‘He was a rebel, a maverick but he was adorable’ – Italy remembers 1970 Milan-San Remo winner Michele Dancelli

Italian Milan-San Remo winner Michele Dancelli has died aged 83, sparking a wave of emotion and memories of a rider who always lived as a rebel and a maverick, refuting the disciplined lifestyle of professional cycling.

Dancelli ended a 17-year spell without an Italian winner at Milan-San Remo in 1970, attacking alone with 70km to go and crossing the finish in Via Roma in tears. He rode for Molteni, with a then young Ernesto Colnago hanging off the roof of the team car with a spare bike on his shoulder and team owner Piero Molteni even promising him one of the company’s salami factories if he won.

Dancelli was born during the Second World War, one of eight children from a poor family from Castenedolo near Brescia and Lake Garda. He started work as a bricklayer at 14 and used his bike to travel to work before training late into the night. He fell in love with cycling when the Giro d’Italia passed his home and started racing aged 16, later winning the Italian amateur title at 20 and turning professional with Molteni in 1963.

Dancelli raced during the dominance of Eddy Merckx, Felice Gimondi and Roger De Vlaeminck but always left his mark. He was twice an Italian national champion, won La Flèche Wallone in 1966, 11 stages at the Giro d’Italia, a stage of the 1969 Tour de France and wore the maglia rosa for 14 days.

“He was a winner and won: in sprints, from a break, on climbs and descents, one-day Classics and stager stages. He was a rebel, a maverick, but he was adorable,” Italian journalist Marco Pastonesi wrote in a moving obituary for Tuttobiciweb.

Pastonesi recalled how Dancelli could have moved to Gimondi’s rival Salvarani team, but refused after seeing Gimondi and his teammates stick to a strict diet the night before a race in Belgium. He and his Molteni teammates went out to a restaurant and ate roast rabbit, but almost won the race.

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Legend narrates that the evening after his famous 1970 Milan-San Remo victory, Dancelli, Italian journalist Bruno Raschi and Ernesto Colnago came up with the idea of the now iconic logo for Colnago’s bikes.

San Remo is known as the city of flowers, and the ace of clubs symbol is called ‘Fiori’ (flower) in Italian. From that day, the Colnago logo included the ace of clubs.

“Dancelli was instinctive and impulsive; he did some crazy things, including attacking so early at Milan-San Remo,” Colnago told Pastonesi.

“He was convinced that the other riders just got in his way and that sooner or later they would have attacked him, so he attacked them first.”