PAX is the theme for the 39^th edition of the Maratona dles Dolomites - Enel

We will become friends on our bicycles. On the steepest climbs, on the scariest descents, if a flat tire stops us; a cyclist anonymous until a moment ago will stop for us. We know it, we all do it, because we know what loneliness on the road feels like.

Peace is born of small acts of solidarity. It is not only about dismantling the atom or stopping the sale of weapons. Every day is an open front: fifty-one declared conflicts and the silent wars of economic injustice. Choosing peace means refusing to get used to tragedies; it is a world awakening without walls or barbed wire. The white flag is not a sign of surrender but the courage to take the first steps toward others. Peace is relationship, training our gaze on a different future. To gunfire we respond with one pedal stroke after another, one step after another; we speak of peace through a simple gesture.

We choose peace the moment we see ourselves when we look at others.

Peace is when we leave the passing lane to ride alongside a stranger and ask how they are; peace is not knowing whether it was Bartali or Coppi who passed the water bottle to whom—we will never know, the gesture alone is enough.

This is what the Maratona is: thousands of stories meeting and breathing at the same altitude, where the mountain becomes a symbol of fairness. We are small, but our task is immense: to think peace, to speak of it and to act, and we will do so with every turn of the pedals. Because peace is a dream we can make real, a road we can travel together, a place where we can truly go in peace.

“True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” — M. L. King

Michil Costa

The meaning behind the Maratona PAX Logo
text by Manuel Bottazzo, graphic designer of the Maratona

The new logo of the Maratona dles Dolomites – Enel PAX is born as a bold gesture of rupture and awareness.

The peace flag, once a universal symbol of hope, has been emptied of its essence, reduced to a sign worn out by habit and indifference.

Its colors, once harmonious and pure, no longer speak to the heart: scattered, merged, blurred, they reflect the chaos inhabiting both the world and the human mind.

In this new visual sign, the reassuring linearity of colored bands disappears. What emerges instead is disorder, fracture, the loss of balance: a silent cry reminding us that true peace is no longer a stable concept, but a fragile search lost in the noise of our time.

The historic Maratona logo, too, has stripped itself of its original colors, renouncing continuity to mirror the collective confusion. Yet in this radical gesture there is no resignation—rather, an invitation, an appeal to face fragmentation with clarity and, together, attempt to rebuild an inner order.

The logo is not a solution, but a question. It does not point to a finish line, but to a journey: one that each of us is called to take, to restore meaning to symbols, strength to words, and light to our consciences.