You know, Clodomiro, we waited for the second Thursday of this February, and the unexpected first afternoon sun, to finally write about you and your little book on Landi: Antonio Landi, 'good passer and excellent climber', 70 career victories, from '48 to '62, a cyclist by love and talent. "70 victories on bread and water - Antonio Landi, the proletarian champion of the South who was reborn", yes, by Clodomiro Tarsia, published many months ago. We waited a long time, guilty, but do you really think there's so much space on the page and in life for us?, that January and the dead season would truly start to give way, and the tinkling of races to show signs of itself, even from the timid calls of races in Australia and the French Riviera and the Vuelta Valenciana....

We waited for the desire for 'Sanremo' - not the Festival, though Cristicchi was great - but almost the 'classic' opener, the Milan-San Remo - because these pages of yours dedicated to Antonio Landi, the Salerno cyclist, from Pellezzano, bearer of the unforgettable 'Baratta' of Battipaglia, protagonist of a sport loved by street kids and the province, in that sweet season straddling the '50s, deserve the virgin caress of spring. And they have the unrepentant freshness of spring that will still come, the primacy of the sun.

Antonio Landi, steel class of 1930, is an actor - first but also second and also placed, and hierarchy no longer matters, to savor such a devotion to sport - of these intriguing pages, deeply from Salerno, the Irno flows, from moving press clippings to a personal photographic collection, assembled with your affection and that of your son Giovanni Landi and enriched with precious testimonies, like the dedicated memory of accountant Luigi Ferioli, the soul of 'Baratta'.

And Landi is the interpreter - with stentorian declamation, not just from sprint to sprint, from escape to escape - of a Campanian epic of cycling that suggests emotion and nostalgia in parallel. (How much has changed, for the worse, Clodomiro, you who saw the Tour of Campania, like me, both in '55 at Arenaccia and in Agropoli, in a rainy sequel of 2000, time and sport...).

Landi is here the solo voice of an unparalleled 'band', for competitive vigor and loyalty of sport and life, where still perform Alberto Marzaioli and Michele Tufano, Luigi Mastroianni and Raffaele Pettine, dear Antonio Minieri and Giuseppe Mauso, the declared champion, Arcangelo Bove and Mario Acconcia, Angelo Damiano and Raffaele Novara...

In that regional cycling, in post-war years when travel and communications did not have today's times and methods, especially for cyclists, where riders from other lands, strong and promising, like Vito Taccone and Carlo Brugnami, Trapè and Bonariva would appear in finish orders...

In that cycling which in Campania was not a numismatic rarity, where Ponticelli was province and not periphery, where every patron saint, even in Piedimonte di Sessa, deserved a cycling race from heaven for his Feast. In that cycling of Giampietro Cup and Laudiero Cup, of Internaples and Lepori Cup, of 'First Bar Luisa Cup' and Flame Cup, of 'Il Mattino' Cup and Opening Grand Prix, of pursuit on the Arenaccia track and Italy Cup team time trial...

In that cycling from childhood to heart, which Antonio Landi from the pink pages of 'Il Mattino' sports supplement on Monday, thanks to you Clodomiro who incredibly are no longer here from a Wednesday ago (or is it a lie?), would have wanted - without ever knowing it, if not now, from another quarter of a century - a new baptism. (And forgive me if I lost the memory sprint, dear Clodomiro, you'll read me better from up high, and from a distance).