Long distance runner, chaser, time trialist, Learco Guerra was the Italian runner most loved by fans in the 1930s: they poured on him the affection...

Long distance runner, chaser, time trialist, Learco Guerra was the Italian runner most loved by fans in the 1930s: they poured on him the affection and popular passion that they were unable to allocate to his great rival, Alfredo Binda, lucid, cold and scientific.
A World Championship (1931, time trial), a Giro d'Italia (1934), a Milan-Sanremo (1933), a Giro di Lombardia (1934) and, again, twice second in the Tour de France (1930, 1933), and twice second in the World Championship (1930 and 1934), plus around eighty races won always as if he were attacking the finish line: with impetus, power, arrogance.
Thus was born the myth of The Human Locomotive: «That one goes like a train». It's a great compliment to go like a train when instead you have two thin human-powered wheels. Big relationship, belly on the ground, and down to swirl, to pan, to piston. Then, having retired from racing, starting from 1945, as sporting director Guerra opened the way to the numerous victories of foreign champions such as Hugo Koblet, Charly Gaul, Federico Bahamontes and Rik Van Looy.
One hundred and twenty years after his birth (15 October 1902), Claudio Gregori and Marco Pastonesi, two excellent names in Italian sports journalism, tell the exciting biographical story of Il grande Guerra.

Art direction Tundra.

    «Learco Guerra can boast a popularity that perhaps no runner has ever enjoyed.
    Millions and millions of people lined up along the streets throughout Italy to cheer him on and cheer him on."
    Orio Vergani, Il Corriere della Sera, 11 June 1934.

 

Weight: 0.6kg
Dimensions: 27 × 16 × 2.5 cm
Authors: Marco Pastonesi, Claudio Gregori
Number of pages: 248
Format: 13 x 21 cm

 

Italian version only.