Memo Garello, who won the Giro del Ticino in Switzerland in 1960 after spending a night sleeping in a car with two teammates. Matteo Cravero, who was fourth in the Giro di Romagna in 1969 and was excluded from the Giro d'Italia for insubordination (his captain, Gianni Motta, finished second) but ultimately replaced the injured Motta at the last moment. Giampaolo Cucchietti, who won the Grand Prix of Antibes in France in 1967, but since it was a track-type event, it doesn't appear in cycling annals. Remo Rocchia, who won a stage of the Vuelta in Tarragona, Spain in 1974 as an amateur, and was offered that evening to race for Bernard Hinault but refused, saying "why be a domestique for someone who comes after me?" - history would not prove him right. Franco Giuliano, who in 1975 as an amateur triumphed solo in the Torino-Tigliole classic, thanks in part to a handful of sugar cubes taken from a bar and passed to him by a journalist friend.

Garello, Cravero, Cucchietti, Rocchia and Giuliano, but also Mollo and Destefanis, Minetti and Perona, Dematteis and Rosa, with a special focus on Italo Zilioli and Lucien Aimar in "Cycling in the Granda" (Hever, 296 pages, 22 euros), which Franco Bocca dedicated to stories and characters of Cuneo cycling. A landscape of roads, a panorama of adventures, a grammar of characters, a map of feelings that the Vuelta, in its four Piedmontese days of the 2025 edition (from August 23 to 26), has embraced, nourishing and strengthening itself. The Granda is the province of Cuneo, to which cycling owes so much: stages in the Giro d'Italia, but also the Prato Nevoso stage in the 2008 Tour de France, the Giro delle Valli Cuneesi and the Fausto Coppi gran fondo, the tireless work of Renzo Tealdi but also the silent and anonymous work of enthusiasts and volunteers, managers and assistants, parents and athletes, more or less successful, knowing that every time one gets on a bike and tackles an overpass, a climb, a pass is already a victory.

"Cycling in the Granda" is a treasure chest of stories. That of Giuseppe Viale, known as Jose. Born in 1937 in Borgo San Dalmazzo, it was 1957 when Jose, an amateur, crossed paths with Coppi and his Carpano teammates during training near Limone Piemonte and asked Tino Coletto if he could ride with them. "On the last day, I even found the courage to exchange a few words with Fausto, to whom I said I would be very pleased to own a racing jersey from his team. He smiled and told me: 'If you come with us to Limone, I'll give it to you'. I didn't need to be told twice. When we arrived at the hotel, Fausto asked the White Lady, who was sunbathing in the garden, for the room key, and from the balcony he threw me the Carpano-Coppi jersey". And to think that Jose was a Bartali fan.

Bocca has the ability to transform a small competitive encyclopedia into an emotional map. A cycling paladin, sentinel of this small ancient world that lives on two thin wheels, guardian and connoisseur of human comedies, Bocca collects traces and imprints of his land: "The Land of the Red Devil" (Hever, 2001), "The Land of Champions" (Hever, 2022), "Turin of the Cit" (Hever, 2023). To the rhythm of pedals.