Porsche<\/a> and watching him test MV\u2019s latest MotoGP bike at the company\u2019s test track.<\/p>\nThe story was titled, Viva! But Hide Your Women, and started like this\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cHis name is Giacomo Agostini, and he poses most of the time as just plain mild-mannered, handsome, glittering Super Italian. In moments of crisis, he strips and changes quickly into a skin-tight, soft black leather costume, with a black leather mask and soft black boots, and roars off on a motorcycle that looks a whole lot like a torpedo.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe lives on the far edge of life, where most men are afraid to go, at a kind of blinding speed punctuated by crashes. He always recovers from the accidents, ministered to by platoons of stunning, pliant girls; he is cool, scarred and bold.<\/p>\n
![\"Agostini](\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns=\")
<\/p>\n
Agostini (MV Agusta) and Barry Sheene (Suzuki), Silverstone 1973<\/p>\n
\n Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople see in it [motorcycle racing] a form of fine, sensible insanity, like knife-fighting or letting the bulls chase you through the streets of Pamplona, which also makes a lot of sense if you don\u2019t think about it too long.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll through the summer, the racers speed on a crushing weekly schedule: race and skid and crash and then make love and drink wine. Only the flintiest survive to make a great deal of money, which means nothing to them. The rest earn trophies, rings and jewelled watches, which also are not important. But they all get covered with glory, which is what motorcycle racing is really about.\u2019<\/p>\n
Ago\u2019s and Ottum\u2019s first meet is at a restaurant\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cAgostini ordered wine, checked the label carefully, felt the bottle for temperature and then sipped it for taste.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Good,\u2019 he said, rolling the wine and a little English around on his tongue. \u2018You must drink it. But as for me,\u2019 he shrugged elaborately. \u2018I cannot. It is sad. In the racing season I must not eat too much pasta and must drink\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHe turned to his translator inquiringly.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Poco,\u2019 the man said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgostini nodded. \u2018I must drink only a little wine, for I must stay healthy to race the motorbikes.\u2019 He leaned back and flashed the brilliant smile. \u2018I weigh 65 kilos now, and my ideal racing weight is 63 kilos.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAgostini is 1.74 meters tall, or five feet seven inches. He has hazel eyes and black hair that always looks sculptured. Surprisingly, he has all of his fingers and toes and his teeth are perfectly in line.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their idle hours in restaurants produced gems like this\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018You like miniskirts?\u2019 asked Agostini, pointing to a leggy girl who was being restrained from leaping on him only by the iron thread of chaperoned propriety. \u2018On Italian women I don\u2019t like them. Italian women are not miniskirt women, they are women of the heart. But on English girls\u2019, he made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, \u2018Yes! I spent three months in London last year, and the English girls\u2026 ahhhh, lovely.\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Agostini leads Yamaha team-mate Hideo Kanaya on his way to the 1975 500cc MotoGP world title<\/p>\n
\n Yamaha\n <\/p>\n
\u201c\u2019I rented this little flat in a building where there were many English girls who were\u2026\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe looked at the translator.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Maids?\u2019 the man said.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Ah, maids,\u2019 said Agostini. \u201cAnd they would go out in the morning and work in the homes of the very rich, and they would come back in the evening and come to my room and visit me.\u201d He smiled again.\u2019<\/p>\n
Of course, Ago also conducted a little business during Ottum\u2019s visit. He rode his 500cc triple, at MV\u2019s tiny test track, next to the MV factory in Gallarate, which mostly made helicopters under licence to American helicopter company Bell.<\/p>\n
\u201cGallarate lies in a clammy gray fog; the test track is out behind the factory, consisting of a lonely black-top road guarded by men with slit eyes,\u201d wrote Ottum. \u201cCurves at each end of the road vanish off into an out-of-focus filminess. Agostini\u2019s yellow Porsche pulls up and stops and Agostini gets out, in black double-breasted blazer, gray slacks, carefully knotted tie. He also is wearing black-and-tan high-top square-toed shoes with pearl buttons up the sides. They are the most beautiful shoes in Italy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgostini pulls off his tie, shirt, undershirt, pants\u2014methodically, heavy-eyed, like a man preparing for a religious rite. He holds the pants up by the cuffs and shakes them all straight and then puts them carefully across the front seat. In his under shorts, very routine shorts for the rest of the clothes, he walks around to the trunk and opens it, takes out a crash helmet and sets it aside and then tugs on a faded maroon turtle-neck shirt. Then he unfolds the racing suit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe black leathers fit so tightly he has to raise his shoulders sharply to zip up the front from between his legs. He pulls on the boots and zips them up the back. Then he tugs on his racing gloves and, punching them between the fingers to tighten them, he walks over and looks at the machine. So far no one has spoken.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Agostini now, at 83 years old<\/p>\n
\n MV Agusta\n <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where Fellini [the legendary Italian movie director] would cut to title and credits; it is a natural break. The mechanic nods and backs away, the sparkplug wrench in his hand. Agostini pulls a comb from a small chamois case and carefully combs his hair. Then he puts on the helmet. It is striped, fore and aft, in green, white and red, the Italian colours. He snaps the black leather mask across his face and pulls down the goggles. With that gesture he changes identity. The Racer. Super Italian.<\/p>\n
\u201cStarting an Agusta 500cc motorcycle is a lot like overpowering a Texas long-horn steer. Giacomo grabs it by the handlebars and pushes it, running alongside, until it coughs explosively into life. Then he leaps on sidesaddle and, in a smooth flow of motion, throws one leg over and blends into it. The monster vanishes into the mist and the mechanic listens to its barking from afar and scowls and looks at the wrench.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is the season to be merry, I\u2019m told, so perhaps now is a good time to celebrate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,108406,5745,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-369121","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-giacomo-agostini","11":"tag-motogp","12":"tag-motor","13":"tag-motor-sports","14":"tag-motosport","15":"tag-motosports","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Agostini](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-2164548082-800x450.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Agostini](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Agostini-Kanaya-1975-Ricard-800x450.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Giacomo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SUPERVELOCE-AGO_AMBIENT-46-800x450.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n