GIANCARLO BROCCI was born in Gaiole in Chianti, in 1954, Bartali’s last year as a competitive cyclist. He began to hear and read about cycling when Coppi was still pursuing his latest goals and the echo of the cycling duel of the century remained very much alive in the hearts of sports’ fans. Graduated in Medicine, he never practiced and has always done other things, in the constant pursuit of his passions. First politics, but he soon interrupted a promising career by writing (summer 1988, preface Michele Serra) Ridatemi il PCI, renouncing his mission and predicting the great crisis of the Left. Brocci has been very involved in sport, practicing it little but loving it a lot and realizing soon, even in that field, that professionals and business were taking the fun out of it. He wrote about Bartali while Gino was still alive, when Coppi, who died young, seemed to have won the duel; Bartali, il mito oscurato revisited a battle that had no winner.

But Brocci is today, above all, the creator of L'Eroica, the historic leisure cycling event that brought the poetry of the cycling that was to the whole world.