RAMATO ‘KIDS BIKE’, C.1975

‘In the 1970s and 1980s, in the workshop of my grandfather’s time, they made these kind of bikes for children, or really for parents who were passionate cyclists!

‘This came to us from a collector in Switzerland, who contacted me around five years ago to say did we want to buy it, so we paid €500,’ says Gastaldello. ‘I couldn’t tell you if that is good value, but I know these bikes were expensive when they were made. The wheels are 20-inch tubulars and the groupset is Campagnolo Nuovo Record. Some owner must have been very keen to give their child the lightest possible proper racing bike because the cranks and chainrings have been drilled out.

‘By this point the company had been Wilier Triestina for some years. When we were founded in 1906 by Pietro Dal Molin, this area of Italy was under Austrian Empire rule, but people of the territory like Dal Molin wanted it to be Italian, so to promote this idea they would use words with meanings only known to Italians. So “Wilier” is made up from the letters of the phrase W l’italia Liberate e Redenta, which means “Long live Italy, liberated and redeemed”. “W” was a short way in Italian of writing “viva”. So the name was a kind of secret protest.

‘“Triestina” was added by Dal Molin when he started our first cycling team, again like a protest or resistance – after the Second World War the rule of Trieste [a nearby town] was disputed by Yugoslavia and Italy. Dal Molin wanted it to be Italian, so he advertised this fact with the team name. It is where our “Alabarda” headbadge symbol comes from – it is the symbol for the city of Trieste.’