Farewell, Mimmo, industrialist and photographer, a mainstay of a paddock that no longer exists

Guglielmo "Mimmo" Maggiali is one of those people who make you feel lucky to have spent your whole life among bikes and engines, hopping on and off planes from one continent to another. He left us a few days ago, far too soon. He passed away far from the noise of the paddock, the place he loved most. He was 82.

Motorsport is not only the realm of riders, technology, and challenges against time and rivals. It’s also a small universe of remarkable people who leave you with memories, experiences, and ways of being. Guglielmo Maggiali was a successful industrialist. From nothing, with the ingenuity and obsession of the greats, he created a company specializing in the repair of large diesel engines: ships, submarines, trains. When we met, a long time ago, I stuck in his mind because through my small town he often passed hidden in the engine compartment of the “Littorine,” the self-propelled railcars that only recently stopped running on secondary lines. He was the owner of “Officine Maggiali,” but if there was a delicate job to be done, he would do it himself. Many times a private plane was waiting for him in Pisa, sent by some magnate left with a yacht broken down in the middle of the Mediterranean. Sometimes Mimmo answered the call from the edge of a track on the other side of the world. He would set off again, and take care of it himself.

In the World Superbike paddock he was “Mimmo,” and only a handful of close friends knew what he really did. Even though he could have bought a few teams (factory ones...), he liked to stay on the sidelines, wearing the standard media vest and queuing for a pass as a photographer for Corsedimoto. Image-making was a hobby, but above all a fascinating pretext. He fell in love with racing in the ’70s following his friend and rider Roberto Gallina. That’s how he lived from the inside the epic era of motorcycling in La Spezia, which in 1981, with Roberto becoming Suzuki team manager and Marco Lucchinelli as rider, rose to the World throne in the 500 class, the MotoGP of that time. It wasn’t in Mimmo’s nature to be “just a friend of.” So he joined Franco Villani’s agency, the most prestigious of the era. Two characters who couldn’t have been more different: Franco was a showman, almost as much a character as the riders of that time. Mimmo wasn’t; he always stayed behind the scenes. Slung over his shoulder, a load of the latest and greatest cameras.

To describe who Maggiali was, just a few snapshots etched in memory are enough. A few years ago in Aragon at 8 a.m. a biting wind was blowing and it was raining. Superstock practice was about to start, a session you could have skipped in such foul weather. Instead, Mimmo, astride his red moped with a gigantic telephoto lens in the basket, sped along the service road braving the elements to shoot from the best spot. Without that thin thread of hardship, there is no passion. Here are some of his images.

Lately he struggled to recognize what had been his world for fifty years. Today’s riders are light-years away from the champions of the ’70s, with a few rare exceptions. For his birthday, one of the last, of course celebrated in the paddock, Jonathan Rea was there to wish him well, from the height of his six World titles. Real people can be “felt,” recognized, and bonded with. Today it hardly seems real that he’s gone. Goodbye, Mimmo.