Arrigo Padovan has died. He was 97 years old. He was the longest-living stage winner - three stages - in the Giro d'Italia. A dinosaur.
Antonio Enrico by birth certificate, Arrigo from his first membership card onwards. From Padova, Castelbaldo. Dirt poor: blind father, mother a jack-of-all-trades at home and in service. Just enough schooling: until thirteen years old. Then working, falsifying his documents, the minimum age was fourteen years, more or less, in Bolzano, first in a workshop then in a factory, twelve hours a day, and evening classes in between. The war disrupted what little Antonio Enrico, not yet Arrigo, had just started. He started over again, from Badia Polesine, then from Verona, always in a workshop.
But the bicycle. A passion. His first race, a local festival, with a borrowed bike, belonging to Angelo Menon, who would race four Giri d'Italia winning a stage. Result: seventh. Padovan bet on himself: forget working, better to pedal. His first racing bike, a Mora from Padova, the result of a public collection, thirty thousand lire, getting a taste for it. The second racing bike, a Lygie, from Atala, starting to win. The rest all racing: in 1950 an amateur, in 1951 a professional, debut at Milano-Torino, withdrawn due to cold and rain, then Milano-Sanremo, finished, twenty-seventh tied with 42 other riders (so much for photo finish), then the Industry and Commerce Grand Prix, first, and finally the Giro d'Italia, white jersey as the best young rider. A sprinter was born.
Padovan raced with Bartali and Coppi. "Watch out for that old man there" - Giannetto Cimurri, masseur at Atala and national team, would tell him, pointing at Ginettaccio -. "If you arrive with him, you'll arrive well". And when he managed, Antonio Enrico now definitely Arrigo would get on the wheel of those two, watch and try to learn. "I cared for both of them - he confided to me - but Bartali was more sympathetic to me. I gave him a water bottle or two, not to Coppi".
Eight Giri d'Italia, four Tour de France, one Vuelta. About fifteen victories. Besides the three stages in the Giro, two at the Tour and one in the Tour of Switzerland, and the Tour of Tuscany. "At the Tour I would cry from exhaustion, from the heat, from the climbs, from the sunburns. Alfredo Binda, who was our team manager at the Tour, would explain to me: 'Padovan, when you're tired, the others are tired too'. It wasn't much consolation. But it gave me the strength to hold on: with Pierino Baffi we were specialists in arriving just before the time limit. And it also gave me the strength to win my stage: it meant the contract for the following year".
In the sprint, Padovan was feared: "The greatest satisfaction was when I beat Rik Van Looy in Milan, at the Vigorelli, in the last stage of the 1960 Giro d'Italia - he confessed to me -. I immediately left for home, but I couldn't resist the temptation and stopped along the way to watch myself on TV". They said he was a bandit: "Perhaps unruly, but not unfair. The truth is that in a sprint you can't let anyone pass. I managed. I knew the cyclist's career is short. And I also knew that the important thing is to win". Words of a dinosaur.