“As I was still very young, I wasn’t able to stop the bike at the finish because my feet couldn’t touch the ground. I had to do a whole lap of the square before I could find a kerb my feet would reach”. Giacomo Agostini was just 11 years old, at the Malegno-Borno on a Moto Guzzi Airone 250.

Giacomo Agostini, A.K.A. Ago, but Mino for his friends. He was always the number one on the list, not only due to the number 1 on his back but also for being the biker who won the most in the motorcycle races. 15 world championships over the space of a decade, ten of which were won consecutively, winning a double championship in 350cc and 500cc categories in the same years, from 1968 to 1972.

In the motorcycling history, the Agostini and Morini duo left an important trace in the sixties. From 1965, the duo changed and became MV and Agostini. They participated in the mother of all races, the Tourist Trophy at the Isle of Man, with MV only: 10 victories, two-second places, one-third place and three withdrawals. He raced for two years in Japan with Yamaha, while in 1976 he was divided between MV and Suzuki. In 1977 he went back to Yamaha. He raced briefly on four wheels and, from 1982 to 1994, Mino has been Yahama-Marlboro’s Team Manager.

Turning a talented driver into a great champion isn’t coincidence or luck. Agostini had a method: he was a champion of perseverance, abnegation, concentration and other reasons which are called: talent, motivation, courage, intelligence.

He was precise bordering on pernickety. He was hungry for victory. He had a burning competitive spirit. He was equipped with the organisative talent and tactical acuity.

He wasn’t only a champion with a career at the limit of being unrepeatable. Giacomo Agostini is the man who embodied the celebrity of a time. The perfect Italian: strong, handsome, the successful sportsman, gently non-scrupulous, reachable only to the extent to have you exposing yourself and then bitterly understanding his unreachability. Giacomo has an undisputable charisma, he’s very refined and able to cast light wherever he goes.

“…you need to be born for this job, you need to receive this gift from mother nature. But it isn’t that easy: you need to work on talent, it needs to be cultivated. I put a lot of love and passion in my job, and I never left anything to chance”, Ago.