Today around 2 PM, when the Tour tackles the Col du Telegraphe climb, it will be impossible not to remember that wonderful Sunday of July 6, 1952. It was 12:30 when, after the Croix de Fer, the front of a strong group of about twenty riders began the long ascent to Col du Galibier.

The small French chamois Le Guilly immediately broke away while behind him a handful of splendid cyclists were selected and immortalized like shadows in Carlo Martini's celebrated photograph, the "photograph of the water bottle exchange".

Yes indeed, Coppi and Bartali, in strict order of progression, were not alone, as sports legend wanted us to believe for years, and it wasn't even a photograph carefully constructed and repeated for the camera, but rather a true snapshot, taken during the race, with plenty of sweat and exhaustion as the main characters. I truly believe, as Marco Pastonesi rightly wrote: "there was no state of mind for making cinema".

A few years ago, in fact, the true photograph emerged showing an exhausted Stan Ockers as the supporting protagonist, his left arm stretched out in a desperate search for a good "samaritan of the climbs" to hand him a water bottle. These anonymous glass containers, once emptied and thrown by the roadside, perhaps shattered into a thousand pieces...

And I would like to believe that some tiny fragment still lies there among the stones bearing witness to the epic of cycling and saying: That day there, I was there!