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  In the throes of an autumnal rush hour, Milan was unrecognisable from the roasted ghost town I’d pedalled through so nervously five weeks before, Stupid Boy Pike on a bike. Look at me now, keeping my speed up in an enmeshment of Italian motorists via manoeuvres that incited a rolling maul of horn noise. I was mean, and I was lean. If my jersey had shrunk as it had in the first week, I’d never have got it over my B-cup Cameroons; they were gone now, part of a one-and-a-half stone downsize. Those aggressively musclebound legs powering me through the traffic looked almost genetically modified, and would gladly have kicked sand in the jowly, pallid face that had greeted these streets back in August. That face was now a decent homage to the 1914 survivors: burned by wind and sun, its many new lines showing clear through the mud and road grime. (You will, I’m sure, be tearfully grateful to learn that my genitals have since come back to life – and in some style, if I may say so. By way of a more regrettable physiological update, I’ve put back on a proportion of that lost weight. This proportion currently stands at 103 per cent.)

  Biddle-ip! ‘Turn right.’ Biddle-ip! ‘Third exit at roundabout.’ I hit a long boulevard and with a juddering thumb clicked back to the sat-nav’s data screen. There it was, in two words and three beautiful, liquid-crystal digits: Avg. Speed 17.8. Mario Marangoni reeled in and passed on the home straight.

  On to the downtown flagstones and tram-lines. It was all getting a little too much. My eyes prickled behind the blue glass, and my heart battered the walls of its cramped merino prison. Over 3,000km on a gearless, brakeless ninety-eight-year-old barn find, built with my hands and powered by my legs. No time now to take account of any achievement-tarnishing mitigations, the thirty-two days it had taken me to ride what they rode in eight, and the unflattering light this cast on my almost literally pedestrian rate of median progress. There was a party in my soul and Mr Rational Perspective wasn’t invited. Alfonso Calzolari got in as my plus-one.

  Victory in history’s hardest race would bring Fonso fame and a small fortune. A genuinely small one: the 3,000 lire first prize was hardly enough to retire on, even when supplemented with his Stucchi salary of 500 lire a month plus a curious bonus of 7 lire per competitive kilometre. All told, Fonso earned the inflation-adjusted equivalent of around €18,000 for his glorious fortnight in hell. Still, that was enough for him and his wife to settle down: they bought a house and raised two sons. And you couldn’t put a price on that mantle of greatness. Fonso would never have to pay for another drink in Bologna, and no Italian would undervalue the life-long adulation of his parents. ‘I always believed in him,’ said his carpenter dad, coining the default expression of long-haul parental pride.

  Alfonso Calzolari’s last recorded achievement as a cyclist came in the 1924 Italian National Championships, in which he finished forty-fourth. By then he was thirty-seven and had been racing as an independent isolato for three years; after another fruitless two, he called it a day. He made a comfortable living thereafter on the back of his celebrity, putting his name to track events across northern Italy. Fonso’s fame had a long tail: in July 1975, sixty years after his epic feat, President Giovanni Leone personally appointed him to the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. He was then eighty-eight, and peaceably ensconced at the Villa Serena nursing home in Ceriale – a town on the Ligurian coast that he’d swept along the day he took the Giro lead. Fonso eventually checked out in 1983 at the suitably long-distance age of ninety-six, a tremendous advertisement for spending one’s young adulthood riding up mountains on raw eggs and rat poison.

  Biddle-ip! ‘Turn left.’ Biddle-iddle-iddle-ip! ‘Arriving at destination.’ To a chorus of glass-muffled protest I pulled blindly across several lanes of traffic and bumped the Hirondelle up onto the pavement. Via Giovanni da Procida, I saw, would be ending my journey in the understated manner of its start. Five weeks before I’d snapped myself outside the drab apartment block that had replaced the Grand Ristorante Sempioncino; ranks of the same inconsequential structures trudged off down the street that had once been home to the Velodromo Sempione. The open-air stadium was demolished in the 1920s, and I’d been unable to pinpoint its former location more precisely than somewhere along this road. In truth, I hadn’t tried very hard: as betrayed by my slapdash research of the route beyond Cremona, I’d never convincingly imagined myself getting this far.

  Sighing in eight ways at once, I pushed the Hirondelle up Via Giovanni da Procida, scanning its dreary walls in search of a plaque or some other evidence of the velodrome’s site. Failing that, an even modestly photogenic backdrop for the ceremonial self-portraits I’d begun to envision, dousing myself and my bike in alcoholic foam.

  Two mishaps now blighted this search. As I heaved Number 7 beneath one of the sickly trees that lined the pavement, the bottle of fizz I’d semi-wedged under a saddlebag strap threw itself to the ground. A percussive tonk stood in for a liner-launching shatter: miraculously, it hadn’t broken. The act of leaning the bike against the tree while I retrieved this enchanted flagon begat a second and more profound adversity. An odious pulping sound introduced a catalogue of multi-sensory dismay: I had marched the Hirondelle’s front wheel straight through a fresh and very generous dog turd. In half a revolution this had somehow applied itself to most of the tyre and a goodly stretch of wooden rim. An unfortunate reflex yank of the brakes had left claggy, retch-inducing lumps hanging from the front calipers and blocks. Even the forks hadn’t escaped and nor – Jesus God no – had the underside of my bidons. In the absence of an undressed Silvio Berlusconi, it was impossible to imagine a more repulsive and dispiriting denouement.

  Jersey over nose and heart in boots, I stooped down, picked up a twig and conducted that grim street symphony, flicking bits of foul catastrophe into the gutter. Then I took my soiled and stinking steed by the handlebars and shuffled blankly up what was left of Via Giovanni da Procida.

  At its final junction the apartment blocks parted to make way for a large, low-slung oval structure. There was no identifying signage, but approaching its curved grey walls I spotted a banner thanking sponsors for their assistance in restoring ‘la pista di legno del Velodromo Vigorelli’. The wooden track of the Vigorelli Velodrome. I cracked a pale smile: this, of course, must be the velodrome that replaced the old Sempione. And not just any velodrome: I’d encountered the Vigorelli while studying the cyclists of old Italy, and one in particular. It was here, on this very pista di legno, that Fausto Coppi set his world hour record in 1942. And here, fourteen years later, that Jacques Anquetil finally beat it.

  It was a little poignant to behold the mothballed decline evident during my circuit of its shuttered outer walls – I later learned that almost two decades had elapsed since a competitive wheel was last turned in anger on the Vigorelli boards, and that these days the stadium is primarily employed as the home of Milan’s American football team, the Legacy Desecrators.

  All the same I began to feel much less distraught as I paced the perimeter. Come on: I’d made it over the line, and the line was a historic velodrome, bonded to one of my greatest cycling heroes. And how about that 17.8? This little victory and the outrageous perfection of its timing was surely worth a solo toast. Increasingly upbeat, I clicked through the sat-nav’s final data screens, choosing not to dwell on the one that said Alfonso Calzolari had beaten me to Milan by 635km. Here we go: 3,336 total kilometres, average speed 17.8kmh, 32,328 accumulated metres of ascent. This last figure had an especially awesome ring to it. Thirty-two vertical kilometres – whooooosh! See you in the stratosphere, kids.

  I checked the camera battery and quickened my stride. There would surely be some appropriate monument to stage my photo-call before, a statue of Fausto or a giant brass bidon or something. Yes, I could work with this: my bike was covered in shit, but success tasted sweet and photos don’t smell.

  Right round the back I found something better than any sculpture: a jet-nozzle hose, coiling out from the side door of a lock-up unit set into the Vigorelli concrete. I put my head r
ound the door and told the darkness inside that I had dog shit on my bike. The echoing male reply made no sense to me, but its tone was cheerfully obliging; I picked the hose up and pressed the nozzle trigger. In the light of the events that were to follow, let’s not dwell on the instant aftermath of this action, which for the record blasted particles of faecal matter over every part of the Hirondelle and my entire body. God love those goggles.

  ‘Eh, bici antica!’

  I wiped a glove across the unprotected parts of my face and looked round. The owner of the voice, an oily-handed smiler of about my own age, had come out to see what all that English swearing was about. Angelo, as he would soon introduce himself, seemed instantly captivated by the Hirondelle, and waved away my warnings of its toxic new coating to pay intimate, crouched tribute. ‘Cerchi di legno,’ he cooed wonderingly, rubbing his thumb over the front rim, then the malodorous hand-crafted wine corks that crowned it. ‘E freni di sughero – eh, Alberto! Alberto!’

  Thus summoned, an elderly bespectacled man in a blue shopcoat emerged from the lock-up shadows. He appraised the Hirondelle with a curt nod, then whipped a set of engineering calipers from his front pocket, bent down and began to measure its tubing in forensic detail. As Alberto went about this strange and silent work, Angelo beckoned me into the lock-up, unveiling a competent grasp of English to ask why I come with such old shirt and hat and bike.

  He threw the lights on and my reply died on my lips. The large workshop now revealed was a shrine to the road-racing bicycle of a certain age: gleaming examples of its traditional form in various states of assembly, tools and machinery pertaining to its bespoke manufacture and, most compellingly, a photographic history of its golden era that filled the back wall.

  ‘Is father of Alberto, Signore Masi,’ said Angelo, noting my distraction and pointing at a bushy-eyebrowed face in one of the larger black-and-white prints. More familiar was the beaky chap standing beside him.

  ‘Piss and biscuits, Fausto Coppi!’

  My blurt seemed to disappoint Angelo. ‘But of course, Masi make bike frame for all great campioni.’

  I didn’t dare confess that the name still meant nothing to me, though the faces of those happy customers posing with their Masi-framed bikes most certainly did. There on the wall was Eddy Merckx, Jacques Anquetil, and Fiorenzo Magni, riding to the finish of that second-worst-ever 1956 Giro with four broken bones. All those machines had been built right here. This Masi fellow was the Stradivarius of cycling’s most fabled epoch.

  ‘Please,’ said Angelo, interrupting my unworthy gawping. ‘I like to ask again – what it is you do here?’ We walked back outside and I dusted off my explanatory spiel. It would be the last time I ever did so.

  Alberto had completed his tubular examination, and was now surveying the Hirondelle’s headline deficiency: he waved at us with his arm through the rear wheel’s largest spokeless area. The tyre around it was already entirely flat. Angelo had been struggling with my story, and this spectacle seemed to bolster his bemusement. ‘I understand, is correct, you ride this bike with such wheel from Cremona.’

  ‘The tyre went flat in Cremona. The wheel’s been like that for days.’

  He frowned. ‘So this giro antico you do, where he start?’

  ‘In Milano.’

  ‘No, no, where he start?’

  It seemed easier to let Paolo Facchinetti explain: I rooted his little book out of the saddlebag and handed it over. Alberto got to his feet and they both peered at the victorious Stucchi team on the cover photo. ‘Alfonso Calzolari,’ I said, indicating the slightly worried little cyclist on the left, with the bouquet on his handlebars. Their cautious hums indicated they knew as much about my notorious race and its winner as I did about their legendary bike frames.

  I stumbled through some of the 1914’s more infamous records – the longest ever stages, the fewest ever finishers – but they weren’t listening. Angelo had thumbed his way to the Giro’s stage itinerary in Paolo’s index, and he and his boss were both staring hard at the enclosed data.

  ‘Prima tappa, 24 maggio, Milano–Cuneo, 420 chilometri,’ read Angelo. ‘You do this tappa?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Is mountain, yes?’

  ‘Sestriere.’

  He turned the page. ‘Lucca–Roma – 430,3km! Incredibile. You do also this tappa?’

  ‘I do every tappa.’

  As he flicked onwards, the two of them shook their heads and mumbled ever more incredulously.

  ‘Every tappa,’ summarised Angelo when they had reached the eighth and final stage, Lugo–Milano, 429.1km. ‘Every tappa, three thousand something chilometri, on such bike.’

  I would like to take this opportunity to thank that Milanese dog and its owner, because without their repulsive negligence all this would have been denied to me. I would not have needed the hose that led me to this hallowed birthplace of bicycles. And so I would never have met the son of the man who built them, and the actual man – as I’ve since discovered – who as a sixteen-year-old served as Fausto Coppi’s mechanic on his final Giro d’Italia. I would have walked on by and toasted my accomplishment unacclaimed and alone, instead of pulling this man close to my side and coating him, myself and my very old bicycle with booze froth.

  Most vitally, I would never have heard the words that his colleague, having kindly photographed the above scene, now delivered, one hand clamped to my shoulder and the other on the saddle of my flat-tyred, crap-spattered, wobbly, wonderful 1914 Hirondelle No 7 Course sur Route. Words that at my stage of flaccid middle age I had given up on ever hearing. Words I would dearly love to build up to with ratcheting, tremulous import, but my wife is shouting up the stairs about the shonky old wooden bike wheel I’ve left in bits all over the kitchen table, so, well, here they are.

  ‘My friend, you are really a hero.’

  * * *

  GENERAL CLASSIFICATION RESULTS

  Alfonso CALZOLARI 135:17:56

  Pierino ALBINI +1:57:26

  Luigi LUCOTTI +2:04:23

  Timothy MOORE +52:20:12

  Race starters: 81

  Race finishers: 8

  APPENDIX

  The Riders

  ATALA

  (grey and blue jersey, Dunlop tyres)

  1 CONTESINI Giuseppe

  2 DUBOQ Paul (FRA)

  3 GRUBB Frederick Henry (GBR)

  4 PETIT-BRETON Lucien (FRA)

  5 ROSSIGNOLI Giovanni

  7 BRIZZI Gino

  GLOBO

  (yellow-gold jersey, Dunlop tyres)

  8 ALBINI Pierino

  10 GARAVAGLIA Gaetano

  11 SPINELLI Rinaldo

  GANNA

  (white and blue jersey, Dunlop tyres)

  12 CORLAITA Ezio

  13 FASOLI Pietro

  14 GANNA Luigi

  15 GREMO Angelo

  16 SANTHIA Giuseppe

  STUCCHI

  (white and red jersey, Dunlop tyres)

  17 BENI Dario

  18 CALZOLARI Alfonso

  19 CANEPARI Clemente

  20 PETIVA Emilio

  MAINO

  (grey jersey, Dunlop tyres)

  21 DURANDO Carlo

  22 GIRARDENGO Costante

  23 LOMBARDI Giosue

  24 LUCOTTI Luigi

  25 TORRICELLI Leopoldo

  BIANCHI

  (white and turquoise jersey, Pirelli tyres)

  26 AGOSTONI Ugo

  27 AZZINI Giuseppe

  28 BORDIN Lauro

  29 CERVI Giovanni

  30 GALETTI Carlo

  31 ORIANI Carlo

  32 PAVESI Eberardo

  33 SIVOCCI Alfredo

  GERBI

  (red jersey, Dunlop tyres)

  34 GERBI Giovanni

  ALCYON

  (sky-blue jersey, Wolber tyres)

  35 PRATESI Ottavio

  Isolati

  (privateer professionals, white jersey)

  37 ARATO Ettore

  38 ROBOTTI Michele
>
  39 MOLON Luigi

  40 BARSIZIA Giovanni

  41 COLELLA Giovanni (SUI)

  43 GOI Sante

  44 MARANGONI Mario

  45 ALLASIA Domenico

  46 ARESO Giovanni

  47 FASSI Giovanni

  49 PIFFERI Giuseppe

  50 BIANCO Eligio

  51 VERDE Romildo

  52 SUSSIO Marcello

  53 BERTARELLI Camillo

  55 GHEZZI Giuseppe

  56 FERRARIO Arturo

  57 SAVINI Nerino

  58 GOFFIN Georges (BEL)

  59 RONCON Giovanni

  60 BASSI Gaetano

  61 ERBA Angelo

  63 SALA Enrico

  64 ANNONI Luigi

  65 BENAGLIA Telesforo

  66 REDAELLI Lorenzo

  67 CASETTA Giovanni

  68 MARCHESE Giovanni