Toni... always with a cigarette between his lips and a signaling board in his hand at the pit wall to support Marco Lucchinelli's exploits. Those were the years of Lucky, Stella Fortuna, the 1980s of the Gallina team, the invincible Suzuki, and Toni Merendino, who was the indispensable jack-of-all-trades in the pit. Today we'd say that a team manager, like Roberto, would've been the team principal. However, back then, they were simply Gallo and Toni.
It was a friendship born in the paddock that then grew, grew enormously, when—along with my colleague, journalist, photographer, rider, brother from a different mother Juan Porcar, and also Toni Merendino—we created the most irrational team imaginable and entered the Paris-Dakar.
That was the real Paris-Dakar: 14,000 km, heading south, CAP 180, towards the capital of Senegal, starting on January 1st from Place de la Concorde in Paris.
I found the car (a fantastic Mercedes GE230 4X4), Juan took care of the logistics, and Toni—who was the key man at HB—was the sponsor. It was 1984.
We finished it. And, I must say, it was thanks to Juan's great navigation skills and Toni's resilience at the wheel. He was able to stay glued to the steering wheel for a whole day, from dawn to dusk. He never got tired, and he smoked. He smoked continuously, one pack after another, so I started throwing all the packs I found scattered around the car into the desert because, between the GE's 200 liters of fuel and the smoke, the Mercedes' interior was worse than the death zone on Everest. The packs never ended. Toni, who started anticipating my moves, would then hide them behind the door panels. I only discovered this once we had reached Dakar.
It was a tough but beautiful adventure, and all three of us were struck by the desert and a longing for Africa. Juanito, who had also done it on a motorcycle, with a BMW, continued racing so much that he became an official Nissan driver. A top driver. Toni founded TOM42, after managed the Cagiva Lucky Strike project. By then, he knew the Ténéré and the dunes of Bilma like the back of his hand.
The World Championship won with Marco Lucchinelli in 1981, the first Italian rider after Giacomo Agostini. It was one of his crowning glories, thanks to the composure with which he dealt with a charismatic, explosive, unique, but difficult character to manage, one like Crazy Horse.
Memories come flooding back, but, above all—carved in the sand like all our categorical imperatives in life—I'm left with the phrase: I preserve my lifestyle.
Toni always lived doing what he loved. He reiterated this, whenever he go the chance, with his mantra.
By then, we saw each other once a year, perhaps at Mugello, where he returned to greet old friends and breathe the air of that paddock where he had been one of the role players of one of the most beautiful adventures of those unrepeatable seasons. We joked around like veterans, remembering what was possible in those years, if you had a bit of imagination.
We can imagine him: dark glasses, gaze turned southward, the steering wheel in his hands... attentive to all the controls on the road book, while the light of dawn sparkled on the sand, becoming flat at noon, and fading into shades of orange before nightfall.
Toni, doesn't that down there look like the flashing light of the end of the stage to you?
You can pay your respects to Toni on Tuesday, at 2:00 p.m., in the viewing room of the San Bartolomeo hospital in Sarzana (SP).