May 1954. Four months earlier, Italy took a historic step into modernity with the debut of television broadcasts Rai while the national team led by the Czeizler-Schiavio-Piola triad is preparing to experience a decidedly anonymous World Cup on Swiss soil. And the protagonist of this story flies the flag of the Swiss country, even if at the start of the Giro d’Italia from Palermo his horizons are very different from what they would later reveal. Carlo Clericiborn and raised in Zurich from an Italian father confined for anti-fascismhad been the protagonist of a controversial episode in the 1953 pink race. Accused of having helped his fellow citizen Hugo Koblet – Fausto Coppi’s rival – to rejoin the group after a fall, he had been kicked off his own team, the Welterweight. It is also at the origin of these facts that Clerici asked for and obtained Swiss citizenship and married, in view of the 1954 Giro, precisely with Learco Guerra of Angelo Biondo Koblet. Who had tasted final success the previous year, but he was beaten by Coppi in his legendary debut on the Stelvio, proscenium for the fifth wonder of the Airone at the Giro. It goes without saying that they are still two contenders for the 37th edition of the pink race, the longest ever with its 4337 kilometres, with Fiorenzo Magni out of the way and the forty-year-old Gino Bartali at the twilight of his career and at the start for the last time.
