really, I met the most amazing people in my life to cycling, through cycling I, I went through life changing experiences, you know, I got I got to learn so much about myself through the sport and I knew I want to focus on the grass-roots, you know, I wasn’t sure what I’m going to do whatever you want to do with new grass-roots matters to me, it was what inspires me in the first place to help shape the lives of young people through cycling through the sport.

And I had that crazy idea that I want to turn cycling into an accessible sport, you know, as opposed to what it is such a logistical expensive sport that only people, only kids who you know has the means can practice. Since it was a sport of the kids will discover through school, you know, you’re coming to your school every day is an obligatory you know, mandate mandatory learning learning facility or institute that every kid has to go through, day in day out.

So I came back to the planning board and I was I started consulting with a few good friends of mine said you know, if you really want to put bring cycling into schools, it will not happen with a regular school system. Because you know, kids go to school from let’s say, eight to three o’clock, you know, you have no room for any any other activity really, if you want to host you know, even just want to store a bike in school is going to be so complicated, how are you going to maintain them.

And then from, from friends from word of mouth, we got offered to start a programme in a boarding school – in Israel we call them Youth Villages.

Some of those kids are not coming from the best backgrounds, you know, so like, if I tell them, you know, there’s that maybe even an Israeli Pro Cycling Team that is racing in, in, in, in, in when you when you can get there when you’re 19 or 20 or 21 that’s for ever for them, you know, they’re 14, there’s you know, there are kids are there, they wake up maybe at 6am in the morning to train, which is an achievement, their friends wake up at 7.30 and go smoking, you know, if if you don’t give them something that they can do tomorrow, then forget about it, really, I mean, 19 is who knows what’s going to happen til then.

So we knew we have to start a programme that is focusing on excellence, which will be accessible for those kids that and we knew that we want to put that the main narrative should not be how how it creates racers, you know, we should we should be how, how we how we can really use cycling to change youth lives.

And I think it was a natural decision to name the programme after Gino Bartalli, you know, based on those those assumptions that we are not looking to create champions, it might be added value, yes or no. But we’re really looking to create champions in life.

Carlton Reid 18:26
As a kid growing up, Margaliot didn’t pay much attention to the Holocaust, despite the fact his grandfather, Avraham, was one of the world’s leading Holocaust scholars

Ran Margaliot 18:37
He was, I believe, one of the first or the first researcher of the Holocaust he was he was born in Germany moved to Israel just before the before the war. And before Israel was established in 1948, already in 1947, just when the war the war ended, he decided he has to start documenting, gathering evidence so it won’t be erased.

So he travelled to Germany, which was not allowed at the time, it was dangerius obviously, to start research. There’s a department in Yad Vashem called on his name, his name is Dr. Avraham Margaliot.

I didn’t know him, he passed away a year before I was born. And but but I think the crazy thing is I didn’t want to know anything about the Holocaust. Until I found out about Bartali. Despite what my grandfather, you know, focus was, I mean, he, he dedicated his life to, to, to remembrance of the Holocaust, I mean, he was he was a professor, and he was, you know, he was a researcher, and he wrote books and, and this this was his thing and I didn’t want to know anything about it because, for me, it was that sad story that happened so many years ago and and as a kid, or you know, or even as a young adult, we don’t want to learn you don’t want to hear about it at all. I mean, I thought, you know, this is nothing to do with me.

The only the only reason I started asking myself questions and learning about wanting to learn about the about the Holocaust was Bartali because he was a hero I could relate to because I was a cyclist. The mission is to get people to know and to ask questions to ask themselves. You know, for me the just the perfect question, I would like to ask, would I do the same thing as Bartali?

Would I be willing to to, to get up out of my comfort zone to help a person you need to do the right thing, would I risk my life for someone that don’t even know, that I have nothing to do with?

Carlton Reid 20:25
Five years ago, 13 years after his death, Bartali was recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” an honourific given by the State of Israel to those non-Jews who risked their lives during the Second World War to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis..

Ran Margaliot 20:42
This is special for me, this is part of what Bartali did, you know, he was riding alone on those roads, delivering fake documents, fake IDs, inside his bike tubes on behalf of someone who, who thought he might be the right guy to do so. We in one way or another, we’re delivering his message too today to thr world, doing the right thing.

Carlton Reid 21:12
If you’d like to learn more about the Bartali Youth Leadership School there’s a video and a bunch of links on the show notes at www.the-spokesmen.com

While the inaugural Bartali 180 was staged in September, the 2020 ride will be held in mid-June. It’s a multi-day, non-competitive event that includes warm-up rides in the Chianti hills near to Florence and, at the end of the 180 kilometre ride on the Sunday there will be a guided visit to the monastery and print shop where Bartali picked up the fake IDs to stuff into his frame.

It’s a special ride, fully supported with team cars from high-end cycle holiday company Chronoplus, and the 180 kilometres fly by.You can opt to do short distances, with everybody joining together for the final climb from Assisi to the Basilica of Saint Francis.

Thanks to Ran for inviting me. The next episode of the Spokesmen Cycling Roundtable podcast supported by Jenson USA, will be out in two weeks or so. Meanwhile get out there and ride.