Den italienska motocrossboken "Imola Mondiale", som vi presenterat tidigare här på vår web-sida, börjar nu att marknadsföras runt om i Europa.
Klicka på rubriken för att gå vidare till "Nyheter"! Där presenterar vi det material som skickats ut om bakgrunden till hur boken kom till, skrivet av författarna, samt ett rekommendationsbrev från Sten "Storken" Lundin. Imolabanan var just "Storkens" favoritbana och han vann fyra av Grand Prix tävlingarna som kördes på den anrika Imolabanan under åren 1948 till 1965.
A BOOK FOR THE PRESERVATION OF
HISTORICAL MEMORY OF THE ITALIAN MOTOCROSS
Bilden - Omslaget på boken - Rolf Tibblin på väg mot en av hans segrar på Imolabanan på sin Husqvarna 500cc!

Presentation av boken IMOLA MONDIALE!

IMOLA MONDIALE
1948-1965
the roots of the Italian Motocross
Luciano Costa - Piero Mita
Bacchilega Editore
“IMOLA MONDIALE – 1948-1965 - le radici del motocross italiano”
Format: 24 x 30 cm
304 pages
Print color and black and white
Hardcover with canvas cover over
Retail price: 35 Euro
Italian language - Translate in English language in the first part only.
The edition, with high iconographic quality, shows the complete history of the competitions. The book was launched in December 10th, 2011 at Imola.

The contents
The full story of the European and World Championships of Motocross which were held in the Mineral Waters Park of Imola from 1948 to 1965, by Francesco Costa, and the Moto Club Imola (Moto Club Santerno from 1954), in collaboration with the Municipality of the City. The book also contains all the classified results of the competitions, the profiles of the champions and the technique - boards of the motorbikes which raced at Imola. The last chapter is dedicated to the event “IMOLA MONDIALE” of May 2010, the first meeting – revival of the motocross of Imola with Sten Lundin and Bill Nilsson guests.

Imola was the first Italian city to host the sport of motocross in general and in its evolved form: the World Championship. From 1948 to 1965, for 18 years, the Park of the Mineral Waters of Imola has become the scene of international competitions that were able to engage in an increasingly broad and diverse audience. Motocross managed to bring together thousands of people in the park (more than 30.000 spectators, in some year), and earning him a reputation as a magical place to be environmentally as well as that of the spectacle. According to the opinion of all the greatest champions, Imola was a true temple of the international motocross with the Belgian city of Namur and the glorious Hawkstone Park in England.

 Dr. Francesco Costa, was the creative and organizational mind of these glorious pages of Italian and international motorcycle racing, whose history began even before the construction of the Autodrome “Enzo and Dino Ferrari”. Thanks to Checco Costa, to his dedication, to his talent, and his great passion, we have the existence and development of motocross in Italy.

 Imola, therefore, stands as indisputable historical site for the work of preserving the memory of this sport. More than any circus acrobat, their stature, their courage, and strength with which they could fly motorcycles thundering over a ton and a half, painted them as a sort of heroes, the invincible knights to overcome all the human limits. The duels between Mingels and Meunier, between Lundin and Nilsson, Smith and Nilsson again, Hallman and Robert, were able to aflame the hearts of the people in a whirlwind of passion, independently of gender, age and interest for the sport. The project is therefore intended to reach an audience broader than the purely technical-sports, and tanks to its content, can involve both the generations that have lived through that period, both the younger ones who can best understand their own roots social, cultural and sporting activities.

 The over sixties generation of Imola still remember, with enthusiasm, names like Marcel Meunier, Auguste Mingels, Victor Leloup, Bill Nilsson, Sten Lundin, Rolf Tibblin, Leslie Archer, Donald and Derek Rickman, Emilio Ostorero and many other champions. More than any circus acrobat, their stature, their courage, and strength with which they could fly motorcycles thundering over a ton and a half, painted them as heroes, the invincible knights to overcome all the human limits.

 The duels between Mingels and Meunier, between Lundin and Nilsson were able to aflame the hearts of the people in a whirlwind of passion, independently of gender, age and interest for the sport. The photos of these extraordinary events, taken by professional photographers of the time, show an audience very different from the audience that following the modern motocross. Men, women, youth, children, mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers and men dressed in overalls, or still in military uniform, huddled behind the wire mesh, forded the river, soaking up the shoes, and climbing trees in search of the best point of view, to enjoy the wonders of a unique, exciting, unbelievable show.

 The book is intended to reach an audience far broader than the purely technical-sports, and thanks to its content, can affect both the generations that have lived through that period, both the younger ones who can best understand their own roots social, cultural and sporting activities.   

The authors Luciano Costa and Piero Mita are ex-motocross riders of Imola who began their racing experience from 1966, when the period of the world championship of motocross was ending in Imola. The same passion with which they faced their sports career, now have renewed in the production of this book. 

Conctat:
Luciano Costa
+39 338 5070103  -  0039 (0)542 010462

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Introduktionsbrev av författarna till boken

“IMOLA MONDIALE – 1948-1965 – le radici del motocross italiano”
Luciano Costa – Piero Mita
Bacchilega Editore - Imola

 Authors Introduction  

 Imola Mondiale
This book represents the crowning of a project started in 2008, a project tended to the recovery of the memory of the Imola World Championships of Motocross. The authors were born in 1947 and in 1948, the years when the international competitions started. To judge from their fervent passion for that events, matured since the tender age, it is not to exclude that they has been reached by the vibrations of the run motors when they were still in bands. During the infancy, the adolescence and the youth, they always attended with anxiety the Gran Prix of Motocross, and living the recurrence as the most important of the year. First accompanied by their parents, then together with adventure mates, they went to the Park of the Mineral Waters to meet their own heroes in meat and bones, to feel the thunder of the one cylinder motors, and to admire stunned the deep furrows left by the clawed rubbers clawed on the ground of the Mount Castellaccio. For three long days the study was set aside, although the scholastic appointments of end year they were decisive for its good result. The perfume of the lindens in flower and the odor of the burnt castor-oil, mixed together they originated a cocktail able to electrify the sense of smell and the spirit. How crowds of impertinent squirrels, gangs of boys climbed on the trees or they were done wide among the legs of the adult public to admire from near the runners’ stunts. The rumble of the start triggered an uncontrollable fervor, and the agents of control had to sweat seven shirts to prevent that some senseless boy crossed the footstep. The conclusion of the tests and the competitions represented the best moment to infiltrate in the camp of the riders, and to looked for a direct contact with them. Contaminating them with a tender smile, boys could at the end touch the mythical motorbikes and to get the coveted autograph of the preferred champion. In the evening of following days immediately after the Gran Prix, the track was not yet dismantled and it was assaulted in the most binding and spectacular parts, for the beginning of exhibitions with bicycles and mopeds. With a good dose of irresponsibility, and without the knowing of their parents, the gangs of young reckless youngs did to competition, looking to which one threw with more grim down for the breathtaking descents of the Mount Castellaccio. With the intent to reproduce the rhombus of the cross motorbikes, the silencers of the mopeds were removed or they were applied postcards held back by tongs from punctured to the forks of the bikes, so that they waved against the rays of the wheels. When the Motocross of Imola stopped after the last Gran Prix 1965, sadly extinguished a tradition that had put deep roots in the mind of thousand of impassioned of all the ages. Not yet adults, the authors of this book, together with a group of other young paladins of the clawed rubbers, they decided to devote to motocross practicing with transformed road motorbikes. Then just came at age, they undertook seriously the agonistic activity in the national championships, with the pious illusion to put the end, one day, to the foreign dominion. The intentions were good, but still needed thirty-four years before, not one of us but, Andrea Bartolini, could win the World Championship.

It is with great honor and a renewed pleasure we assume today the burden of rewriting the roots of this long and glorious history. After a silence lasted more than forty-five years, someone had to complete the attempt to recompose the shed traces of a cycle of events that were of remarkable historical importance for the City of Imola and for Italy. Suppression of the competitions could not going with the removal of their memories, that remains today still long live in the most elderly generations. During our research job, that lasted more than three years, we became aware that we were among the few people to own all the necessary elements to achieve the difficult task has made in here. A long search extended to recovery precious traces and testimonies is initiated from original professionals photos of the epoch, we methodically and jealously had collected and kept safe along years. To reconstruct eighteen years of competitions has not been simple. Many files have irremediably went lost, and often, also who possesses material historically precious, it is not always available to face a serious search looking through in the Babylon of personal effects accumulated in the years and forgotten in wine cellars or dusty attics. Nevertheless, with more than thousand images patiently found again, listed and restored, and with a rich harvest of articles coming from the newspapers and from the sector magazines of epoch, today we have been able to have all the necessary ingredients to conclude this work. We thank all those people who have collaborated furnishing precious testimonies in the form of oral stories, photos, posters and written publications. We are convinced that this work will succeed in purely reaching a wide public of that technicalsporting, and that it will be able to involve both those generations that have lived that period, and the more youths, the lasts could in this way better understand their own social, cultural and sporting roots.
Luciano Costa and Piero Mita

Rekommendationsbrev från Sten "Storken" Lundin

 “IMOLA MONDIALE – 1948-1965 – le radici del motocross italiano”

 Introduction of Sten Lundin

Remembering Imola
by Sten Lundin

It is with great pleasure that I have welcomed the request of Imola’s friends to introduce this wonderful book. The extraordinary international competitions that took place in your city still are an indelible remember. In the history of the Imola’s Motocross I’ve been the only one four times Gran Prix winner. Just in Imola, in 1955, I’ve gotten my first absolute victory of European Championship with the BSA Gold Star.

It was also the first victory of a Swedish rider in a Grand Prix. Then in 1958, ’59 and ’60, I won again three times with the Monark. Fifty-five years have elapsed since my first victory, attending the “IMOLA MONDIALE” Memorial the 23rd of May 2010 with my friend Bill Nilsson, has been an exciting dive in the past. We were surprised about how many Imola’s people still remember us and our performance. During the events organized in the city and in the Park of the Mineral Waters (Parco delle Acque Minerali), I appreciate the efficient way by which organizers predisposed every detail in order to turn the event into a real motocross day. With great pleasure I have received honors, rewards, and presents from the City of Imola, I met old competition mates, and I saw original motorbikes still in perfect state. I had the opportunity to participate in a memorable parade riding a Lito, as that one I used in the sixties, and I had also the opportunity to run the circuit through again by walking ross on the Mount Castellaccio: two moments that both made me happy and “put me again in the track” with my spirit. May the 22nd 23rd 2010 were two marvellous summer days, a nice weather I remembered very well, and I found every year in Imola, in the warm and sky-blue month of June. The perfume of lindens and the good kitchen are also still the same today, the stay was very pleasant. I always come in Italy with great pleasure. In the sixties where I had been invited by the Italian Motorcycle Federation to hold a course of motocross for the Italian riders, and May the 23rd, I had the opportunity of meeting many of my ex-students. I came to Gallarate, to Avigliana and Bra, where I tried to teach all I knew about motocross: as to stay in saddle, as to use few the friction and as to feather the motorbike in the jumps to fall with the back wheel. Then I used to invite students, before climbing on in saddle, to cross the track in order to get familiar with it by walking, and so to studying the best trajectory. In Imola someone has asked me if I was able to remember the track. My answer has been affirmative. I remember perfectly every jump, the fords, the slopes, the curves and the down-hills. Today the Park of Mineral Waters has not changed a lot, but few traces of the motocross track are still evident. With the help of the Italian friends I went looking for them, and with a strong emotion I re-drawn the circuit. The circuit of Imola does not exist anymore, but in the history it remains, together with Namur and Hawkstone Park, one of the temples of the motocross of the Golden Era. In the postwar period, the competitions of motocross were dominated by English. Few years after the Belgians became the best and to halves the fifties Swedish riders began to go foreign countries to attend international competitions, in Holland, in Belgium and in France. Bill and I were two of the best pilots and we marked the beginning of the Swedish period. In 1955 we reached Imola aware of the possibility to have a good performance riding the official BSA. It was one of our first motocross international experiences. Bill had already put in evidence on the occasion of the motocross of the Nations that took place in Sweden, in Skillingaryd, while I was desirous to improve and maybe to win my first competition. During the official tests in Imola I didn’t push at most, rather I looked for well memorize the track, saving motor, brakes and suspensions. Our adversaries were very determined, expecially the Belgians and the English, but that time I was lucky, and in the final trials I succeeded in starting among the first ones. After few turns I found me to the head, that I maintained up to the finishing line, not without first to had fought with champions as Stonebridge, Jansen and others. In that competition, Bill was very unlucky and fell-down in the river Santerno part. From the last position he succeeded in catching going up until the seventh place behind Baeten and Mingels. I could never forget that day because it was my first victory in a Gran Prix.

In the same year I brought Sweden to its first victory in the Motocross of the Nations in Denmark, together with Nilsson, Johansson and Lundell; then I also won the Gran Prix of Holland in Norg and I finally was third in the World Championship of the class 500, behind the English Draper and Nilsson. The 1958, 1959 and 1960 represent my Italian triptych. Above all I remember the 1959. The victory I got with decision awarding me both manches in front of Rickman brothers. Since I also won my first world title that one was a great year for me. When in 1965 I knew that the motocross of Imola was destined to end, I was very sorry, not only sorry because the circuit was me congenial, but also because a tradition that for me lasted eleven years was interrupted. I would not have seen anymore the city of Imola and its marvelous public again, and I would not have received its warm hospitality anymore. That history could not end in this way, and so May the 23rd 2010 the miracle has still come true. I infinitely thank the authors of this book for their great effort in reassembling, with notable wealth of details and fine images, a long and complex history. I also thank in a particolar way the ASI and the CRAME for the generous support furnished to the recovery of the memory of glorious pages of the history of the international motocross.

Thanks Imola!
Sten Lundin, Hjortvagen, Sweden