RaiSport offers a special appointment tonight: at 10:30 pm, the documentary 'The Three Tailors of the King' by Franco Bortuzzo and Raisport, dedicated to Eddy Merckx and the Italian artisans who crafted his extraordinary bicycles, will be broadcast. You can watch it tonight at 10:30 pm on RaiSport and in replay on RAI 2 at 02:30.

Faliero Masi, Ernesto Colnago, and Ugo De Rosa are 'The Three Tailors of the King', the three Italian artisans who made almost all of Eddy Merckx's winning bikes. Three figures from the cycling world with different career paths, but also three frame artists who, as Eddy Merckx himself said in the documentary written and directed by Franco Bortuzzo and produced by Raisport, "... have cycling in their blood". 525 victories in 1,800 races contested: this is the impressive record of the Belgian rider, not for nothing called 'the cannibal' (although Merckx never liked this term too much).

The first victories were achieved with steel bikes created by the legendary Tuscan Masi, naturalized Milanese, who had his 'workshop' at the Vigorelli velodrome, a workshop where all the great cyclists of the 1950s and 1960s passed through, from Coppi and Anquetil onwards.

Then the victories in rapid succession, in just three years, thanks to the bikes of Ernesto from Cambiago, the 'padrun' who later revolutionized the cycling world by introducing carbon, his intuition. And then, the triumphs of the entire second part of the Belgian's career, with Ugo's bikes 'with heart', the artisan who made the cycling world aware of the ductility, rigidity, and 'class' of titanium.

Through the words of Alberto Masi, Faliero's son, Ernesto Colnago, and Cristiano De Rosa, Ugo's son, as well as Eddy Merckx himself, we rediscover a golden era for cycling, spanning from 1966 to 1976. And then, through the technical progress expressed in the Hour Record, starting with the one achieved by Eddy Merckx with Colnago's Mexico Oro, passing through Francesco Moser's, and arriving at Filippo Ganna's latest, we discover how bicycle craftsmanship has changed up to the present day, where wind tunnels, computers, CAD, and 3D printers have become everyday reality.

'The Three Tailors of the King' written and directed by Franco Bortuzzo, edited by Luca Zanoli, narrated by Francesco Pancani, 60 minutes long, produced by Raisport, 2025.