The year the Giro d'Italia organisers paid Binda not to start, a sum reported at twenty-two thousand five hundred lire, matching the winner's prize.
Why they did it
In 1929 Binda won the Giro and took twelve of fifteen stages, including eight consecutive.
The race was owned by the Gazzetta dello Sport, and public interest in a foregone conclusion was falling. Removing the strongest rider was a circulation decision.
Binda accepted, and rode the Tour de France instead, winning two stages before abandoning.
The record
Five Giro d'Italia victories: 1925, 1927, 1928, 1929 and 1933. The total is matched only by Fausto Coppi and Eddy Merckx.
Three world road race championships: 1927, 1930 and 1932. He was the first rider to win it more than once.
Forty-one Giro stage wins.
The style
Binda played trumpet in the town band of Cittiglio and worked as a plasterer in Nice before racing.
Contemporary accounts describe an unusually smooth, seated climbing style and an apparent absence of visible effort.
Manager
As commissario tecnico of the Italian national team from 1946, Binda's principal achievement was managing the coexistence of Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi.
He led the team at the Tour de France in 1948, when Bartali won, and in 1949 and 1952, when Coppi did.
Why it goes on a wall
Because a bicycle race once decided that its own champion was bad for business and paid him to stay at home, and he took the money and went and won something else.
Paid to stay home.