He won two gold medals at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, in the 1000 m time trial and the 1000 m sprint.

[1] Between 1958 and 1970 he won two gold, four silver and two bronze medals in sprint events at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships.

[3] In 2010, together with journalist Francesco Lodi, he published a book Quando la Rabbia si trasforma in Vittoria ("When the anger turns into victory") describing his early life until 1960.

[5] On 7 May 2015, in the presence of the President of the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI), Giovanni Malagò, Gaiardoni was inaugurated into the Olympic Park of the Foro Italico in Rome, along with Viale delle Olimpiadi, the Walk of Fame of Italian sport, consisting of 100 tiles that chronologically report names of the most representative athletes in the history of Italian sport.

On each tile there is the name of the sportsman, the sport in which he distinguished himself and the symbol of CONI.