RAI TV recently featured the heroic conduct of my old cycling idol Gino Bartali during the sad days of the Shoah.

Though I was too young at the time, I had later visited Auschwitz, in Germany and the Garden of Remembrance, in Jerusalem. When I was doing post-graduate studies in Milan in 1958 I had the pleasure of meeting a young Jewish girl whose family had been saved by a Catholic priest who had hidden them in a chicken coop in his back garden during the time of the persecution, which was not as bad in Italy as it was in Germany.

Bartali, gruff and harsh-spoken – he was dubbed Ginettaccio – was the eternal rival of Fausto Coppi and the king of the mountains. He too had done his bit and he used to carry fake passports and documents in the seat and tubes of his bicycle and he is reckoned to have saved about 800 Jews from deportation and certain death.

“Tutto sbagliato, tutto da rifare” was his favourite expression but what he did for the Jews was certainly not “sbagliato”. He did good by stealth, which is only now being acknowledged.

Forza Gino!