Road to Valor: A True Story of WWII Italy, the Nazis, and the Cyclist Who Inspired a Nation

by Aili McConnon

His vision had started to cloud, one of the first signs of bonking—the condition when a rider’s body shuts down because he has consumed all the energy stores in his muscles.

For a man who had lived almost all of his adult life in the unrelenting scrutiny of the public eye, there is something fitting in the fact that he was able to keep some element of his greatest achievement private. As he would tell his son Andrea, “If you’re good at a sport, they attach the medals to your shirts and then they shine in some museum. That which is earned by doing good deeds is attached to the soul and shines elsewhere.”