When he is at home, Zana visits her every morning. “I stop for an hour before training, give her a few caresses, tell her something and give her something to eat.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The only problem is that Puglietta is very jealous. Her “rival” is Vihor – vortex in Slovenian – a beautiful horse that Filippo bought with the first money he earned racing in the youth categories with some help from his grandmother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor me he is like a friend,\u201d says Zana. \u201cBeing with him is one of the things that relaxes me the most.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Vihor is a workhorse and, every autumn, he and Zana collect wood. There are two areas that Zana and Vihor like to go to do this, the woodland half an hour from his home or on top of Monte Cengio, which was the scene of a furious battle during the First World War, a walk of about two hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe start early in the morning. For me, it’s a good workout instead of going to the gym. It’s hard for the poor guy and, to avoid tiring him too much, we often leave the day before.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Last summer, this time to celebrate his victory on the 18th stage of the Giro d’Italia between Odenzo and Val di Zoldo, Zana gave himself two young goats: Odi and Zoldo. Cows, horses and goats are not the only animals that live with the 25-year-old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don’t know how many there are anymore, but I have many chickens, rabbits, pigeons and some Vietnamese pigs.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Since he was a child, Zana has always had a great love for animals. \u201cI also like dogs and cats, but I go crazy for farm animals, horses and cows before everything else,\u201d<\/em> says Zana. Maybe it’s because he remembers very well when visiting his grandfather, Sergio, in his farmhouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI must have been three years old at most and when they told me \u2018let’s go to grandpa\u2019 I was very happy. I remember that he had lots of calves and I helped him feed them. I could have stayed there for days!”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n A personal Noah’s ark<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Zana is very attached to his land. He comes from a family where they ate bread and played soccer but he chose the bicycle by joining the team of his Venetian town: Piovene Rocchette (the same one where Davide De Pretto also comes from).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even today, every morning before the race, his mother sends him the usual message: “go slow”. But Zana knows well that to win you need to go fast and he knows that he will try every day of his career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen I stop cycling, I would like to live here among the hills and mountains,\u201d he explains. \u201cI see myself on my farm taking care of the animals and cultivating some land.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the meantime, Zana is preparing for the Giro d’Italia and will be at the start of the Tour of Alps on Monday. If this summer his personal Noah’s Ark has some new guests, it will mean that the young Italian rider has achieved some new victories. We just need to wait and see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Puglietta is two years old. A beautiful white head topped with a curious orange tuft and a very affectionate character. Filippo Zana gifted Puglietta, who is a calf, to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45920,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[296,386],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45917"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45917"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45922,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45917\/revisions\/45922"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2024\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/WhatsApp-Image-2024-04-08-at-09.42.47_23f7a9ba-768x1024.jpg\")