I’M A RIDER FRANCESCO GUIDOLIN

The new Swansea City manager is known in his native Italy as a cycling nut – in fact, he claims to have ‘invented’ the Giro d’Italia’s infamous Monte Zoncolan...

My home region, the Veneto, has a very strong cycling culture. I remember us getting our first TV and never missing a Milan-San Remo after that. I also vividly remember seeing the Giro d’Italia for the first time. I must have been six or seven, and our teachers took us out of the classroom and to the roadside to see the race pass through Castelfranco Veneto. That became a tradition – a break in lessons and everyone outside to see the Giro whenever it came through our town. It wasn’t until the end of my football career in Italy in the mid-80s that I started riding properly. I’d had a bike growing up, but it was just for messing around on – nothing serious or organised. My sport and my job ended up being football; I played professionally until an injury forced me to retire at 31. That was also when a dear friend and the guy behind Italy’s best amateur team, Egidio Fior, gave me a racing bike. I brought up my 100,000th kilometre in the year 2000. I’d just turned 45. I reckon I’m now close to 200,000 – I try to do around 10,000 kilometres a year, most of them in the summer months, when there’s no football. I go back to the northeast of Italy, usually when the Giro’s on, then to France to watch some of the Tour and to ride on the Côte d’Azur and in Provence. Monte Grappa, at home in Italy, has always been my climb. I also go on holiday every year to Roussillon, near Mont Ventoux, and I’ve climbed that at least once or twice every year for the last six or seven years, usually on a Sunday so I can test myself against other weekend riders. My wife waits at the top, I get changed, then we head down through Sault and have lunch. It’s always a special day in my year. I still haven’t gone under one hour thirty for the climb from Bedoin, but I haven’t admitted defeat yet.