It happened at Dente di Cane. Giro d'Italia 1964, the stage that started from Roccaraso and arrived in Caserta, 188 kilometers and that Dente di Cane, a tough, straight, brutal climb, a kilometer-and-a-half long, where riders would beg spectators to push them, being careful that those same spectators wouldn't steal the tubular tire strapped under the saddle, or pull the pump from the frame, or rummage through their pockets looking for a sandwich. A spectator insulted Jacques Anquetil, who on the fifth day had seized the pink jersey, and would carry it all the way to Milan. "Thief, go home". Giampiero Pancini, a domestique, but not Anquetil's, stopped, got off his bike, pushed the spectator, sent him into a ditch, then got back on his bike and continued the race. And Anquetil thanked him.

Yesterday morning Giampiero Pancini died. He was born on June 1st, 1939, he was 87 years old. He was Tuscan, more precisely from Arezzo, from Castelnuovo, a hamlet of Subbiano. And he was Tuscan, more precisely from Arezzo, in his vocation for cycling. Who knows if anyone hoped to have found a small new Coppi, in the year of his breakthrough, 1960, but towards the end of the season, when Pancini first won at Santa Caterina di Cortona, then the time trial of the Coppa del Mobilio at Ponsacco, about forty kilometers covered at 47 kilometers per hour. Prize: a mirror, still hanging in the Pancini home. Amateur with Fracor of Empoli alongside Livio Trapè, he turned professional in 1962, and there he had to adapt to racing as a domestique: at Atala, team captain Vito Taccone, a fifteenth place at the Giro di Toscana, retirement at the Giro d'Italia in the terrible snowstorm stage at Passo Rolle, seventeenth place at the Tre Valli Varesine. In 1963 and 1964 at Lygie, still for Taccone, forty-fourth and twenty-sixth in the general classification of the Giro d'Italia. "A good guy, a very good guy – recalls Pietro Partesotti, teammate at Lygie in 1963 -. He spent a lot of time with Idrio Bui, also Tuscan, but from Sinalunga". "Tall, lean, silent – specifies Roberto Poggiali, also at Lygie in 1963 -, he was a handsome boy, well-built on the bike". 1965 would be Pancini's final year as a professional, with Bianchi-Mobylette of Pierino Baffi and Bruno Mealli, Meo Venturelli and Dino Zandegù. Enough fountains and water bottles, enough chases and placings. His passion drove him to continue as a sports director, life convinced him to specialize until he opened a bakery, and consolidated it, and expanded it first in his Castelnuovo di Subbiano, run with his wife Luana and today managed by his daughter Sandra.

"If he had raced today – recalls Marcello Mugnaini, his teammate at Lygie in 1964 – he would have been considered a golden domestique. Strong, even in time trials, generous, obedient, patient. With Taccone patience was an essential quality. To Alfredo Sivocci, the sports director of Lygie, I said it clearly: either me or him. Instead Pancini was less impulsive, he thought before saying something, and maybe he wouldn't say it at all". After racing ends, riders remain teammates of the same squad, like a big family. "We would meet at the Giro del Casentino, at the punch card, then eat all together – says Mugnaini -. We went together to the first Eroiche, with Pasquale Morini, a great friend of cycling. And perhaps also to the lunches organized by Enzo Ricciarini at Narnali di Prato". It's an emptiness full of stories and affection. "We were also united by bread, daily bread – adds Mugnaini -. Him in his big bakery, me, after 20 years as a representative for Filotex, as a delicatessen owner and greengrocer, just as it was done back then, in my Montemignaio".

"There are few of us left", whispers Partesotti. Now even fewer. Fallen at home, slipped into a coma, 15 days fighting between life and death: poor Pancini. The funeral on Saturday at 10 in the church of Castelnuovo.