He watched Magni's leg.
The fault was in the bicycle.

Magni had pain in his right knee and calf. The young mechanic watched his pedal stroke and decided that the rider was not the problem.

A view from the side

The 1955 Giro was approaching. During a training ride with, among others, sporting director Giorgio Albani, Fiorenzo Magni complained of pain. That is how Ernesto Colnago later told the story. While the others saw a champion in difficulty, Colnago saw a movement that was not round.

He believed that one crank arm was bent or out of alignment. Magni reluctantly agreed to visit the modest workshop in Via Garibaldi in Cambiago. Colnago corrected the bicycle. When Magni tried it again, the pain was gone.

The story comes from the mechanic

The scene has been repeated many times, nearly always by Colnago himself and long after 1955. That does not make it worthless, but it does change its status. We can document that Colnago joined Nivea–Fuchs at the Giro and that his connection with Magni became decisive. The precise conversation and instant cure belong to the form of later memory.

That is also why the story works. Colnago did not cast himself as a doctor. He looked at the rider as a mechanic would: symmetry, load and a movement repeated with every revolution.

The test at Vigorelli

Before his place in the service car was secure, another test waited. At the celebrated mechanic Faliero Masi's workshop beneath the Vigorelli track, Colnago later said that he was given 44 wheels to build and true. He began in the morning and finished that evening.

The result was board and lodging and a job as second mechanic. During the Giro he had more than one crank to inspect. Bicycles had to be washed, wheels checked, tubular tyres glued and faults found while the riders slept.

Magni won — Colnago stayed

The Giro began on 14 May and ended on 5 June after 3,871 kilometres. On the penultimate stage Magni profited from a late move with Fausto Coppi and took the lead. He won the race by only 13 seconds from Coppi.

For Colnago, those three weeks were an entry pass. He remained in professional cycling, later built frames for champions and turned his name into one of the sport's best-known marques. The beginning was smaller: a sore knee, a bicycle in a workstand and a young man willing to say that the champion's machine was out of line.