I was 10 and I had a splendid Graziella bicycle, called “Rally 70”, where the 70 meant the decade it was made in. With my palls in the same building we tried to imitate the motocross champions of the day and attached bits of card by the spokes to get some noise out of an otherwise silent machine. We rode in a nearby playground where someone had (generously) left two mounds of earth that we used as jumping ramps. In summer we’d set out with rucksacks on our backs to explore paths in the hills and the more mud there was, the dirtier we got (the mudguards came off after the first few jumps), the happier we were on getting home.

In winter, my parents decided I should give up bob-sleighing for skiing (sigh!): a fine pair of 195 cm Elans (should I ever have to do the 1 km sprint) accompanied me for some years, and falls, till a genius of a friend (to whom I’ll always be grateful) made me try something decidedly shorter. That was when I started to abandon the slopes for the pine woods and get increasingly dependent on the thrills of fresh, virgin snow.

When the long awaited age of majority came, after years on cunningly souped up Vespas, I bought my first real motorbike, which, given my genetic inclination for off-road riding, was one of the first Enduros on the market. I couldn’t believe I could now build on what I’d done for years with my Graziella. Jumps, fords, wheelies and countless off-road trips filled nearly all my summer weekends for a long time to come.

In the early ‘90s, I decided to upgrade my passion for snow by joining a bunch of snowboard pioneers. What a revelation! And what a glorious turning back of the clock to boyhood enthusiasm that gripped the whole group. Well, I’ve tried loads of sports, with infinite parties and drinking bouts, I’ve always preferred fun and games to serious competition in everything I’ve done and I’ve only recently discovered, at the age of 45, that I’ve been doing FREERIDE ever since I was a kid!!