VALERIO ZAMBONI: At home in Lycra or Italian silk By Vic Armijo LYCRA OR ARMANI? Valerio Zamboni always looks good, whether he s powering up the rooad or showing a multi-million dollar jet to a client. Valerio Zamboni has an innate competitive nature that inspires him to excel at whatever he does. I ve always been this way, the 59 year old Italian said during a late
January interview, Absolutely, always. I could compete over drinking coffee I have a competitive attitude on whatever I m doing. That s certainly true of his business life he deals in really bigt-ticket items he s a jet aircraft broker. It s an unusual field of business, but very easy for me. I ve been an airplane pilot since forever. When I was 16 years old I started to fly gliders and I went to airplanes and became a professional pilot. I did all the careers. I started as a co-pilot and ended as a flight operation manager. Then I started to sell airplanes, any kind of airplane. But since 1995 the only domain of aircraft that I have been is private jet airplanes, the kind that you sell to big clients; IBM, General Motors. In 1995 I started to represent Bombardier business aviation (the third-largest airplane manufacturer in the world after Boeing and Airbus). We service Italy, Monaco, Switzerland and other countries in Europe. And then four years ago I started to represent Sikorsky Helicopters in some countries in Europe. These are the best brands to represent. I m selling what I like, which is good. Many executives in positions such as Zamboni s spend their leisure time pursuing sport. But no golf, tennis or squash for this guy; while he s 59 years old he truly is a world class Ultracyclist. He s the 2011 24 Hour World Cup Champion, he won last year s 24 Hours of Sebring and the 2011 Race Around Ireland he didn t just win his age group he won the overall in these prestigious events, beating several rider half his age. This will be his fourth RAAM, having finished third in his age group in 2011 and 2012, And in my first RAAM in 2010 I quit, he related, I was going to miss the time cut-off at the Mississippi. Despite such phenomenal results, he s actually relatively new to cycling, taking up the sport in 2007. Thirty years ago I used to do a lot of mountain climbing, he recalls, I had a bad accident and broke my hip and a few other things. I couldn t do any sports for about twenty years until I went through a full hip replacement and since that time I ve been back in sports. In those years in between I grew about twenty kilos and I couldn t even walk any more. After the surgery they gave me a couple of options. One was swimming the other was cycling. I decided that cycling was less boring. Seeing him on the bike it s hard to imagine that he started so late in life he has the fluid and relaxed spin of someone who s been pedaling for decades, I have a coach, a fellow who used to be a pro, he offers as explanation. That coach is Leonardo Piepoli, winner of Giro di Italia stages. During RAAM he s available 24 hours a day, Zamboni continued, He s the one that has the last call on what I have to do. He gives me a lot of advice. During RAAM every couple of hours we send him information on what I m doing. He s the one who usually calls the shots on what I have to do. Eventually he s the one who decides on when I have to rest or not rest. Piepoli helps Zamboni to maximize what little time he has to devote to training, It s getting more and more difficult, frankly. Monaco where I live training starts at 6:00 am, finish up about 9:30 and get a quick shower and go to the office and stay at the office all day long. It s not an easy thing to do. But Zamboni manages to start the year strong by wintering in Miami, Florida, We re here December until March. In the winter Florida is fantastic. I look at all of my friends on Facebook and back in Monte Carlo in the winter
time they re training indoors not fun at all. Here every day you can go out and do decent training. Temperature, I never see anything below 25C (77F). Fantastic weather. Training, racing and business fill his annual calendar, I don t have a lot of other time. Usually I do my resting period from cycling in October and then I have some plans that I m going to take my wife here and there, but in the end we don t usually do a lot of things I just want to rest and spend time with Allesandra. We ve known each other for 20 years. We got married 5 years ago. Frankly speaking, without her I never could have started UltraCycling. You need so much organization and you need to have people who really love you. It s so complicated. Every time you have to put together minimum five, but up to ten people coming from Europe, some from the United States. All these travel arrangements, there s a multitude of things to do. THE FUN BEGINS Valerio Zamboni shares a laugh with RAAM s George Thomas at the start of last year s race, while his
beloved wife Allessandra (left in red) looks on. Yes, RAAM is challenging physically and logistically, I love the experience and every year I go I want to do better than I did the year before, Zamboni said, RAAM is a complete different game. Besides two or three people who fight for victory, most of us it s just a sort of survival game. Even if you start with certain ideas and plans of how you re going to do it, by a certain point after a few days you re going to be fighting nausea, or saddle sores or whatever problem it is that forces you to activate your survival mode, instead of any other goal that you had before. I keep doing RAAM just with the goal to improve every year. And every time I question myself, Why am I here now? But just as soon as I finish I m asking what did I learn to be better next year? My plan is fantastic. It s one of the best ones before we start. The first day I m going to this and the next day I m going to do that, and then the reality come to play when you go into the desert, and you re out of California and into Arizona, whatever you planned to do is totally screwed up. Absolutely. The second day on. Despite all of the hardships and challenges of RAAM, Zamboni is always one of the more outgoing and jovial racers and always has a quip or amusing observation to offer and almost always looks as if he s enjoying every mile. He takes joy in the challenge, the accomplishment and in being an inspiration, he offered this in closing, I think that we can prove that even people who have had some kind of surgery, in the end of the story they can even do RAAM. I m not sure if anyone has done RAAM with a hip replacement. But I m an example that yes, you can do it.