The last days of school saw us engaged in La Villa with students from the High Schools and Technical Institute of Alta Badia. We are here thanks to the friends of the Maratona dles Dolomites, who last year supported the Scarponi Foundation's school project with a donation of 10,000 euros. Thanks to this donation and many others received from private individuals, including various public contributions from calls and co-projects, in the 2025-26 school year the Michele Scarponi Foundation managed to meet girls and boys from 42 schools in 27 Italian cities. From Filottrano to Milan, passing through Jesi, Marotta, Ripatransone, Ancona, Cento, Bologna, Cuneo, Brescia, Schio, Trento, Luino, San Salvo, Vergato, Bra, Mondovì, Racconigi, Saluzzo, Fossano, Corinaldo, Montefano, San Benedetto, Perugia, Pieve di Soligo, Castiglione d'Orcia, Pontedera. A Tour of Italy spanning one school year that has as its final stage the stadium of the most famous cycling in the world, the Dolomites.

The meetings with the students are three: the first involves all the students of the school and is my responsibility; the second and third meetings feature only first and second-year classes and with me is Alessandra Giardini, who arrived from Bologna on a packed regional train to Brunico, a city where it is normal to get around by bicycle, and therefore also safe.

The students of Alta Badia speak at least four languages: Ladin, German, Italian and English, yet even they don't know why the pink jersey is pink, they answer "climber" when I ask them what the cyclist who is strong on climbs is called and only one in a hundred has heard of Fausto Coppi. The second test also confirms the rule that putting a foot down is a gesture that is no longer in fashion. In fact, when I arrive to tell them about that stage of the Colle dell'Agnello and ask them to put themselves in Michele's shoes and choose whether to stop and wait for their team captain, giving up their own victory for an uncertain chase for the pink jersey of a teammate, or go straight towards a well-deserved personal triumph, only one hand out of two hundred rises whispering that they choose to stop. The others want to win, like the hundreds and hundreds of hands of the same age encountered previously in the other schools. The overwhelming majority of the other hands have no doubts, their own victory is the most important, always.

So I let Michele speak, I show the video of that sacred stage and they see the walls of snow, Steven Kruijswijk in the pink jersey who makes a mistake in the curve on the descent and crashes into the snow, Vincenzo Nibali in a white cape and Michele who puts his foot down. "Yes guys, Michele gives up his own personal victory for a greater victory, that of a teammate, of another."

Not a year will pass from that outdated gesture that my brother will be hit and killed in Filottrano, at home, and on me and the boys, at this point, falls a silence without name, like a mountain at night. Only putting a foot down saves us this time too, only that gesture helps us climb the impossible climb and brings us back together, within the same embrace, as written on a green note, anonymous, by a boy or girl from Alta Badia, when at the end I invite them to write down a word, an emotion, after listening to Michele's story: I felt the love that you can have for someone else.

The students know how to change the road.