FEDERICA MOLTENI Alfonsina Strada. A race for emancipation

Alfonsina Morini Strada is the daughter of farmers and of a time she did not choose, at the beginning of the 1900s. A time when cycling is for fearless heroes. They are strong, they are valiant. And they are all male. Alfonsina is a ten-year-old girl when she falls in love with the bicycle. She is a young girl when she secretly trains with her father’s old bike. She is a woman when she becomes a cyclist, a champion, a true athlete. But above all, Alfonsina is a SCANDAL. Because she lives in Italy a hundred years ago. Italy of fascism, Italy of male chauvinist thought, Italy where women do not vote. In this Italy, Alfonsina invents and builds her own destiny, breaking down prejudices and conventions and participating – the only woman in history – in the Giro d’Italia in 1924. Alfonsina’s story is a TRUE and extraordinary one. The story of this woman is strange. Because it is the story of an unknown person, a woman forgotten by history, yet it is an incredible life that happened a hundred years ago. When women could not choose a husband, profession, destiny… and not even the clothes to wear. When women could not study, attend university, vote, go to the bar or theater. Alfonsina breaks conventions to measure herself against a world of men, because cycling is a sport of strength and effort. Riding a bike, pedaling with bare legs, wearing a jersey… today is normal, but in the early 1900s it was a scandal, especially in the midst of the rise of fascism. But Alfonsina is like the wind, which knows no laws or limits and runs as long as she has strength, as long as her legs hold up, as long as there is a horizon to reach and surpass: racing in the Giro d’Italia in 1924. The first and only woman in history. To talk about a forgotten woman, about rights gained, about roads still to be traveled.