Business was good and the Gastaldello brothers decided to supply their bikes to some performing teams. It was Dino Zandegù, a good racer in the 1950s and 1960s, then sporting director, to convince them to gradually attempt the adventure of professional competition. In 1979 Zandegù put Mecap Hoonved together, a team with no great expectations which had Mario Beccia, Luciano Rossignoli and Sergio Santimaria as it most representative racers. Beccia, a climber born in Apulia but raised in Trevigiano, was 24 years old at the time and had risen to stardom by winning the first stage of the Giro d’Italia of that year, the Florence-Perugia, while Santimaria’s greatest achievement was the 600 kilometre Granfondo from Milan to Rome. In 1981 the Selle San Marco from Rossano owned by the unforgettable commander Luigi Girardi proposed his team of professionals, which was equipped with Wilier Triestina bikes. Carlino Menicagli sat in the team car. The promising young Tuscan Enrico Maestrelli was there with Santimaria and Alfio Vandi, the climber with the blue eyes who was the captain. Thanks to Vandi, Wilier won the Gran Premio di Reggio Calabria and the Placci Cup. Also Giuseppe Martinelli was on the team, who 15 years later would become the manager of Marco Pantani. Girardi and the Gastaldellos followed their professional progress side by side the year after. For Wilier Triestina the time had come to regain the former glory on the jerseys of a first class team. However it was a dark year, at least in terms of racing results. Gianluigi Stanga, who had cooperated with Wilier when he managed amateur teams, in 1983 put together the Grandi Cucine Mareno, whose second name was Wilier Triestina. The team, which boasted various Venetian racers, had a limited potential and results equalled the modest expectations. It was the first step of a three-year project which began to provide results from the following year, when Stanga, with the support of Lino and Antonio Gastaldello, gave life to Supermercati Brianzoli. In 1984 Chinetti won the Gran Premio di Reggio Calabria, while in 1985 the Supermercati Brianzoli, which had already chosen a three-colour scheme, won the Italian road championship thanks to Claudio Corti, first alone on the Montello track. That year Corti won the Giro dell’Umbria and the Giro di Romagna. Whereas the racer Giovanni Mantovani came first in the Tre Valli Varesine and in the fourth stage of the Giro di Puglia (Tour of Apulia). Gianbattista Baronchelli was also in the team, who above all had an uneventful year. In 1986 the Gastaldello brothers decided to interrupt their commitment as technical sponsor of professional teams to focus on the structural development of the company. In recent years, business volume had significantly increased, the headcount had doubled but the good growth rates that Wilier had ahead of it risked being choked by an historically based organisation. It was time to move forward, no more playing it by ear, make some brave choices and focus on specific targets. Having successfully managed the brand together for a long time, in 1989 Lino and Antonio Gastaldello decided to go their separate ways, though in the same field. Antonio remained in the workshop in via Stazione, while Lino started the Wilier Triestina business branch, with offices in via Aldo Moro in Rossano. Wilier Triestina we know today was developed from this company branch. Time confirmed the value of that choice. Wilier Triestina managed by Lino Gastaldello grew by the day, improving the quality of the product while expanding and finding new niches in the market. Thus in the middle of the 1990s Lino was asked to get back on the professional bandwagon to support Brescialat, a team with a desire to grow and assert itself as much as the company from Rossano. In 1995 Brescialat’s organisation featured high performing figures, such as Casagrande, Podenzana, Piccoli, Leoni, Lanfranchi and Missaglia. Among the most important successes of that year was the Giro di Toscana won by Podenzana and the 15th stage of the Giro d’Italia, Val Senales-Lenzerheide, won by Piccoli. In the meantime, the new office was completed in via Fratel Venzo, a factory designed with an eye to the future, with a great amount of available space and highly functional logistic solutions in light of the company’s additional growth. In those years, aluminium gradually replaced steel and Wilier rushed to proposed state-of-the-art models with lighter frames. The weight issue represented a huge advantage but there was still a lot of work to do concerning stiffness, which at the beginning was the main defect of aluminium.

In the most famous stage race in the world the climber that Italy had its hopes on was off to a slow start. As often happens. He was triumphant. A dream came true. Two days later he raced from Courchevel to Morzine. During the climbs the best were all together; they had a common snare to face. Five kilometres from the pass Pantani repeated his ritual: hands low on the handlebar of his Wilier and off without delay. Once again he was solo, his legend had definitively taken off. The relationship between Marco Pantani and the anufacturers of his bicycles was not just professional.