I’d never won anything.

I was an impulsive young bicycle racer at a twilight training race in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. I was eighteen in June 1988, and still learning the art of criterium racing in my second full season. The sound of pump chucks breaking the vacuum as they came off tire valve stems mixed with the smell of freshly cut grass. It was a typically warm, humid evening holding the chance of a thundershower.

The usual cast of characters for the “A Race” field were on the start line: robust, muscular velodrome and criterium specialists, time trial geeks who shaved their arms in addition to their legs for extra speed, skinny mountain climbers out of their element on the flat circuit, and then the all-rounders like myself. They were dentists, accountants, bureaucrats, firefighters, college students and bike shop employees who underwent the metamorphosis to top amateur racers every Tuesday night from late April to September.

I was in flying form. I knew the course well enough to know it punished impatience. There were twenty-five laps. I told myself to wait.

On the start line I saw him.

An Italian ex-professional rider—though I wouldn’t learn his name until later—stood out immediately. Effortless poise. Restrained charisma. Immaculate kit. A thoroughbred among our local rabble of donkeys.

In Europe—especially Belgium and the Netherlands—criteriums, races on a closed road circuit, can be scripted circuses. So the presence of an Italian thoroughbred in an American criterium was sheer folly—sort of like driving a Ferrari on a dirt track.

The course was a two kilometer loop around the perimeter of a business park. There was a slight hill after the start/finish line, enough to scrub your speed, but it was gained back on the long, sweeping downhill that led to a left-hand 90-degree turn and the finish line almost exactly 200 meters away. It was a great place to absorb the performative art of the criterium.

The races were scored like a velodrome omnium, with points gained for the first two riders across the line every lap, further points for the first five across the line every fifth lap, and then double points for the finish. By riding consistently but conservatively, a rider could place in the fifth-lap totals and at the finish and find himself atop the points leaderboard.

That was one way to perform well. Then there was my way.

With four laps to go, I attacked—jumped from the pack of riders, stood on the pedals, and tried to tear myself loose before patience could catch me.

There’s nothing to lose, I told myself, already knowing this was rash.

Within seconds I sensed someone on my wheel. I glanced back and was stunned to see the Italian following, perfectly composed. I would later learn his name: Sandro Fortunato.

He rode a celeste Bianchi Superleggera, with silver Campagnolo components that were gleaming in the last light of the day. My own bike—a hardscrabble Dauphin Reynolds 531 borne of Gallic vainglory—clicked and creaked beneath me like an old gate asked to open one time too many.

We hit the downhill. He drew alongside, calm with controlled breaths, almost conversational.

He didn’t shout. He didn’t command.

“Go,” he said.

So I went.

This is where my crack-up might have begun. The peloton has its own sort of centripetal mass, and escaping it requires bravado, intense effort that is only just submaximal, and a touch of insanity.

The speed rose. The gap opened. My lungs burned, but the effort felt strangely suspended, as if we had slipped outside the race and into some private agreement neither of us had spoken aloud.

The peloton hesitated behind us. That was enough.

My mind looked for reasons to hoist the white flag in the frenzy of the escape. So I began to run down a litany of questions to assess my next chess move. How long was I supposed to pull? Was the junior scout bound to sacrifice his chances for the commanding officer? Was there an etiquette here I didn’t yet understand?

I decided in the space of 100 meters—one-tenth of a kilometer—that Sandro was likely a man of principle, not someone to exploit the naiveté of an eighteen-year-old boy.

Just before the next corner, I swung aside and let him come through. He did not surge or lose composure. He’d put his trust in my bike handling ability, even though I was a nobody. That made me feel like I was somebody. He was following my rear wheel closely and swinging aside just enough to drop behind me, but not disrupting the rhythm or flow of our paired effort.

Fortunato took the front smoothly, without theatrics, carving the turn as though he had drawn it himself. When I looked back again, the field was nowhere in sight.

Before the line he pulled off and waved me forward, inviting—not demanding—my turn. Three laps to go.

What followed was wordless and precise. Five-second pulls. No surging, no games. Just rhythm and measured cadence. Veteran and amateur, Italian and American, trading work in mechanical accord. A four-lap global partnership against the clock.

I felt completely fresh, and my brain had not registered the lactate buildup in my blood.

We had the race.

And then came the problem.

I felt astonishingly good. The effort I had feared never arrived. My legs were alive, my breaths steady. Opportunity gathered itself at my back.

Should I attack him?

Was there an obligation between two riders who had shared an escape? Or was winning simply a matter of strength left in the legs? Fortunato had raced against the international elite of world cycling. He’d survived all three weeks of the Giro d’Italia. He’d rubbed shoulders with champions, served them, beaten them. I was an eighteen-year-old local racer having the ride of his life. Would I ever again have a chance like this one?

Before I could decide, his hand rested lightly on my back.

Gentle. Paternal.

“Go ahead, son,” he said.

I entered the final corner first and rose from the saddle, legs burning, the air thick with sweat and dusk. Two hundred meters of blur and faith. In racing, as in life, victory is never certain; sometimes it arrives disguised as someone else’s grace.

I crossed first, too startled to lift my arms. Sandro coasted in behind me. Serene. Gracious. Magnanimous. Gentilezza—kindness, but also nobility.

Our little pageant had concluded with theatrical flourish. He touched my shoulder.

“Good job,” he said.

“Grazie, signore.”

I should have felt triumph. Instead, there was a stillness I didn’t yet understand. There was no thunderous applause or cheers. Just the clapping of hands from the few girlfriends or wives gathered at the finish.

The victory had been given before the line. My pride had not come across it yet.

I drank from my bidon, splashed some water over my face, and let a few drops fall onto the pavement behind me.

Then, finally, I raised my arms.

***

Matthew Butterman is a journalist and marketing communications specialist from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA. He is also the creator and host of the Nimble Youth podcast, which focuses on pediatric mental health. He is writing his first novel, Light of the Horses.

An earlier flash version of this story was selected by the Wildsound festival.