Winter took away, for the child Paolo, the summer of his years. It left in December, even before the solstice and Christmas, with the passing of Rik Van Looy at 90 years old, the great Belgian cyclist, the summer of his years.

It left, from that pink vacation house in Carano, where the child Paolo - dressed like a mature adult - had returned just the other day, to tidy up time and barely mitigate the chill of its walls: house "Della Rosa".

Summer left, not just that of 2024, but the very concept of summer, and his hands discreetly and cautiously leafed through the dry paper of Lo Sport Illustrato collections from the early '60s, escaped from the cold tidying of young housemaids. What could that mountain of newspapers mean to them, or even to their children, their grandchildren. Who was Zilverberg?

It left, and Paolo's child memory barely remembers - now that he could be a grandfather of those ten years - his first bicycle, during the time Van Looy was alive.

He would leave Salgari's books, Sandokan and Tremal-naik, to climb on it, early in the morning, in the countryside, the endless summers of Carano, his first bicycle. Paolo the child would escape from his grandmother Rosa's rough hands who was still rubbing his face with fresh water, she who said he washed like cats, and off he went. The Tourmalet, the Izoard, the Aubisque, the Stelvio were there, on the hundred meters of a worn path between grass and terrain, from the family house to the Di Meo settlers' house, further up. Across a rickety wooden bridge, crossing an old rural road.

His first bicycle was there, a Bianchi 18, with racing handlebars and a water bottle, made of tin like a sheriff's star, and even a gear shift, incredible, which an ingenious artisan from Sessa Aurunca, in the workshop near the Annunziata, had managed to adapt to such a small bike.

And on that little bicycle, at 10 years old, he would call himself Pasqualino Fornara, still in tears for the dramatic defeat in the 1956 Giro, in the Bondone storm, his Fornara, the melodrama... And he would tell races in his own way, like a reporter: yes, last Coppi, or at most second to last. And among the worst, always a Belgian, Van Aerde, and a Swiss, Vaucher, you explain to him why. And his first bicycle, a bike with an adult's gear shift, was Paolo's child pride, every time they would go from the countryside to Carano on Saturday afternoon for an ice cream, on the Corso.

And the village boys, the street kids, would follow him to look at it, to admire it perhaps too closely. And he was a bit afraid they might want to take it, and he would cling to his father, the times his father was there, who hadn't remained in Naples, at the University.

And he just had to turn back, to admonish them severely, and they would vanish just from that stern look. And child Paolo, reassured, would then sprint, redeem again: behind the curve of the Station road, he would imagine the flying finish line. "Go, Paolo, see that you're no longer the sniveling kid crying for that Fornara, you've become a big and strong boy, you know, just like the Belgian Van Looy".

His father's voice, his rare smile, the name heard for the first time in his heart of Rik Van Looy in the summer of 1960, blessed by his father as the emblem of the absolute champion: without stain and without fear, a Cid Campeador.

Van Looy's face, in those years of Lo Sport Illustrato, his feats and that missed Giro d'Italia, child Paolo would still caress. But slowly, almost like communion wafers, slowly so as not to hurt the undefeated champion of FAEMA, not to cause them damage, not to wake them. Yes, child Paolo, even now in January 2025 when he is of a completely different age, is still big and strong like Van Looy. Only that Rik, even after his end on December 17, 2024, will remain immortal.