When we drove closer to UC Davis, where my daughter was about to start her freshman year, I teared up. My daughter did the same as we went farther away from our home in the Bay Area. This was an adventure we knew she was ready for, and one we had been preparing for since the day she was born, but for us as parents, it was difficult nonetheless. My Fausto colleague Tim Schamber told me, “Bring Kleenex.” He was right. As Anthony Bourdain once said: “To have a child is to give fate a hostage.”
Fortunately, when we got back to an overly quiet home, my work with Fausto offered a perfect refuge, with my melancholy state being broken by a new project: an Italian film shoot, Fausto’s first. I had the experience of attending numerous shoots and helping produce several films with Peloton magazine, so felt confident for this latest foray with the talented French filmmaker Lucas Stanus, whose days are typically booked solid chronicling UCI World Cup downhill races. Our goal was to document the collaboration between Fausto Pinarello and his design team on the development of Pinarello’s entirely new gravel bikes, the Dogma GR and the Grevil F.
Based in Villorba, just outside the idyllic and upscale city of Treviso, the Pinarello crew—led by Fausto Pinarello, product manager Raffaele Maccari and digital marketing manager Alessandro Fasolato—welcomed us to their headquarters with an espresso. They were eager to show us their new bikes, launched this past July after two years of development.
I last visited Pinarello in 2014 to attend the Gran Fondo Pinarello with Peloton founder and Fausto editor-in-chief Brad Roe. The investment at Pinarello since then has been significant. Its small retail shop in downtown Treviso has been relocated to a stunning two-story, vaulted-ceiling bottega next door to the company’s gleaming offices and factory. This combination showroom/retail store proudly displays the many jerseys that the Pinarello brand has won over the years.
THE FULL STORY IN PRINT
