The tragedy of 50 years ago in Monza. Pasolini and Saarinen, courageous and rebellious: defeated by fate

eir memory has never left my heart. I will always carry them with me” (Giacomo Agostini).

Exactly fifty years ago, on May 20, 1973, a double mourning took away the innocence of motorcycling forever. On the Monza track, in a race valid for the 250 class world championship, the Rimini man lost his life Renzo Pasolini and Finnish Jarno Saarinen. Together they were the toughest opponents of the legendary Ago. Who was waiting for them in the pits that Sunday in Brianza. And he never saw them return.

The heroes

Renzo Pasolini and Jarno Saarinen embodied, on two wheels, the spirit of 1968. Courageous rebels, this is what they were, one and the other, in the collective imagination. Paso, in the memory of those who knew him, was a type rough, tough. He wasn’t predestined, he didn’t have the sun in his pocket. But he possessed an enormous heart and the proletarian Italy of the time was reflected in his courage which made him the perfect antithesis of Agostini (who, despite being very different, respected him very much).

Saarinen, well, Saarinen was the North Wind. It was the future becoming present in advance, without warning. He changed the way of riding a motorcycle, defying the laws of gravity. It leaned on the asphalt beyond any reasonable limit, you looked at him and you were sure he would fall. Instead he straightened up and was already beyond the curve. A legend in the flesh.

The tragedy

They do not exist footage of the scary carambolawhich triggered the drama at the Curva Grande. Whoever was there suddenly remembers an atrocious silence. Then the survivors began to arrive on foot. Shocked, almost incapable of bearing witness to a nightmare. It was later established that a seizure on Paso’s motorcycle had triggered the inferno.

The survivor

At first the radio announced that there were three dead: fortunately Walter Villa from Modena, left lifeless on the asphalt, he was revived by the intervention of the doctor Claudio costa, the father of the Mobile Clinic. I would later become friends with Villa. He told me: “I have no memory of the accident, total darkness. On the other hand, I know that afterwards I conquered four world titles carrying forward the work and intuitions of Paso”. Half a century has passed. Yet it seems like yesterday, for those who stopped breathing hearing that the two Heroes had gone on the run forever.