"Eighty-five" – he confides – "are not too few, but not quite so many either. The average life expectancy has increased, and I would like to contribute to this process of healthy aging as long as possible, hopeful and imaginable. And then there's a secret: you shouldn't call it aging, but experience. And here I would still have quite a lot to do, to learn, to work on. I've heard there's an Italian who is extremely experienced: he's an impressive 111 years old. Compared to him, I'm almost a kid, still a schoolboy".

Dino Zandegù will turn 85 tomorrow ("Beauty, to be honest, not even when I was 20"). His cycling as a rider, from the Sixties and Seventies, seems prehistoric ("When, five kilometers from the finish of a Veneto Amateur Race, I braked, got off the bike and greeted dad, mom, and all seven of my sisters, and the first pursuers, whom I had a three-minute lead on, overtook me, Gino Bartali, who was scouting for San Pellegrino, told me I was all wrong and needed to be redone. I'm afraid I didn't do it"). His cycling as a sports director, from the Eighties and Nineties, seems cinematic ("When, at a Giro dell'Appennino, I found my rider Johnny Fregonese among the retired, whom I had ordered to stay on the wheel of the favorite Gibì Baronchelli, and he told me he had kept his word and obeyed to the letter, retired Gibì, he had retired too, and then I could only pat him on the shoulder and congratulate him"). His cycling as head of the advertising caravan, from the 2000s, seems theatrical ("A musical and road Giro d'Italia, joyful and playful, circus-like and Cistercian, itinerant and honking").

A couple of years ago we were working on his book. He didn't want to do it. Perhaps he feared his colleagues: "They'll think I've gotten a big head". Perhaps he feared the commitment: "I'll never reach a hundred stories". Perhaps he even feared his memory: "Sometimes it plays tricks on me". After laborious negotiations, he finally agreed on the subtitle: "Hundred stories true 90 percent". More complicated was agreeing on the title: "If everyone falls, I win". Lalla's, his wife's, go-ahead was indispensable, who has no consultative but decisive power. Then he became so attached to the book that he became the most equipped, most stubborn, most effective seller in the Italian publishing house Ediciclo network. At the risotto in Masone before the Turchino along the Milano-Sanremo, at the start of Coppa Agostoni, at the finish of Coppa Bernocchi. In deconsecrated churches, in civic libraries, in restaurants with old glories. Sometimes equipping himself with stool and small table, umbrella and raincoat, along with fountain pen and pencil. In this Giro, in Asiago, where he was almost playing at home, he achieved a full house. I saw him in action with my own eyes: suffocating like a swarm of bees, Machiavellian like a sudoku, convincing like Mike Tyson. On the rear window of his car, he stuck the book cover sticker, and thanks to this trick he managed to be recognized even on the highway, stop at a short rest area and place a couple of copies on the fly, enriched with personalized dedication and meticulous signature.

Zandegù, a cunning fellow, pretends to reject praise, claims to have no merit and explains that instead he lost his great battle. Representative – indeed, free-lance – of Francesco Moser's wines, thanks to a subtle and praiseworthy diplomatic work Dino had managed to persuade none other than Beppe Saronni to buy cartons of Teroldego and Lagrein, Gewurztraminer and even brut 51,151, all regularly and periodically, until a couple of explosive interviews with the two in the "Corriere della Sera" abruptly interrupted sales. Forget Trump, forget tariffs! "And the only one to lose out – Zandegù still complains – was me. Precisely me who had nothing to do with it".