When you win once you step into the annals, statistics, newspaper and website chronicles, the personal history of those who are fans or closely follow this sport. But it is only by winning that we truly enter the history of the discipline and of sport in general. Philippe Ganna he won the time trial at the World Championships in Flanders for the second time in a row and it is this victory that is also starting to define him clearly for the future. In American sport the idea is known that everyone can win once, maybe it is a matter of luck, form or coincidence, but only the great champions win consecutively, just like Filippo Ganna the did.

In fact, Ganna is already a serial winner and we should never forget her. He has won the individual pursuit at the World Track Championships four times, from those in London 2016 to Berlin 2020, already proving on the track that he is an absolute champion. He didn’t stop there, in his already huge specialty, in the race won in the past by people like Fausto Coppi, Francesco Moser and Bradley Wiggins, but he wanted to explore other roads from an early age. He chose to become a perfect cyclist for the road and Sky immediately noticed, who later became Ineos-Grenadier, or the team that creates champions in bursts and thus wins big rounds.

With the England squad, Filippo Ganna realized he can be irresistible even on the road, often helping fellow captains on the plains and placing the first pointy on the road at the 2019 Yorkshire World Championships, finishing the time trial in third place behind Rohan. Dennis and Remco Evenepoel. How much time seems to have passed since those days. Also yesterday, Evenepoel challenged Ganna in a world time trial on a home course he knew perfectly well. Filippo Ganna however gave him 44 seconds and in these 44 seconds there is all the growth of an athlete who started half a step behind the Belgian, still very young but already launched at full speed in the Olympus of the greatest runners of history. With an exceptional physical and muscular base, Filippo Ganna has been able over these two years to refine the details, gain strength and better understand how to ride a bike at very high speed on the road. He screwed in some screws and today it is the largest chronoman in circulation, already right now potentially one of the best that has ever been seen.

It should also not be forgotten that a little over a month ago, Ganna led the quartet of the Italian team Pursuit to a magnificent Olympic gold medal, clinched at the last penny thanks to his sensational sprint against the favorite Danish team. And yesterday’s test further clarifies the disappointment of the Olympic time trial. It was not an approximate state of form or a slightly lower value than opponents who had overtaken it that day in Tokyo, Roglic, Dumoulin and Dennis, but it was a track problem, too moved and complex to make it release all the watts of its power.

Today, Ganna is a great time trial champion, but in these two years he has also shown something else, which allows him to open other doors than the already enormous possibility of repeating himself. again in the road time trial and on the next international track. races, with Paris 2024 three years later. Filippo Ganna in the victory of Camigliatello Silano of the Giro d’Italia 2020 showed everyone who can become yet another runner, which has different objectives than usual. This victory, which came after a great breakaway by the group, showed that the Ganna of the future, if he wants to and that his paths with the track do not create too many obstacles, could become a prestigious stage rider in the big leagues. towers and a classic monument, especially the Paris-Roubaix.

A cyclist with this physical structure, his endurance capacities and the now fully acquired ability to ride the bike at these crazy speeds, will no longer be able to set limits on the track and the race. The Filippo Ganna of the future can become even bigger and challenge the young and wonderful riders of the present and the future, such as Wout van Aert, Remco Eevenepoel, Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogacar, undermining them less in the victory of the big tours , an unrealistic goal, at least to this day, but in races that mark history and illuminate the career of a champion. And when this step is taken, today this Ganna has passed from top to bottom, who knows what will become of him.