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Cycling Nostalgia: Authenticity,Tourism and Social Critique inTuscanyBrian Joseph GilleyPublished online: 30 Jun 2014.

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Cycling Nostalgia: Authenticity,Tourism and Social Critique inTuscanyBrian Joseph Gilley

Over the last 15 years Italian cyclotourists have been building a subculturearound nostalgia for vintage cycling (bici d’epoca). Vintage-inspired racesand gatherings such as L’Eroica (the hero) in Tuscany serve as theideological and organizational foundation of a kind of cyclotouring seekingto reclaim the values of an older and ‘purer’ form of the sport. Riders andenthusiasts dress in pre-1980s cycling clothing and are by regulation notallowed to ride bikes made after 1987, the year clipless pedals andaluminium and carbon fibre frames began mass production. Heroic cycling,as it has come to be called, draws on a history of social and politicalengagement by cyclotourists and cyclotouring clubs in Italy. The TouringClub Italiano (TCI), founded in 1894, began as a club for bourgeoisgentlemen in Italy’s North who had an interest in cycling. The TCI quicklybecame involved in the Liberal political causes of the moment and beganadvocating for better roads and an improved tourism industry. The TCI’sgoal of making ‘Italy known to Italians’ serves as the historic foundation ofbici d’epoca which has attached itself to other contemporary sociopoliticalcauses in Italy seeking to undermine Europeanization and preserve Italianagricultural and artisanal heritages.

The recent increase in vintage cycling events, known as bici d’epoca, inItaly is a contemporary expression of the historic use of sport to expresssocial, cultural and political ideals. The rich history of Italian cycling,nostalgia, authenticity and tourism converge to create a subculture seeking

Brian Joseph Gilley, Indiana University Bloomington. Correspondence to: bjgilley@indiana.edu

Sport in History, 2014Vol. 34, No. 2, 340–357, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17460263.2014.924666

© 2014 The British Society of Sports History

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to challenge the cultural opaqueness of neoliberalism and globalization.More recently we can see anti-globalization and anti-Europeanizationartisanal movements in Italy using the desires of cyclotourists tocommunicate particular ideals about nostalgia, heritage and localismsuch as the emphasis on locally produced food and wine at vintage cyclingevents. This challenge includes a long-standing marriage of cyclotourismand authenticity which engages broader attempts to preserve local culture.Cyclotour events where strict rules, for example, require participants toride pre-1980s bicycles and wear vintage clothing, emphasize moments inItalian cycling history in a process that expresses contemporary scepticismfor Europeanization. Intersecting with Italians’ attempts to use cyclingnostalgia to communicate anti-global ideologies is increased interest bycyclotourists in Italy’s approach to artisanal manufacturing and foodheritages. In recent years, American cycling tourist companies based inTuscany, for example, have sought to ‘authenticate’ their tours throughvalue-added experiences focusing on the principles of paese d’origine,‘country of origin’, which is also used to denote the region, village or citywhere a product is grown or produced. Paese d’origine, ‘made in Italy’being the most common designation, is often used on artisanal foodproducts and artisanally produced goods such as pottery to indicate acertain level of quality and authenticity in process of production oringredients. The historic significance of Italy in professional cycling andItaly as an ‘authentic’ tourist destination have converged in guided cyclingtours where Tuscan landscapes and culture feature prominently. Thissearch for ‘authenticity’ engages recent international interest in gastro-nomic consumption and romance about the ‘old country’. Italians usingcycling to communicate certain values and political ideals has a muchlonger history, beginning in the early twentieth century. In this paper, Iseek to examine the ways in which the nostalgic underpinnings ofcontemporary cyclotourism in Tuscany intersect with the history of theideological uses of cycling in Italy. The work presented here comes fromover six years (2006 – present) of participation in cyclotouring inTuscany, archival research and interviews with cyclotourists, cyclotouroperators, hotel operators and artisanal food producers. Consistent amongall of these sources is the desire for the cyclotourist to experience anostalgically produced authenticity.

Authenticity, sensation and the imaginary in cyclotouring

The American and Italian cyclists I interviewed were seeking to access aset of experiences they believed were only available on their bikes in

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Tuscany; a physical experience within a landscape imagined as containinga pure and authentic version of cycle sport. While I interviewedcyclotourists from all over Western Europe, Japan, New Zealand, andAustralia, Americans are the most interested in engaging the ideologicalaspects of Italian nostalgic cycling and its political engagement with thelocal, artisanal and authentic. The interrelationship between nostalgia,authenticity and cycling can be more broadly examined than as a simpleform of hobbyist escapism. Rather, as Knudsen and Waade point out, ‘thelonging for, something other than a mediatised, commercialised andsocially constructed reality is neither a thing you can possess nor a state ofmind, but something which people can do and a feeling which isexperienced … authenticity is performed’.1 Authenticity in cyclotourismemerges through a particular performance on the bicycle. That is, someways of riding one’s bike are more authentic than others in the discursiveimagining of cyclotourism, i.e. ability, specialized knowledge and geo-graphy (hills versus flats). The ability to perform properly an authenticpresentation of self through sport is as much about one’s ability, training,discipline and comportment as it is about the location where theperformance takes place. The location where the physical activity occursindexes authenticity to the experience of moving one’s body in a particularplace and space. The feeling of performed authenticity is also supported bythe sensual experience of consumption, with specific foods, equipment andpractices being part of the authentic experience. Authenticity in cycling ingeneral, and within each cycling subculture, is a structure of intercon-nected activities with the single thread drawing it together – the unifyingelement being a particular view of the body in motion on a bicycle and thevariety of possible associated experiences around the body.

For the cyclist travelling to Tuscany, the sensory experience ofcyclotouring is replicated in other activities, such as wine and olive oiltasting, and artisan tours. Tour operators easily extend the value of theauthentic ‘artisanal’ body experience of cycling to other industries inTuscany that trade in paese d’origine. Artisanal olive oil producers andsmall wineries trade in values already of interest to cyclotourists, such ashealth, quality, character, durability and exclusivity. Cyclotouring becomesdistinctly associated with a particular set of values that prizes all of thesecharacteristics but also has a historic connection with cyclotouring,established at the turn of the nineteenth century. These values draw ona certain nostalgia for the bodily experiences of the past when ‘bikes weremade by hand and pros had more grit’, as I was told by one tourist, asurgeon from Los Angeles.2 As well as landscape and food, cyclotouringdraws its authenticity from nostalgia for a golden age of cycling. It is a

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‘structural nostalgia’ where the good old days of cycling contained aparticular form of sensory experience in one’s riding: suffering in the hills,and descending the windy roads, leaving behind medieval hill towns,overlooking vineyards and olive orchards.3 As Caldwell points out, thistemporal compression of early-twentieth-century cycling and contempor-ary bodily experience by cyclotourists embodies the collapse of time, spaceand material, such as food and bicycles, into ‘generic, imagined andstylised accounts’.4 The relation of the sensory to that of place is stylizedand embedded in values which are attributed to a particular physicalexperience but also become ways of performing one’s individual authen-ticity in a ‘steady screening of representations’.5

Throughout its history, cyclotouring in Italy has always involved theintersection of sociopolitical values, representation, nostalgia and a questfor a highly specific sensory experience. The sensory experience ofcyclotouring builds on the seemingly inherent relationship betweencycling as a sporting activity and a transport form. The universality ofriding bikes, the exhilaration of going fast and the sense of freedom as wellas mobility are embedded in all forms of cycling. How cycling is experi-enced and acted out also brings our attention to the tension betweenriding a bike as sport and as leisure, as both are accessing similar sensoryexperiences but applying highly specific aesthetics and meaning to bodilymovement and space. The tension between cycling as a leisure activity andas a sport practice is influenced by socio-economic and class conscious-ness reflected in cycling enthusiasm. As we see below, the uses ofcyclotourism that emerged as a bourgeois activity in early-twentieth-century Italy are carried forward by upper-middle class cyclotourists whoseek to access many of the same values. However, among this group thetension between leisure, sport and social values are reflected in thedifferential ways cyclotourists consume Italian romanticism.

History of cyclotouring in Italy

Contemporary cyclotourists are tapping into a kind of cyclotourism whichbegan in Italy in the late 1890s and was framed by social change and theonset of modernity. We were also unknowingly accessing an establishedhistory of using cycling as a medium to communicate certain socio-political values. Early cyclotourism, it seems, sought to engage similarsocial concerns as it continues to today: the emergence of new technolo-gies, sociopolitical change, transnationalism and rapid industrialization.6

For the liberal bourgeois bicycle enthusiast from the wealthy andentrepreneurial North, cyclotourism, and all tourism, functioned as a

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way to engage these changes head-on. The Touring Club Italiano (TCI)was founded as the Touring Club Ciclistico Italiano (TCCI) by cyclingenthusiasts in 1894.7 Bringing other forms of touring into the club’smission, it dropped ‘Ciclistico’ in 1900 to become Touring Club Italianodue to the emerging popularity of the motorbike and automobile.8 Beforethe switch, the TCCI promoted the virtues of cycling for health andleisure and as a hobby for the modern bourgeois Italian. The goals of theTCCI were also nationalist, to introduce Italy to all Italians. 9 The TCCIcoordinated cyclotouring events in and around major cities, providedmaps and began pushing for better roads and signage. With the expansionto other forms of touring – automobile, motorcycle and airplane – theTCCI’s mission became focused on promoting tourism in Italy by Italiansand supporting Italians travelling outside of Italy with maps, guides andadvice. The TCCI also became similar to other traveller societies as a placefor world travellers to deposit photos and journals, and to meet fellowtravelling enthusiasts. The relationship between sport, leisure and tourismfor middle class Italians was not lost on the TCCI, as they came toemphasize touring as linked to a particular kind of lifestyle. The lifestylewas one chosen by the newly wealthy, who sought physical activity andenjoyed serious competition. The aesthetic of the physically fit andworldly tourist became associated with the middle class, which fittedwithin the mission of the TCCI and its leaders.

Between the turn of the century and the beginning of the Second WorldWar, Italy’s cyclotourists embarked on vast expeditions by bicycle throughrelatively unknown Italian landscapes in the south and east. They wrotereports and books recording their observations and experience ofencounters with new topography, foreign-seeming southern cultures andthe technical details of mechanical and physical challenges that occurredduring their journeys. Early writings by the TCCI and cyclotouristsrevolved around the questions of national importance, especially the socialand cultural disconnection of the South from the rest of the country.Cyclotouring in this era represented the Italian bourgeois desire tomodernize the nation, to create a modern Italian identity after unification.Cycling, as a physical activity and as an inspiration for writing, became avehicle, literally and figuratively, for engaging with this important issue.The highly local and regional cultures of Italy had the makings of exoticadventures not too far from one’s home, but for middle class liberals, tinyvillages, and the South as a whole, represented the backwardnessobstructing Italy from its path to modernity. The cover of cyclotouringhero and TCCI founder L.V. Bertarelli’s travelogue, Calabria e Basilicata:Escursioni Ciclistiche (1897), shows a peasant woman barefoot, head

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covered and carrying a giant amphora.10 In the background we see agentleman riding a bicycle, presumably Bertarelli, looking sympatheticallytowards the woman. The cover captures a central theme of the cyclotouristwriting from this era, of which A.G. Bianchi wrote in the introduction:‘Luigi Vittorio Bertarelli has with this, and other trips, demonstrated thegreat utility for us Italians to know, by studying our country, to berighteous in opinions, exact in judgments’.11 As Bosworth tells us,‘Bertarelli’s TCI was constructing both modernity and a national identitybeneath the tantalisingly blue skies of Italy and beside the redolent ruinsor remains of the “Italian” past of Rome and the Renaissance’.12 Themodern national identity Bertarelli and other Liberals sought was anationalism of the bourgeoisie and intelligentsia.13 Bertarelli, as a Liberal,also regretted the South’s lack of modernity, which came through in histravel writing. He lamented the ways of violence through which Italy hadbecome unified, and remarked that the basic benefits of modern medicine,industry, agriculture and land tenure had yet to make their way to theSouth. Italian middle-class cyclotourists sought to bring modernity andglobalization to Italy, and to illustrate the unity of the Italian peopledespite cultural differences. Yet the TCI felt, as did many Liberals, thatthey should be the ones to manage progress and modernity.During the Liberal period through to the end of the First World War,

the TCI expanded its geographic as well as political influence, seeking tochallenge taxes on bicycles and bans on cycling in cities, and promotebetter roads.14 The TCI also sought to improve the ways in which thetourism industry in Italy functioned, especially in contrast to its Europeanneighbours. For example, in 1908 the TCI initiated a commission for theimprovement of hotel services in Italy, which included the creation of acourse for hotel owners and workers.15 The concern over the quality oftourism for foreigners visiting Italy and Italians visiting abroad drove agreat deal of the TCI’s activities. With Italian colonialism in Libya and theinevitability of world war in Europe, the TCI sought to continue itssupport of Italian nationalism and the Liberal political cause.16 Uponentering the war, Bertarelli saw an opportunity to capitalize by sending ajournalist to the front and documenting the war in maps, journals and amulti-volume book series. Additionally, a military unit guided by the TCI,Volontari Ciclisti e Automobilisti, was established to help in the fight byphysically preparing youth with the invigorating exercise of cycling andalpine sports. It also sought to improve the infrastructure of the use ofautomobiles and bicycles in the military.17

The TCI’s use of cycling as a way to communicate certain values in itswritings and actions was not lost on the Fascists, who followed the

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Liberals into power. Mussolini had a great admiration for professionalcyclists, at least the ones he viewed as valuable to his cause.18 Generallyspeaking, the leaders of the cycling industry in Italy did little to resist theinfluence of Fascism in their sport, and in many ways colluded with theregime in order to survive. As cycling was used to explore bourgeoisconcerns for Italy’s modernity, cycling under fascism became attached topromoting a particular notion of Italian physicality that emphasizeddurability, toughness and perseverance.19 The Tuscan cyclist was seen asthe quintessence of this category, l’eroica delle strade bianche (‘the hero ofthe white roads’).20 The white roads are white gravel roads, which arenotoriously difficult to navigate on the skinny tires of a road bike. Thestruggle of training and the beauty of racing on these roads were not loston the Fascists. In a propaganda piece entitled Lo Sport Fascista e la Razza(‘Fascist sport and race’) Luigi Barbarito wrote: ‘The fans and the kids lovethese champions who are riding the white Italian roads, in tight groups,covered in dust, hunched over the handlebars, for all the countries ofItaly’.21 The small booklet goes on to praise the heroes of the white roadsand focuses on professional cyclists, Gino Bartali in particular, who wasTuscan and represented all that the Fascists wanted to convey to the restof the world and to themselves about their physicality.22 The CatholicChurch also found Bartali useful for conveying political and socialmessages, as it was Bartali who dedicated his victories to the Pope insteadof Il Duce. For the Fascists, Bartali’s pious Catholicism helped smooth thecontradictions between violent virility and Christian ideals. A winner ofthe Tour de France, he represented the ‘triumph of three cardinal Catholicvirtues: chastity, stoicism and charity’.23 The political use of Bartali’simage existed within a broader context of cycling enthusiasm and touringin the pre-Second World War era, where clubs needed to engage withtopics and issues of importance to Il Duce and the Fascist cause orbecome a target of censorship. Cyclotouring publications began promot-ing a conception of a particular type of Italian citizen, whose regionalidentity fed into a strengthened national sense of personhood. Forexample, Vincenzo Baggioli wrote a story on cyclists from Lombardytouting the benefits of eating gnocchi for energy and power when ridingin mountainous terrain, whereas, in the same journal, Domenico Farinaspeculated on the ways cyclotourism and athleticism could be used toaddress the health problems of meridional peoples (Italians south ofRome) and promote a greater adherence to Fascist social and politicalbeliefs.24

Fascists, drawing on the same themes as ideologues/thinkers of the latenineteenth century, asserted that cycling, spanning as it did regional and

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colonial difference, was better for the physical improvement of the Italian‘breed’, and thus contributed more than any other sport to unifying andimproving the Italian nation. Cyclotourism and racing also became acritical tool for extending Italian colonialism in Libya, where occupyingsoldiers and citizens participated in clubs and raced in the Giro dellaTripolitana, a stage race in the colonial region containing Tripoli, whichwas promoted in the early 1930s as having the same stature as the Girod’Italia.25 As a co-founder of the TCCI and the future president of TCI,Bertarelli adapted to the ideological demands of the Fascists by reiteratingthe mantra, ‘to make Italy known to Italians, to unite them as tourists inone big family, separate from any political party, each wholly free in hisown field, except that all worship the national flag’.26 The intersection ofrace and sport in colonialism and attitudes towards the South furthersought to conflate cycling to a politically nationalist mediated sense ofbody movement. Over and again in pre-war publications cyclotourismand racing emerge as a way to create a political consciousness among agroup of people highly sceptical of the Fascists, but who also sawthemselves as having complementary relationships with other cyclistsamong Italy’s emerging enemies. The unifying ethos of the cyclingenthusiast attempted to transcend political upheaval. Bertarelli continuallyemphasized the TCI’s lack of interest in national or world politics unless itdirectly dealt with the goals of his organization. At the same time, cyclistsand the tourist industry were living under a Fascist regime that glorifiedcolonial expansion and war. The post-war Italy for tourists was explicitly aFascist one, as Bosworth points out:

It was absurd … to overthrow the common foreign view of Italy as aplace of sun, blue skies, feste and Art … instead use the known andloved, the better to lead foreigners to an appreciation of the manifoldachievements of the new Italy and its new fascist men and women …Italy’s matchless climate could tempt visitors to participate in modernsports and thus induce them to gain a better comprehension offascist virility and fascist organisation’.27

Historic Foundations in a New Era of Cyclotourism

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, performing cycling inexclusive ways split into emerging branches of enthusiasm for race bikes,vintage bikes and all things handmade. By 2005 various subcultures wereemerging within cycling, primarily in Europe, the United States and theUK. Cyclists who prized the nostalgic claimed some aspect of authenticityin their use of bicycles and sought to attach their particular vintage

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aesthetic to social and political movements, such as the bicycle commutermovement. Cycling enthusiasts in the US and Europe began to placeriding a bike in the centre of debates about transportation, globalmanufacturing, human rights and larger philosophical debates aboutcommunity.28 As the first decade of the 2000s came to a close, road-race-oriented cyclists were becoming the far right to the commuter-hipster farleft of the cycling world. The debates about the authenticity of cyclingencompassed the difference between bike frame material, carbon versussteel; highly manufactured versus handmade; and imported from Asiaversus US or European domestically made. Older steel frames made byhand from heritage Italian (Ciocc and Olmo), French (Peugeot) andBritish (Raleigh) companies were rediscovered for their aesthetic but alsosymbolic value. Contemporary boutique-made bicycles (Rivendell) usingolder methods and fair wage labour also increased in popularity,particularly within the US. Like any industry, cycling has been affectedby globalization, particularly in the manufacturing of equipment, such asbicycles, accessories and clothing. With the mass production in Asia ofrace bikes – formerly a very exclusive, artisanal crafted and boutique-onlypurchase for the ‘serious cyclist’ – vintage cycling enthusiasts are con-stantly in search of products that are more authentic and exclusive in theirnostalgia. In very recent years, the popularity of vintage bikes, singlespeeds and early-twentieth-century cycling-dandy clothing attests to thissearch for a purer past, moving away from the earlier vogue for sleekclothing and wind-tunnel-tested, computer-engineered carbon fibre bikeframes. Other debates about how one performs cycling authenticity alsoemerged in how one engages the terrain, the kind of clothes one wearsand the way one moves one’s body on the bicycle, i.e. riding fast andaggressively or being relaxed and indifferent to speed. The sociopoliticalmarking of bicycles and types of riding-racing, commuting and touringcoincided with growing anti-globalization movements in Europe andthe US, and in particular became a meeting point for the two poles ofintensity within cycling. Riding a bicycle was attached to a growingconcern about localism manifested in debates about food quality,artisanship and transportation.29 The American Left’s concerns aboutthe effects of globalization are something that the Italian tourist industryand cyclotour operators have easily capitalized on and are welcomed by allcyclists seeking their different forms of nostalgic certification for theirriding. The by-product of this nostalgia is the conflation of certainsociopolitical concerns with the sensory experience of riding a bicycle.

The Italian and American cyclists who seek a certain sensory experienceon the bike also seek ancillary sensory experiences that reflect their values

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about cycling. Cyclotouring, according to the Italians providing services tocyclotourists – food, accommodation, transport and guiding – is mostlypart of the enormous Italian tourism complex. The majority of olive oilproducers, wineries and small villages acting as gastronomic destinationsseem to make little distinction between a group of tourists arriving by bikeor by tour bus. At the same time, on closer observation, we see the touriststhese Tuscan businesses host as the vessels for a strategically deployedsociopolitical construction of Italian culture as obtaining a kind ofessential authenticity challenging the intrusions of modernity. Cyclotour-ists are continually reminded of the social and political ideologies ofmovements such as Slow Food.30 The principles of Slow Food and thefood and wine certification system in Italy, DOCG, for example, arecontinually reinforced through a constant stream of posted signs, freesamples and purposefully arranged visits to shops specializing in the localand artisanal. According to the guides and businesses providing highlylocal experiences and services to the cyclotourist, their work fullyintegrates into the values of Tuscany as a region. Certified Chianti wines,salami cured in centuries old cellars by seventh-generation butchers andpottery made in local factories are all labelled as authentic treasures ofTuscany. No doubt there is nothing imaginary about food quality, process,local economies and fair labour practices. These are all quantifiableaspects of the Italian socio-economic and food system. At the same time,many small shops, café and restaurant owners in small Chianti villagestold me that there was not the population to sustain a sufficient incomewithout tourism. The impact of rural outmigration with the slow andpainful collapse of the share-cropping system in the last century hasshifted patterns of consumption to further solidify the structural inequal-ity of Italian agriculture.31 A counter attendant at a centuries-oldmacelleria (butcher shop) in Grieve in Chianti lamented: ‘So we sellwhat makes us who we are and it can become cheap and unimportant, butit is our survival, No?’ Cyclotourism fits into this delicate balance betweenthe creation of an ‘artifice’ of Tuscany and the ways tour operators andbusinesses believe in the authenticity of their region and the purity ofexperiencing its culture. Bairner reflects on this balance: ‘sport has greatlyassisted national endeavours to resist or, at the very least, to domesticateglobalising impulses’.32

The experiences – products, riding and culture – as a tour operator toldme, emanate from the same set of values, which are distinctly Tuscan andinherently challenge Europeanization as well as the neoliberal policies ofthe Berlusconi government. The push against the influence of globaliza-tion, as Rachel Horner-Brackett points out,

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encompasses environmentalism and the protection of gustatorytradition and pleasure, while taking a conscious step away from thefrenzied pace of the modern world. It addresses both conservativedesires to preserve ‘traditional’ local communities, as well as alternat-ive, progressive solutions to industrialisation. The unlikely connectionbetween gustatory pleasure, social justice and sustainability delivers aholistic critique that challenges many underlying philosophies andoutcomes of globalisation.33

The holistic critique of globalization is a political force in Italy entangledwith critiques of neoliberal policies continually threatening to homogenizea population historically resistant to national culture as well as a resistanceto the socio-economic impacts of deregulation on the distinctive qualitiesof Italian regional life. However, what makes this move holistic is a formof localism that simultaneously engages broader sociopolitical struggles.This move is both material and symbolic in the ways it articulates withtwo of the most important principles of Italian culture: allegiance to thelocal and cosmopolitanism; always negotiating a sliding scale fromtradition to modernity. Italians see ‘themselves as living at both ends ofthe evolutionary process: that is, living in a country that exhibits grossprovincial differences, yet one that is part of a global, cosmopolitanculture’.34 Since cycling as an industry is international but takes place inhighly local contexts, it is an ideal medium for transmitting the values ofthe global and local, which makes it an easy mediator between ideologiesin constant tension.

L’Eroica: Heroic cycling

Bertarelli’s use of cyclotouring to bring social and political ideas to publicattention continues in the material and symbolic deployment of nostalgiaand authenticity in contemporary vintage cycling. One of the bestexamples of the strategic deployment of nostalgic images is the annualcycling event known as L’Eroica (the name of an event and organizationthat translates to the word ‘hero’), which takes place in the Chianti regionof Tuscany. L’Eroica began in 1997 as a group ride on the strade bianche(white roads) of Tuscany for enthusiasts of vintage and antique bicycles.The ride begins in the town of Gaiole in Chianti and twists through thehills of Tuscany for up to 200 kilometres, with rest stops along the wayserving local wines, baked goods and produce. The scale of the race wasexpanded in 2007 with the addition of a professional bike race, the MontePaschi Eroica, held the week before the vintage ride and flea market. Theparticipants in the enthusiast tour, until recently, were mostly Italians

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from central Italy, but by 2010 race organizers began limiting the numberof foreign participants because Italians were being squeezed out oftheir own event. Spinoffs of the race are now being operated by theL’Eroica organization in England and Japan. Additionally, there are nowmultiple organizations in Italy devoted to bici d’epoca (vintage cycling)with the recent addition of a Giro D’Italia Epoca (vintage Tour of Italy)which has 12 stages held over the course of five months. The over-whelming popularity of the professional race and its elevation to a ‘classic’for the international race calendar required it to be moved to the springrace calendar and is now known as the Strade Bianche with a dramaticfinish on the Piazzo del Campo Siena. At L’Eroica, one will see a broadrange of bicycles from nineteenth-century penny farthings to contempor-ary handmade bicycles retrofitted with vintage components. However, theemphasis for organizers, flea market vendors and participants is on anostalgia for a kind of cycling that has come to be known as ‘heroiccycling’, which roughly includes the period between the invention of thebicycle and its mass manufacture at the turn of the nineteenth century upto the mid-1950s. This era includes steel bicycles without gears, cyclists’clothing made of wool, leather saddles or accessories, and minimalattention to personal safety in the way of helmets. Pre-1960s cycling wasalso characterized by a different kind of cyclist and a greater adventurismamong event organizers and athletes. The cycling heroes throughoutEurope from this era came mostly from the working class and werecharacterized by their willingness to risk life and limb for victory. Theseheroes suffered immensely on unpaved surfaces through mountain passes,dangerously descending through the Alps, Apennines and Pyrenees. Theyhad very little technical support from team staff and often had to makerepairs to their bicycles or change tyres themselves during the race. Afterthe spring and summer race season was completed, most professionalcyclists had to return to family farms or labour-intensive manufacturingwork, and squeeze in off-season training when possible. It was a rarity foran athlete to be able to support himmself year round solely withsponsorships, public appearances and prize money. This moment incycling history is held in high regard because it represents a ‘golden era’before cycling became more corporatized and athletes became full-timesports figures. Vintage bicycle enthusiasts admire the technology of thisera as for them it represents a purity of form and function for the bicycle.Recently, steel bikes made before 1987 were included in the regulations asbeing certifiably vintage and allowed into the race. This cut-off representsthe year before clipless pedals become mass produced and carbon fibreframes were widely available. The regulations seek to reinforce the value

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that the best machines were artisanally made and possessed aestheticqualities idiosyncratic to the maker, the country of origin and the purpose.Bicycles made of Italian steel by Italian hands were some of the highestquality, lightest and most technologically advanced, which makes themtreasures for collectors and riders of vintage bicycles.

Independent of hobby or a fetish for vintage objects, the desiresembedded in contemporary heroic cycling emanate from an aspiration fora highly specific performance of authenticity through sensory experience.As the early TCI members did when they battled poor roads, frightfulmountain passes and strange new cuisines in the South, the contemporarycyclotourist seeks a purity of sensuality in riding one’s bike and theencounters it produces. L’Eroica participants will overwhelm you withtheir extensive and detailed knowledge of historic bicycles, accessories andhistoric cycling sports figures. As with any other collector culture, cred-ibility is housed within the knowledge of minutiae as well as the accuracyof re-enactment. Simultaneously, heroic cycling is about more thancollecting beautiful objects and their restoration or display. Heroic cyclingis about a particular kind of riding; a particular kind of bodily experienceproduced by the strade bianche. As an experienced cyclist I understoodthis first hand at my first L’Eroica in 2008 at the beginning of myfieldwork on cycling culture. The gravel of the strade bianche is made of amixture of small compacted gravel and fairly large chunks of white rock inpools and ruts. The mixture of types of surfaces makes the roads difficultto navigate and going downhill is fairly treacherous. As we were lining upfor departure, one of the vintage riders told me that the route is intendedto be challenging and give to the cyclist the full ‘sensation’ of riding theirbikes. Looking down at my Italian carbon and aluminium bike with ninespeeds, he was critical of my ability to understand the beauty of L’Eroicaand my understanding of why it was such an important celebration ofItalian cycling history. He told me: ‘The race will be too easy for you’.Race organizers agreed, as only individuals riding vintage bikes and invintage clothing received a box of locally made products, such as wine,cheese and olive oil, upon completing the 170-kilometre circuit. Hundredsof cyclists line up before dawn on bikes that are at least 30 years old. Asriders had until the 1990s, they do not wear helmets. However, they doassemble vintage wool outfits, usually uniforms of past cycling teams and,in an attempt to be authentic, search everywhere and pay large amountsof money for matching ensembles. The most obsessive of this group ofenthusiasts possess the bikes, outfits and accessories of a particular teamfrom a specific year or race.

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Beyond L’Eroica serving as an event for the vintage enthusiast, itsorganizers clearly use the ride and festival as a way to communicatecertain social values and political ideas about localism and the preserva-tion of regional identity. L’Eroica is a Tuscan event and, as some wouldargue, one that specifically belongs to the Commune of Siena. The virtuesof the region’s food, wine and olive oil permeate every aspect of the event.Simultaneous with the markets selling vintage bikes, parts and clothing isan exposition on local foods, where cheese, oil, and wine producers havestalls for tasting. The presence of agricultural cooperatives passing outliterature, giving talks about sustainability, fair trade and the healthbenefits of eating local leaves no doubt as to the connection made betweenthe products of paese d’origine and anti-globalisation politics. The messageof L’Eroica fits nicely into the inherent and overt critique of European-ization, neoliberalism and the preservation of Tuscan agriculture. In theL’Eroica context, nostalgia through food activism and nostalgia in thedeliberate production of cycling culture co-construct one another in waysthat make each impossible to separate one from the other. This co-construction intentionally produces a discursively seamless sensoryexperience between the consumptive practices of cyclotourism and eating.However, L’Eroica and the vintage cycling enthusiasts are taking much oftheir anti-globalization cues from gustatory social movements such asSlow Food, who advocate sustainable agriculture, biodiversity and localism.In achieving these goals food quality movements link a particularnostalgia to notions of cultural heritage. In this very same way, thenostalgia for bicicletta d’epoca (vintage bikes) accesses the heritage ofItalian cycling to emphasize a moment where what was Italian wasobvious in its aesthetic and production.The discursive construction of a particular authentic moment for

cycling and the purity of contemporary sport and cyclotouring arecombined in ways reminiscent of their use in other periods of socialand political anxiety for Italy. The L’Eroica cyclists, vendors, andpersonnel I rode with and interviewed did not invoke the ideals of aparticular period, but rather used a cumulative set of concepts drawn fromthe liberal and Fascist periods. The ideals of the post-war Republic do notfind their place in L’Eroica, as they are characteried by a moment ofpolitical corruption and disunity that the majority of Italians areembarrassed to acknowledge in a positive way. At the same time, noneare particularly proud of Fascism either. While this is a provocative topicfor another time, I would argue that Fascism’s use of sport was moreabout the clever discursive machine of Fascist exploitation of enduringregional values that remained constant even after their use by the

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totalitarian state had ended. Nonetheless, the rhetoric that enthusiastsinvoked emphasized the importance of heritage cyclotouring for com-municating a single, national idea of Italy that encompassed regionaldiversity manifested in individual and collective forms of comportment.Multiple riders I spoke with, particularly those older than 50, conceive ofheritage cycling as an aspect of a larger social movement to help maintainItaly’s distinctiveness within Europe, but also regional distinctivenessagainst the threats that were posed by Berlusconi’s neoliberal policies andimmigration. Younger riders, who were in the minority, saw L’Eroica asvalidating a particular set of anti-globalization social values, much liketheir hipster counterparts in the US. Most of the riders in their 20s and30s were not from the Tuscan countryside, but rather from cities inTuscany, such as Florence or Pisa, as well as the northern cities of Milanand Turin. Heritage cycling for them represented a pre-global industrialcomplex of both the bicycle and of the sport of cycling. When ridingL’Eroica myself, reading Italian vintage cycling blogs and talking tovintage enthusiasts, the notion of the cycling hero as it was represented byBartali and Coppi is easily evoked without an awareness of its politiciza-tion by the Fascists, Communists and the Vatican.35 When mentioningthe similarity in characteristics of heroic cyclists admired by the Fascistsand the contemporary vintage enthusiast alike – toughness, virility,aggression – vintage cyclotourists were eager to point out that thosevirtues, particularly among rural Tuscans, predated Mussolini and thebicycle.36 Regardless, when reading contemporary accounts of heroiccycling in the writings of the TCI and Fascist propaganda a clear patternof cyclotourism’s usefulness for communicating relevant-in-the-momentvalues becomes apparent.

Conclusion

The successful use of cycling by L’Eroica to communicate values is not loston other regions, particularly Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna, wherethere is a surge of vintage cycling events, all of which are tied in some wayto local agrotourism, artisanal bike products and the promotion of regionaltastes. In the same way as Bertarelli did through the TCI, contemporarycyclotouring is attempting to engage the middle-class Italian male inimportant social and political questions through a form of materialpractice. However, after the mid-1990s, the globalization of the bicycleindustry has made it difficult to pinpoint any item as a distinct product ofa particular nationality or region other than those carrying historic marks,such as Bianchi or Colnago. Even with current bicycles produced by

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famous Italian makers, they too have lost their symbolic capital by movingthe majority of their manufacturing to Taiwan. In order to engagecontemporary social issues from an essential Italian point of view,cyclotourists must access a moment before globalization challenged theirdistinctiveness within Europe and before neo-liberalism challenged thedistinctiveness of regional culture. As TCI cyclotourism had one hundredyears before, heroic cycling is attempting to understand Italy’s place in theculture of Europe as well as sort through internal sociopolitical challenges.As Kolleen Guy and Gilles LaFerté have pointed out for wine producers inFrance, ‘the countryside no longer lags behind national economicmodernisation but forms one of the mainstays around which modernisa-tion was achieved, through France’s economic specialisation in crafts-manship and the luxury goods markets’.37 Tuscany’s leading role in theagrotourism experience and production of paese d’origine products,however, has required a symbolic re-connection to ‘tradition’ as a wayto challenge the connection between the modern and the homogenizedglobal.The messages of L’Eroica are easily absorbed by American cyclotourists,

who are in Tuscany to access a particular kind of sensory experience.Their lack of knowledge of Italian politics and society, however, makethem mostly oblivious to the sociocultural underpinnings of localcyclotourism. Italians are happy to oblige this fetishization and perform-ance of a particular form of cycling because they have attached their owndestiny to a belief in the uniqueness of the sensory experiences providedby Tuscany. The local in this sense finds its perfect partner incyclotourism, as the social image cyclotourists are attempting to conveyto one another and to themselves congeal around essentialized notions ofsensory engagement. According to vintage cycling core certain aspects ofL’Eroica are in fact lost on many of the non-Italian cyclotourists. As oneItalian vintage cyclist from Turin staying at our hotel told me, ‘You all arenot heroic cyclists. You cannot understand the beauty of the stradebianche because you are here to conquer it.’ The man was the epitome ofthe vintage cyclist right down to his period moustache. He also was nottoo far off in his assessment of our desire to attack the ride making it intoa race. And in fact the next day at L’Eroica many of us rode right past therest stops with wine and local delicacies offered along the way. At the endof the day, my fellow cyclotourists saw the nostalgia, heritage andtradition as mostly cute window dressing for a challenging ride throughtough terrain. I am fairly certain, however, that the nostalgia was notaimed at the American cyclotourist, but was being invoked to tell Italianssomething about themselves.

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Notes

1. B.T. Knudsen and A.M. Waade, ‘Performative Authenticity in Tourism andSpatial Experience: Rethinking the Relations Between Travel, Place andEmotion’, in Re-Investing Authenticity: Tourism, Place and Emotions, eds B.T.Knudsen and A.M. Waade (Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2010), 15.

2. Ethnographic interview excerpt, October 2008, Gaoile in Chianti, Italy.3. Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State

(New York: Routledge, 1997).4. Melissa Caldwell, ‘Tasting the Worlds of Yesterday and Today: Culinary

Tourism and Nostalgia Foods in Post-Soviet Russia’, in Fast Food/Slow Food:The Cultural Economy of the Global Food System, ed. R.R. Wilk (New York:Alta Mira, 2006), 106.

5. Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self (New York, NY: Vintage, 1988), 63.6. R.J.B. Bosworth, ‘The Touring Club Italiano and the Nationalization of the

Italian Bourgeoisie’, European History Quarterly 27, no. 3 (1997), 382; GiuseppeVota, I Sessant’Anni del Touring Club Italiano (Milano: TCI, 1954): 47 – 57.

7. Vota, Sessant’Anni, 11.8. Ibid., 67.9. Le vie d’Italia, xxxxi (January 1925).10. Calabria e Basilicata: Escursioni Ciclistiche di L.V. Bertarelli (Milano: Biblioteca

Del Giornale ‘La Bicicletta’, 1897).11. A.G. Bianchi, ‘Prefazione’, in Calabria e Basilicata: Escursioni Ciclistiche di

L.V. Bertarelli, 15. Translation by author.12. Bosworth, ‘Touring Club Italiano’, 382.13. Ibid., 385.14. Vota, Sessant’Anni, 51; Bosworth, ‘Touring Club Italiano’, 381.15. Vota, Sessant’Anni, 122; Bosworth, ‘Touring Club Italiano’, 387.16. Vota, Sessant’Anni, 144–6.17. Bosworth, ‘Touring Club Italiano’, 389; Vota, Sessant’Anni, 163.18. Stefano Pivato, ‘The Bicycle as a Political Symbol: Italy, 1885–1955’, Interna-

tional Journal of the History of Sport 7, no. 2 (1990).19. Stefano Pivato, ‘Italian Cycling and the Creation of a Catholic Hero: The Bartali

Myth’, in European Heroes: Myth, Identity, Sport, ed. R. Holt, J.A. Mangan andP. Lanfranchi (London: Frank Cass, 1996): 128–38.

20. C. Barbarito, Lo Sport Fascista e La Razza (Torino: G.B. Paravia & C., 1937), 48.21. Ibid.22. Pivato, ‘Italian Cycling and the Creation of a Catholic Hero’, 129; Jacques

Ardoino, ‘Anthropologie du sport, perspectives critiques: Actes du colloque’,Paris-Sorbonne, 19–20 April 1991.

23. Pivato, ‘Italian Cycling and the Creation of a Catholic Hero’, 129; SimonMartin, ‘From Cycling Priests to the “Sportsman’s Pope”: Italy, Sport and theCatholic Church’, European Review 19, no. 4 (2011): 545–61.

24. Vincenzo Baggioli, Ciclismo a ruota Libera - Divagazioni sintetico-futuristiche.Aneddoti veri o Ben inventati. Confidenze di binda, Guerra Milano (Milano:Casa Edit. Vecchi Edit. Tip., 1932); D. Farina, ‘Esiste un problema ciclistcomeridionale?’ Ciclismo D’Italia 12, no. 1 (February 1934), 22.

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25. ‘Lo Sport in Colonia’, Ciclismo D’Italia 12, no. 1 (Febbraio, 1934), 15; Barbarito,Lo Sport Fascista e La Razza, 48.

26. Le vie d’Italia, xxxxi (January 1925).27. R.J.B. Bosworth, ‘Planning in Fascist Italy and the Limits of a Totalitarian

Culture’, Contemporary European History 6, no. 1 (March 1997), 6.28. Luis Vivanco, Reconsidering the Bicycle (New York, Routledge, 2013), 99–107.29. Ibid., 107.30. Carlo Petrini, Buono, Pulito Eguisto (Torino: Einaudi, 2005).31. R.A. Horner-Brackett. ‘Savoring Ideology: An Ethnography of Production

and Consumption in Slow Food’s Italy’ (PhD diss., University of Iowa, May2011), 7.

32. A. Bairner Sport, Nationalism, and Globalization: European and NorthAmerican Perspectives (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001), 164.

33. Horner-Brackett, ‘Savoring ideology’, 7.34. E. Castellanos and S.M. Bergstresser, ‘Food Fights at the EU Table: The

Gastronomic Assertion of Italian Distinctiveness’, European Studies 22(2006), 183.

35. Stefano Pivato, Sia Lodato Bartali (Roma: Edizione Lavoro Roma, 1985), 82.Martin, ‘From Cycling Priests’ 547.

36. Writing on behalf of Mussolini, C. Barbarito said ‘Le folle e i ragazzi amanoquesti campioni che pedalano nelle bianche strede italiane e vanno, in gruppiserrati, coperti di polvere curvi sul manubrio, per tutti i paesi d’Italia [Thecrowds and the kids love these champions who are riding in the Italian whiteroads and go together tight, dust-covered hunched over the handlebars, for allthe towns of Italy]’: C. Barbarito, Lo Sport Fascista e La Razza (Torino: G.B.Paravia, 1937), 48.

37. Gilles Laferté, ‘End or Invention of Terroirs? Regionalism in the Marketing ofFrench Luxury Goods: The Example of Burgundy Wines in the Inter-warYears’, Working Papers of Centre d’Economie et Sociologie appliquées àl’Agriculture et aux Espaces Ruraux, 2012, 3; Kolleen Guy, When ChampagneBecame French: Wine and the Making of a National Identity (Baltimore, MD:The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).

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