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Ormezzano thought to himself, it was in a very un-Italian way. Baldassare Castiglione had spoken for all Italians then and now in his sixteenth-century
Il Cortegiano
– the
Book of the Courtier –
when he decreed that a man must not only look good and speak well but also and above all possess a
sprezzatura
, a certain nonchalance. ‘He conceals art, and presents what is done and said as if it was done without effort and virtually without thought.’ For all his precocity and talents,
sprezzatura
was not a quality displayed by Merckx. His facial features, like his riding style, brought to mind industry, not artistry.
    If there was a modern-day expression of the Castiglione prototype, a current ‘King of Cool’, it was the film star Steve McQueen, and Gianni Motta happened to be his spitting image. Right now, though, there was nothing cool about Motta’s reaction to defeat. In two years’ time, just up the coast in Savona, Merckx would curl up on a hotel bed, sobbing uncontrollably and vowing never to race again. That was Motta this evening. One by one, like mourners at a funeral, his Molteni teammates filed into his room to offer their support. Up the road in a different hotel, Motta’s sworn enemy Felice Gimondi also stewed.
    The night would bring counsel, plus some perspective. Rather than by Merckx, the great Italian triumvirate of Gimondi, Motta and Bitossi had been undone by the Via Roma. That and a universal sporting truth: there are certain horses that excel on certain courses. And also such a thing as a one-trick pony.
    Merckx’s sprint victory in the Gent Wevelgem semi-classic 11 days later would do little to change their mind; that picture of the finish line at San Remo, with three children of a golden generation fanned across the Via Roma, and Merckx just ahead of them, said unequivocally that the future looked sun-kissed for Italian cycling.
    ‘I mean, how were we supposed to know?’ asks Felice Gimondi today, almost pleading for understanding, compassion, maybe even forgiveness. ‘I had won the Tour de France in my first year as a pro, I was about to win another Giro. Everything was going well…Who knows how many more Giri d’Italia I’d have won if
he
hadn’t come along. But he did come along. And we didn’t realise for months, years.’
    ‘O sole mio
    sta ‘nfronte a te!
    ‘O sole, ‘o sole mio
,
    sta ‘nfronte a te!
    It’s my own sun
    that’s upon your face!
    The sun, my own sun,
    It’s upon your face!
    Dino Zandegù says the urge to sing came spontaneously, the words just flowed. Well, not exactly: a large and vocal group of Italian migrants stationed close to the prize podium had watched him cross the line, his right arm thrust towards the angry skies, his face and hands black as theirs after a day in the mines of Charleroi and Marcinelle, and broken into their own chorus.
    First an ironic, ‘
O sole mio!
’, then an invocation to join them: ‘
Canta, Dino, canta!
’: ‘Sing, Dino, sing!’ And so Dino had sung, to the delight of his countrymen and the tickled disbelief of cameramen and journalists from all over Europe.
    A few paces away, making his way through the mêlée, Zandegù’s Salvarani teammate Felice Gimondi also smirked. He had watched ‘Il Dinosauro’ win from 200 metres back down the finishing straight in Gent. Thirteen seconds later, Gimondi had followed Eddy Merckx across the line. As the blubs flashed and Merckx lunged, Gimondi harked the anguished cry of a beaten man.
    If Zandegù’s performance on the cobbled hills, the
bergs
of the Tour of Flanders on the second day of April was a revelation, his singing was not, at least not for the Italian public. Ever since his Giro d’Italia début three years earlier, the baker’s son from Padova had enlivened many an uneventful race with his impromptu balladry, often accompanying an impressive baritone with exuberant arm-waving. If a birthday needed celebrating, all eyes would be on Zandegù in the middle of the