January 27th is the Day of Memory, which since 2005 the UN has established to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution. For us, it's an opportunity to remember, once again, Gino Bartali.

The first time is never forgotten, especially if the first time was at the Vigorelli. "Bartali, and also Coppi, would come to warm up before the meetings. We would look at them, observe them, study them, admire them, love them. And we wouldn't dare approach them. Out of respect, shyness, and even fear."

Marino Vigna, from Milan's Cagnola neighborhood, lived just a few hundred meters from the Cycling Scala and, enchanted and infected, would live cycling for his entire life. "Meeting Bartali was inevitable. It happened in 1960, after the Rome Olympics. With all the other Olympians - I had won gold in the team pursuit on the Eur track - in September I participated in the San Pellegrino stage race, which gathered winners from one of the 100 San Pellegrino races held during the year, starting from San Marino and ending in San Pellegrino Terme, there were also Bailetti, Fornoni and Trapè, we didn't race in teams but in groups, and the leader of my group was Andrea Bartali, Gino's firstborn son."

The relationships would become closer. "In 1966 and 1967 Bartali was my technical director at Vittadello. The first year we raced on a Pinarello bike but branded Vittadello with the same colors as the jersey, orange and black with a white V. The second year on a Pinarello bike but branded Bartali. The first year I won at the Milano-Torino. The second year an almost victory at the Vuelta in Spain. It happened that after a few days, of the 10 riders at the start, with Panizza, Dancelli, Andreoli, Baldan retired... only four of us remained, Aldo Moser, De Rosso, Schiavon and me. In the Andorra-Lérida stage I joined a breakaway of eight, with strong sprinters like Graczyk, but I would finally have a chance after three top 10 placements. Instead, a spectator leaned too far beyond the barriers, we collided, he hit my shoulder, I finished seventh. Despite feeling broken everywhere, I held on and reached the conclusion of the Vuelta in Bilbao. Bartali rushed to reassure the Vittadello managers, explaining that I had done well, very well, always better, that I had improved even on climbs, yet I was not called up for the Giro d'Italia."

Vigna and Bartali would continue to meet even when Marino became sports director at Faema and collaborator of Alfredo Martini in the Italian national team. "Every casual encounter, and even every official occasion, became a reunion. That time we entered a restaurant together, then Martini asked Bartali to leave because his presence had attracted a crowd that filled the premises and prevented eating. That time, or rather probably two, in Larciano, in Abruzzo, when we participated with our wives, Adriana his and Vilma mine, at parties organized by emigrants returned home. That time Ivo Faltoni suggested we stop in Amatrice to eat a real amatriciana, Martini followed by me, Bartali followed by the people. And all those times Bartali was invited to tell the water bottle episode and then first asked his interlocutor if they were a Bartali or Coppi fan, then based on the answer modified the version: if they were a Coppi fan, it was Coppi who passed him the water bottle, if they were a Bartali fan, it was he who passed the water bottle to Coppi."

Vigna was a Coppi fan, but became - this too was inevitable - a Bartali fan. "And I remained a Bartali fan even after his death. Faltoni invited me to participate in the commemoration of Gino, starting from the Terontola station and arriving at the churches of Assisi, about sixty kilometers by bike. Because Terontola was one of the railway junctions where Bartali would go during his peace postman missions transporting fake documents to give a new identity to Jews persecuted by racial laws. And because in Assisi Bartali would stop to obtain those identity documents in a convent of cloistered nuns. All details that he, among the billions of words with which he overwhelmed us, had never revealed to us."