Where do you think your passion for sport stemmed from and what are some of your earliest sporting memories?

As with every Italian kid, my first experience with sport was with soccer, I start playing with friends when I was six or seven years old. Every afternoon after school there was a meeting point at the local park, I remember we were using trees as goalposts and we came back home before it was dark.

I also remember watching sport on TV, the World Cup in 1994 in USA and the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996 and F1 GP, I fell in love with the big emotions the athletes spread to the fans.

When did you get into cycling and at what point did you and others realise you had a real talent for the sport?

My passion for cycling started when I was 10, my dad is an amateur racer and I asked him for a cool bike like he had. He didn’t buy me one but he signed me up with the local youth bike team and I start racing. I was playing soccer and swimming in the mean time but it looks like I was waiting for something else and with cycling it was love at first sight.

Tell us about your long-time affiliation with the Red Hook Crit? What do you love most about that race and what have been some of the less memorable moments its presented?

My fixed gear passion started in 2010, I watched some cool videos of Mash riding this track bike on streets of San Francisco brakeless and videos of the first Red Hook In Milano. I realised it was a new and fun way to race bikes – different than road cycling – so in 2011 when Red Hook came back to Milano I didn’t miss it and it was really fun! Red hook is all about the emotions, definitely not boring and this is why people really love it.

After more than 20 years I have so many cool memories, but New York in 2012 was special as it was my first time in USA and I will never forget the feeling at the start grid in front of the Liberty Statue with the National Anthem on speakers. This is a story that I will tell to my nephews.

What do you see as your biggest achievements in cycling?

Helping the cycling community by organising cycling events and helping the local youth team with training and races. Also a lot of my friends who took out a fixed gear bike just for fun have now got road bikes and mtb and to spend the weekend riding around dolomites. These are the best achievements for me.

Tell us about the new team you joined in 2018 and some of the successes you’ve had since.

Team Bahumer have a long story of successes in Red Hook and other important fixed gear races around the globe, and I’m really happy to ride with them. The guys are super cool, we have fun and we race around the world. The biggest team win of 2018 is also the must important race, the Red Hook Crit in New York won by Pippo – it was a spectacular race!

Personally I won a race in Varese, it was really cool because it was my first victory after my injuries in 2016, and now we have a September full of top races before the Red Hook Milano, me and the team are going to do our best in every single one.

What goals do you have for the future both in and outside the sport of cycling?

It will be really nice to be in the top 5 in the next Red Hook Crit in Milano. Also, I’m working on a big event in Carpi (the city where I live), it’s a weekend of fixed gear races and a Granfondo, it is really important for the whole community. All my energies are here right now so fingers crossed!