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Marco Pinotti, Saunier Duval - Prodir

16 July 2005

A Curious Episode: The Bicycle Thieves

Yesterday I rode about 6 hrs on the track and road, so today I had an easy ride. I rode with Milesi, Bramati and Missaglia to Brignoli's coffee bar (former rider, teammate of Pantani) in Bergamo. We stopped a couple of minutes to drink something cold. The bar is called "Kilometro 0" and it is in the center of Bergamo.

When we exited the bar, in the central square, Milesi's and my bikes weren't there. Somebody had stolen them. So we were talking about what to do, when a guy called Davide Burini offered to take us home. He got on his MTB and went home to get his car. After a few minutes, Davide phoned us saying that he had seen 2 guys on our bikes! He was about 3 kms away, so with the help of some other guys, we got on 2 scooters. We began to reach Davide, who in the meantime was trying to follow the thieves with his MTB. We went full gas through the city until the next village, keeping in contact with Davide by phone. It was amazing seeing me and Milesi, dressed like bikers on a scooter, with Bramati and Missaglia following us with their bikes. In the village Davide lost the 2 thieves, so we divided up. Suddenly we saw the thieves escaping in a little road and we blocked them. They left the bikes and ran away. One of them collapsed against a car and escaped, the other one was blocked. We then called the cops who took the foreign (from Romania I heard) guy.

Luckily it finished well. For some minutes we felt like we were in a comedy, with the high speed chase on scooters through the city. A big "thank you" to Davide for his help!

bye
Marco

 

Read more of Pinotti's Inside Scoop
News Special: Longing for the Giro, New book by Gijs Zandbergen and Marco Pinotti

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