Pit Lane Persephone

Chapter 8: Seb (Part 1 of 2)

September isn't my favorite month in Rome, but I still prefer being home to being anywhere else. Tourists continue to linger in the Piazza Navona and the beaches at Civitavecchia are still too crowded, but the air is already a few degrees cooler than two weeks ago, meaning autumn isn't far behind. Nothing beats the Eternal City in the harvest season when the locals wrap up their holidays, kids go back to school, and life returns to its regular rhythm. Of course, I still have two more months before I can take a proper vacation, but a few days home before heading off to Barcelona is a welcome break.

Sitting at a sidewalk café within view of the Pantheon, I scroll through my phone catching up with news from the last few days. I'm especially interested in coverage of the Melbourne race and reactions to my renewed success, which I'd missed because of the day and a half lost to traveling.

With my eyes on the screen, I sip the scalding espresso and smile. My Twitter had blown up with congratulatory notifications, and Instagram is flooded with tags to photos I'd taken with fans. And as expected, the press coverage is good. It is really, really good. I went into the race sixth overall in total points, but my second place finish gave me a boost to now be tied for fourth. Even better, a cheeky photograph captured the exact moment during lap fifteen that I edged out Diego Martin, forcing him into third position. With our heads down and elbows nearly touching, I'd taken a tighter line into the turn and came out ahead. The Spaniard had to look at my tailpipe from then on out until we crossed the finish line.

Tobei naturally gets a lot of column inches devoted to his win, but my comeback is nearly as examined. "Can Italy's Bianchi Pull-off a Second Consecutive World Title?" one headline reads, while another—with a thumbnail photo of me and a white cockatoo from the sanctuary—boasts, "Road Racing Has Never Been Hotter Thanks to Italian's Late-Season Turnaround." Another picture from the animal park shows eight of us with the Komodo dragon, accompanying an article that nicely sums up the situation:

Nansei Racing Team's Tobei Kojima may have won the fourteenth race on the World Road Racing Federation's calendar held in Australia on Sunday, but the championship is far from being locked-up. With just four more races to go, Austin Harris still leads in overall points even though the young American hasn't taken to the track since early August. The announcement of the Cadmium Racing Team rider's hiatus soon thereafter has apparently lit a fire under his teammate and current titleholder Seb Bianchi, who won in Malaysia two weeks ago and now finished second at Phillip Island after an inconsistent start to his season. Spain's Diego Martin rounded out the top three after a close race that saw the first six riders separated by only two-and-a-half seconds as they crossed the finish line. Reid Butler, Dai Mura and Gareth Watts, who took fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively round out the contenders who all still have a mathematical chance at being this year's world champion.

Across the table, Nando noisily flips a page in the daily he bought at a bodega on the way to breakfast. "Why don't people read real newspapers anymore?" he asks without looking up.

I shift in the metal bistro chair. "They're outdated by the time they're printed, they're bad for the environment both for their manufacturing methods and distribution channels, and they're a pain in the ass to fold," I say, pulling my finger up my smartphone's screen.

"It was a rhetorical question," he says before folding the paper in half and shoving an article at the top of the sports section in front of me. "I bet your mom already cut this one out for her scrapbook."

I glance at the write-up of the race and the close-up picture of me accepting the second-place trophy on the podium.

"Uh-hum." I barely acknowledge my status as hometown hero because I'm more interested in the fifth most popular headline that my search has found. Clicking on the link, I have to read it twice to make sure I understand correctly, and by then, it's brutally clear. There's no way an article entitled "Dimas Acts Like a Diva Down Under: Will the First Woman in World Road Racing also be the Last?" will be positive.