The premise for this writing stems from a desire, expressed with his usual grace, by a former student of the long-standing sports director - and the adjective is not exaggerated when referring to the Tuscan Marcello Massini. And the term sports director is certainly too narrow for Marcello, a long-standing presence in the effervescent - often, if not always - Tuscan cycling world where he consistently represented a point of reference and balance among many colleagues who were not lacking in talkativeness, the "polemical drive" expressed with explicit and sometimes stinging vivacity.

Passion for two wheels is a common denominator of the sports director's role with the competence that the function requires, but not everyone possesses the enriching figure, from all perspectives, of a reference point similar to the Latin figure of the "pater familias" with its own positive prerogatives. And these prerogatives have even greater significance when shared with his wife, Mrs. Vera and a cycling-friendly family like that of Carlo Faraoni. A perhaps less known but no less important name in the Massinis' daily and sporting life is precisely that of Carlo Faraoni with his wife, Luciana Gradassi who, incidentally, was a sports director - a role that was scarcely frequent for women at the time.

"An unbridled passion for cycling for all four of them" is the definition by a former professional, for some time now an appreciated, considered, and important organizational pivot at RCS Sport, always somewhat hidden like when he raced for various seasons among professionals, rewarded by a single individual victory at the 1992 Giro del Friuli and then a sports director in important teams, who was the suggester of this memory personally experienced as a young man, a period with important sporting and life experiences, side by side. We will certainly incur his disapproval by revealing his name: Alessandro Giannelli. Too bad.

His experience is the same experienced by many young riders, Tuscan and not, who found in various periods of their career development a welcoming home, loving, without luxuries but certainly not sparing time, means - beyond advice - in a serene environmental climate, without excessive competitive pressures, but with attentive affection, without ostentation or "isms", in a positively familiar climate focused on serenity. And even non-positive observations about life and race events were expressed without punitive intentions, pure criticism, but formative, seeking corrections for constant improvement.

The always mustachioed Marcello Massini was born in 1942 in Santa Maria a Monte, a historic and characteristic municipality in the north of Pisa province. Here was also born (1967) the strong professional cyclist Massimo Donati and, for football, Romano Fogli (1938-2021), a fine and technical midfielder in top-level teams and then a coach. From Santa Maria a Monte is also Gabriele Balducci, born in 1975, holder of a significant career - professional from 1997 to 2008 - a strong sprinter with good career successes but always with extremely difficult approaches to any kind of climb.

He was a technical collaborator of Paolo Bettini when the "Cricket" was the Italian national team coach and always in the team car with the historic Tuscan Mastromarco team from Lamporecchio.

The professional curriculum in cycling for Marcello Massini first saw him as a competitor with a career without particular highlights compensated by a marked passion for two wheels that leads him, starting from the early '70s, to operate as a technician in youth teams in the area, combining it with his professional activity of managing electronic games for public establishments.

Then it was a crescendo in various teams and major teams of the prolific Tuscan cycling always maintaining a precise imprint of genteel discretion as a stylistic feature of his work - and even down from the team car - in perfect symbiosis with his wife Vera and friends Carlo Faraoni and Luciana Gradassi, the sports director already mentioned above.

In all - or almost all - interviews on various sites, Massini always fears forgetting or making merit rankings for the pedaled career of young riders who passed through the teams he managed and the two families, but these names constitute a significant part of the "who's who" of Tuscan cycling of his era who successfully arrived in professional ranks.

And, just to increase Giannelli's reproaches towards the writer, he also remembers Alessandro Giannelli, winner of the classic uphill finish race, the Bologna-Raticosa of 1982.

Demonstrating the personal charisma he exercised in the effervescent "circus-ring", fortunately mostly dialectical, of Tuscan teams of the time, he was able to limit the decibels of the "chatter", as Tuscans define the speaking and/or shouting of the often fiery colleague Marcello Mealli, perhaps due to the homonymy, just like another well-known and lamented sports director, but not only, Enzo Mannucci, also from Valdarno like Mealli who provided Massini with the prized vin santo from Terranuova Bracciolini where in the Malva fraction the Mealli family originated.

And the experience lived by young pedaling guests in the two families of Santa Maria a Monte goes far beyond the simple memory and perhaps nostalgia for the more or less remote youth of those who experienced it. It is rather a plebiscitary recognition and thanksgiving for a way of living a type of cycling, with similar characteristics, present also in other places by typology, in some parts of Italy.

And to them goes the recognition and gratitude for the commitment shown by the "ex" young pedalists and also by all the "passionists" of two wheels, as in certain parts of Tuscany the passionate fans of two wheels are indicated.

In the photo, from left: Piergiorgio Rosellini, Enrico Galleschi, Giancarlo Ricci (deceased), Alessandro Giannelli and Marcello Massini.