Cycling was a sport so important in Italy that it marked a generation, sparked f
ears of civil war, changed the way Italian was spoken, led to legal reform and e
ven prompted the Pope himself to praise a cyclist, by name, from his balcony in
St Peter's in Rome. It was a sport so popular that it created the geography of I
taly in the minds of her citizens, and some have said that it was cycling, not p
olitical change, that united Italy. Pedalare! Pedalare! is the first complete hi
story of Italian cycling to be published in English.
