Cantalupo, the eagle of Filottrano, the parrot Frankie: it sounds like a zoo, but Alessandra Giardini has simply talked about Michele Scarponi's world, who found himself in his short life being an authentic circus performer, a refined tightrope walker, someone who attacked the road and opponents with a smile on his lips and even when he lost - and lost - always found an appropriate way to turn the page.

It's a light book by Alessandra Giardini, a happy pen of cycling who wrote about this boy from Filottrano, as deep as a climb. It tells the story of a boy who became a man and understood from his first steps that his future would be on a bicycle's pedals. That one day he would win the Giro d'Italia, as he told his cousin Juri when he was a little boy. A book that flows and retraces a life too short, too fast and is complemented by beautiful photographs that are the right companion to a volume that is a true diary of the heart.

One day I'll win the Giro, he had confided, dreamed, and pursued. And one day he even lost it, not knowing he had won it, because it would have been given to him at the table due to Alberto Contador's disqualification, who at that time had an open complex doping issue. He never boasted about it. He lived that suffocated victory as such. With measured awareness that in that Giro he had finished second, not first. And the modest ceremony of handing over the Senza Fine trophy, combined with the privilege of racing the Herning time trial - in Denmark - with the pink jersey and number 1 on his back: it was a prize he experienced with exuberant shyness.

He was born to ride a bicycle and to be a team player, capable of winning and making others win. He had the right competitive drive and genuine awareness of his own limits: he was intelligent. Very. To most, he appeared to be a clown, but those who had the fortune to know and frequent him - and it was a true fortune - could benefit from his depth of soul, his intelligence as pure as mountain water. A man with a quick wit, who never got discouraged. Who knew how to lift you up with a smile and a caress, those that perhaps he would have wanted from his environment, which at a certain point almost pretended not to see him.

Alessandra tells this story with lightness, just as he would have liked, who did not like fuss, who would shy away from too many compliments and praise thrown around. A book written at the will of Marco, his brother, who for years has been running the Michele Scarponi Foundation and to which all the proceeds from this beautiful volume will go. A perfect Christmas gift: because it talks about a beautiful person, a great dad, an adorable husband, and a teammate like no other, and also has the merit of barely touching on the sad epilogue of a boy who dreamed of winning the Giro d'Italia one day but would have wanted to grow old with his Anna, watching his twins, Tommaso and Giacomo, grow up. A book made of images and true words: light as thoughts, deep as a climb.

MICHELE SCARPONI - deep as a climb
by Alessandra Giardini
192 pages
Published by Fondazione Michele Scarponi

Available on the Michele Scarponi Foundation website - by calling 347.5929666 or writing to info@fondazionemichelescarponi.com