Michele Dancelli from Brescia died this Thursday at the age of 83. He won Milan-San Remo in 1970, as well as a stage of the Tour de France in 1969 and eleven stages of the Giro d'Italia throughout his career.

The black and white images don't lie, and Michele Dancelli, his Molteni visor raised above his forehead, let the tears flow on March 19, 1970, unconcerned by the Italian cameras. The Brescian, who died this Thursday at the age of 83, had just won his first and only Milan-San Remo, and in doing so, reconciled the Italians with the Primavera, a race that had eluded one of their own since Loretto Petrucci's victory in 1953.

Despite successes in the Flèche Wallonne (1966), the 8th stage of the 1969 Tour de France, not to mention eleven stages of the Giro (he also wore the pink jersey 14 times), Dancelli could never compete in the transalpine legend with the icons Fausto Coppi, Gino Bartali or Felice Gimondi but, at the heart of an era dominated by the Cannibal who would join him at Molteni a year after his victory on the Via Roma, he still won 73 successes and took bronze medals at the World Championships in Imola (1968) and Zolder (1969).

A former communist activist, he admitted years after his Milan-San Remo victory that he had "let himself be overcome by emotion. On the finish line, I was in tears and I couldn't stop, because the carabinieri, the people from the organization who were surrounding me, were congratulating me, they were crying too, all of Italy was crying..."