A step back in time to remember the figure of a doctor who for twenty years worked with scrupulousness and professionalism in important cycling teams. We are talking about Mario Ireneo Sturla, a doctor from Pavia, a city where he was born in 1948 and from 1974 to 1994, was "the doctor" of cycling teams, actually top-level ones like Atala, directed by the capable Franco Cribiori and subsequently, for a shorter time, with teams guided by a then young team manager, Emanuele Bombini, born in 1959, originally from Puglia but moved very young to Oltrepò Pavese, holder of a solid professional career and, almost without interruption, risen to the team car with first-rate successes and prestigious riders. To the twenty years, several others of assiduous consulting to multiple riders should be added.

For those who would like to refresh their memory, the annuals of two wheels and the web document, with abundance, names of champions and very valid supporting riders who raced under Milan's Franco Cribiori and the now Pavese Emanuele Bombini, the "Bomba", who is now the primary organizational reference for the famous "Wine Arrow", a classic race that takes place among the vine-covered hills of the area.

Obviously we gave precedence to cycling, but Professor Sturla is, in parallel, an established, passionate, and competent boxing expert, at the highest level, holding various important national and international positions in world organizations of the "noble art", using a classic definition of boxing, both in his specific professional medical field and in the managerial one. And all this always putting forward attention, passion, interest in the person, beyond the specific scientific professional value never separated from patient care...

His educational path is completed in his Pavia with the finalization - medical degree with 110 and honors - at the prestigious local university. He is a specialist in Internal Medicine, Occupational Medicine and, naturally one would say, Sports Medicine. He collaborates assiduously with renowned universities and international institutions.

He is president of AMSD Pavia FMSI, national health coordinator of FPI (Italian Boxing Federation), president of the National Studies and Research Commission FPI, president of the Medical Commission of European EBU (European Boxing Union) and Chairman of the Medical Commission of WBC (World Boxing Council).

Here, however, we talk about bicycles and cycling enthusiasts of not-so-young age can remember Dr. Sturla, team doctor, characterized by a very personal - and meticulously maintained - appearance, unchanged over time, including face and clothing - let's define them "Habsburg-style" - which he always proposes with ease and a touch of peculiar class, naturally. An irreplaceable, unique, very personal style felt from within, without any ambition or concession to wanting to present himself as a "constructed" character through appearance. They are part of his being and characteristic nature.

His approach has always been, and is, gentle and available, both on roads - sunny or wet, narrow, wide and sloping up and down with challenging curves (ed. note: the term dangerous is not usually contemplated for barely concealed modesty in official cycling terminology), and ringside, with the varied humanity that crowns the square.

And, precisely ringside, a friendship matured between the doctor and a popular, multifaceted print journalist and television personality who also loved the "noble art" like Maurizio Mosca who exclusively entrusted the care of his health to his Pavese doctor friend. A care based on the journalist's trust and the doctor's full understanding of the peculiar, extroverted, let's call it "creativity" - carefree, often outside predetermined schemes - that characterized the character, but above all friend, Maurizio Mosca.

On this point, Sturla recalls that while at Disneyland with the Batik Del Monte team of Bombini, penultimate stage of the 1997 Tour de France and departure of the final stage with finish at Paris-Champs-Élysées, he receives an alarmed phone call from Maurizio Mosca. Sturla verbally reassures his friend about the symptoms of presumed illness exposed by the journalist with some apprehension. It was Saturday and he invited his friend to come to Pavia to his studio the following Monday. During the night, a "surprise": the hotel staff informs him that a gentleman arrived by taxi asking for Dr. Sturla, for whom, however, the fact was certainly not a "surprise". His friend Maurizio Mosca - who never wanted to obtain a driver's license - was absolutely not new to these "raids" by taxi, to various destinations and events, and the Milan-Rome route, departing from the Gazzetta dello Sport headquarters and then from television studios, was part of the "normality" for Maurizio Mosca and, the doctor recalls, he sometimes participated in these trips, especially regarding boxing, sometimes real "gypsy journeys", with Milanese taxi drivers who well knew the "special customer". It was precisely at the San Matteo Hospital in Pavia that Mosca passed away in 2010, always cared for in the inexorable course of his illness, by his great friend Mario Ireneo Sturla who carries out important clinical activities there in various fields.

Among his multiple commitments, roles and consultations, Professor Sturla maintains constant relationships with his two-wheel friends. He mentions many and we report some, in random order, "flag-style" to use a typographic term, starting with Miro Panizza, Pierino Gavazzi, Massimo Podenzana, Gianni Bugno, still a close friend, Eugenio Berzin, Piotr Ugrumov, Moreno Argentin, Ivan Gotti, Silvio Martinello, Giovanni Mantovani and several others. For "equal opportunity" in boxing he mentions Rocky Mattioli, the Stecca brothers, Loris and Maurizio, and Giovanni Parisi.

The characteristics and merits of those mentioned can be found on the web, but "inside", right in the heart of Mario Ireneo Sturla, the faces, stories, memories expand the field to all his patients, both in sports and in daily, top-level medical profession, for patients big and small.