There are those who also manage to bike them. Maybe sprinkling, maybe winning medals, maybe classic, rpm, tours … maybe putting a world bare that, years ago, had taken dangerous drifts. Nicole Cooke He visits the Ghisallo Museum, which reopened on March 1st, and brings the shirt of the world champion on the road to Varese in 2008 as a gift, the bike used in the Giro d’Italia won in 2004 and the pink jersey that then consecrated its primacy. But they are not just shirts and bicycles. There is a lot of story behind, there is a world to tell, of victories, records, talented but above all there is a cycling that, then, for women it was certainly not what we admire today. At the time of this great Welsh champion, born in Swansea thirty -eight years ago, female cycling was not what became today and for women it was a distant professionalism, for organization and business, from the current one. Those were the “turbulent” years of doubts and suspicions, of situations often in chiaroscuro: “I ran as a professional on the road from 2002 to 2012 and I feel a privileged- he told in January 2103 in his farewell letter to the competitive activity that also became an accusation against a cycling that with the doping scandals and the abuse of substances had taken a dark path- I could travel for the world. He really thrives and gives me great pleasure. The fact of being able to satisfy the inner desire of a twelve year old of being able to run by bike and collecting records was an infinite joy. Cycling was, and continues to be, a sport dominated by men and equality from many points of view still has a long way to go … ». A farewell that left an emptiness for an absolute champion who stopped pedaling after winning everything: three golds at the World Cup on the Junior road (Plouay 2000 and Lisbon 2001), two medals in the mountain bike (silver in Sierra Nevada in 2000 and gold in Vail in 2001, the Giro d’Italia in 2004, the Tour de France in 2006 and the golds at the Olympic Games of Beijing in 2008 World Cup on the street of Varese in the same year, the only woman to succeed in the world of cycling. 10 years and seeing a female cycling on a lively and healthy road- he still wrote in his farewell letter- and all this will happen when the athletes will be treated with the same respect and the same consideration of their male colleagues ». This is why a few days ago at the Ghisallo Museum Nicole Cooke did not bring only two of his many victorious shirts and a bike in the hands of the. They delivered to them a piece of its history and what it meant and today means for women’s cycling.