|
Fausto Coppi
Angelo Fausto Coppi (Italian pronunciation: [ˈfausto ˈkɔppi]; 15 September 1919 – 2 January 1960) was an Italian cyclist, the dominant international cyclist of the years after the Second World War. His successes earned him the title Il Campionissimo ("Champion of Champions"). He was an all-round racing cyclist: he excelled in both climbing and time trialing, and was also a good sprinter. He won the Giro d'Italia five times (1940, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953), the Tour de France twice (1949 and 1952), and the World Championship in 1953. Other notable results include winning the Giro di Lombardia five times, the Milan–San Remo three times, as well as wins at Paris–Roubaix and La Flèche Wallonne and setting the hour record (45.798 km) in 1942. Early life and amateur careerCoppi was born in Castellania (now known as Castellania Coppi), near Alessandria, one of five children born to Domenico Coppi and Angiolina Boveri,[1] who married on 29 July 1914. Fausto was the fourth child, born at 5:00 pm on 15 September 1919. His mother wanted to call him Angelo, but his father preferred Fausto. He was named Angelo Fausto but was known most of his life as Fausto.[2] Coppi had poor health as a child and showed little interest in school. In 1927 he wrote "I ought to be at school, not riding my bicycle" after skipping lessons to spend the day riding a family bike which he had found in a cellar, rusty and without brake blocks.[3] He left school at age 13 to work for Domenico Merlani, a butcher in Novi Ligure more widely known as Signor Ettore. Cycling to and from the shop and meeting cyclists who came there interested him in racing. The money to buy a bike came from his uncle, also called Fausto Coppi, and his father. Coppi said:
Coppi rode his first race at age 15, among other boys not attached to cycling clubs, and won first prize: 20 lire and a salami sandwich. Coppi took a racing licence at the start of 1938 and won his first race, at Castelleto d'Orba, near the butcher's shop. He won alone, winning an alarm clock. A regular caller at the butcher's shop in Novi Ligure was a former boxer who had become a masseur, a job he could do after losing his sight, in 1938. Giuseppe Cavanna was known to friends as Biagio. Coppi met him that year, recommended by another of Cavanna's riders. Cavanna suggested in 1939 that Coppi should become an independent, a class of semi-professionals who could ride against both amateurs and professionals. He sent Coppi to the Tour of Tuscany that April with the advice: "Follow Gino Bartali!" He was forced to stop with a broken wheel. But at Varzi on 7 May 1939 he won one of the races counting to the season-long national independent championship. He finished seven minutes clear of the field and won his next race by six minutes. Professional careerHis first major success was in 1940, winning the Giro d'Italia at the age of 20. On 7 November 1942 he set a world hour record (45.798 km at the Velodromo Vigorelli in Milan).[5] He rode a 7.40-metre (291-inch) gear and pedalled with an average cadence of 103.3 rpm.[6] The bike is on display in the chapel of Madonna del Ghisallo near Como, Italy.[7] Coppi beat Maurice Archambaud's 45.767 km, set five years earlier on the same track.[8] The record stood until it was beaten by Jacques Anquetil in 1956.[9] His career was then interrupted by active service in the Second World War. In 1946 he resumed racing and achieved remarkable successes which would be exceeded only by Eddy Merckx. The veteran writer Pierre Chany said that from 1946 to 1954 Coppi was never once recaught once he had broken away from the rest.[10] Twice, 1949 and 1952, Coppi won the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in the same year, the first to do so. He won the Giro five times, a record shared with Alfredo Binda and Eddy Merckx. During the 1949 Giro he left Gino Bartali by 11 minutes between Cuneo and Pinerolo. Coppi won the 1949 Tour de France by almost half an hour over everyone except Bartali. From the start of the mountains in the Pyrenees to their end in the Alps, Coppi took back the 55 minutes by which Jacques Marinelli led him.[11] Coppi won the Giro di Lombardia a record five times (1946, 1947, 1948, 1949 and 1954). He won Milan–San Remo three times (1946, 1948 and 1949). In the 1946 Milan–San Remo he attacked with nine others, five kilometres into a race of 292 km. He dropped the rest on the Turchino climb and won by 14 minutes.[12][9] He also won Paris–Roubaix and La Flèche Wallonne (1950). He was also 1953 world road champion. In the first years of his career, Coppi was unable to ride the Tour de France. When he turned professional in 1940, the Tour de France was not held because of the Second World War. The Tour restarted in 1947, but Italians were not welcome yet. In 1948, Italians were welcome, but Coppi was suspended by the Italian cycling union because he had abandoned the 1948 Giro d'Italia in protest against the small penalty given to Fiorenzo Magni. In 1949, Coppi was finally able to enter the Tour. After several stages, Coppi was more than half an hour behind in the general classification, but he gained time in the mountain stages, and ended the Tour winning the general classification and the mountains classification, both with his teammate Bartali in second place, also winning the team classification. In 1950, Coppi did not defend his Tour title, because he refused to ride together with Bartali. In 1951, he joined (riding together with Bartali), but was still affected by the death of his brother Serse Coppi, and did not excel.  In 1952, Coppi started again in the Tour. He won on the Alpe d'Huez, which had been included for the first time that year. He attacked six kilometres from the summit to rid himself of the French rider, Jean Robic. Coppi said: "I knew he was no longer there when I couldn't hear his breathing any more or the sound of his tyres on the road behind me".[13][14] He rode like "a Martian on a bicycle", said Raphaël Géminiani. "He asked my advice about the gears to use, I was in the French team and he in the Italian, but he was a friend and normally my captain in our everyday team, so I could hardly refuse him. I saw a phenomenal rider that day".[15] Coppi won the Tour by 28m 27s and the organiser, Jacques Goddet, had to double the prizes for lower placings to keep other riders interested.[16] It was his last Tour, having ridden three and won two. To conserve energy, he would have soigneurs carry him around his hotel during Grand Tours.[17] Bill McGann wrote:
In 1955 Coppi and his lover Giulia Occhini were put on trial for adultery, then illegal in Italy, and got suspended sentences. The scandal rocked conservative ultra-Catholic Italy and Coppi was disgraced.[19] Coppi's career declined after the scandal. He had already been hit in 1951 by the death of his younger brother, Serse Coppi, who crashed in a sprint in the Giro del Piemonte and died of a cerebral haemorrhage.[n 1] Coppi could never match his old successes. Pierre Chany said he was first to be dropped each day in the Vuelta a España in 1959. Criterium organisers frequently cut their races to 45 km to be certain that Coppi could finish, he said. "Physically, he wouldn't have been able to ride even 10km further. He charged himself [took drugs] before every race". Coppi, said Chany, was "a magnificent and grotesque washout of a man, ironical towards himself; nothing except the warmth of simple friendship could penetrate his melancholia. But I'm talking of the end of his career. The last year! In 1959! I'm not talking about the great era. In 1959, he wasn't a racing cyclist any more. He was just clinging on [il tentait de sauver les meubles]."[20] Jacques Goddet wrote in an appreciation of Coppi's career in L'Équipe: "We would like to have cried out to him 'Stop!' And as nobody dared to, destiny took care of it." Raphaël Géminiani said of Coppi's domination:
Rivalry with Bartali
Tim Hilton, The Guardian[22]
Coppi's racing days are generally referred to as the beginning of the golden years of cycle racing. A factor is the competition between Coppi and Gino Bartali. Italian tifosi (fans) divided into coppiani and bartaliani. Bartali's rivalry with Coppi divided Italy.[23] Bartali, conservative, religious, was venerated in the rural, agrarian south, while Coppi, more worldly, secular, innovative in diet and training, was hero of the industrial north. The writer Curzio Malaparte said:
Their lives came together on 7 January 1940 when Eberardo Pavesi, head of the Legnano team, took on Coppi to ride in support of Bartali. Their rivalry started when Coppi, the helping hand, won the Giro and Bartali, the star, marshalled the team to chase. By the 1948 world championship at Valkenburg, Limburg in the Netherlands, both climbed off rather than help the other. The Italian cycling association said: "They have forgotten to honour the Italian prestige they represent. Thinking only of their personal rivalry, they abandoned the race, to the approbation of all sportsmen". They were suspended for three months.[24] The thaw partly broke when the pair shared a bottle on the Col d'Izoard in the 1952 Tour[n 2] but the two fell out over who had offered it. "I did", Bartali insisted. "He never gave me anything".[25] Their rivalry was the subject of intense coverage and resulted in epic races. Life during World War IICoppi joined the Italian Army when Italy entered World War II: the declaration of war on the Allied Powers was made on the day after the finish of the 1940 Giro d'Italia.[26] Officers initially supported him continuing his riding career: track cycling and one-day racing continued during the war, and Coppi continued to enjoy success, winning the Giro di Toscana, the Giro dell'Emilia and Tre Valli Varesine on the road in 1941, along with the Italian national pursuit title on the track. He struggled at the beginning of the following year following the death of his father, but became national road champion after suffering a puncture and losing one and a half minutes to the bunch, forcing him into a solo chase to rejoin the peloton. The following week he broke his collarbone in a crash before he was due to defend his national pursuit championship in the final against Cino Cinelli: however, Cinelli refused to accept the title by default, and the final was delayed to October, which Coppi won. Shortly afterwards he made his successful bid for the hour record at Vigorelli Velodrome: the roof of the building still had large holes after Milan had been heavily bombed a few weeks earlier.[26] However, in March 1943 Coppi was sent to North Africa to participate in the Tunisian campaign, fighting against British forces. According to Coppi's identification paper, he was captured on 13 May 1943 in Enfidha, 100 km south of Tunis, although he may have been caught the previous month by the British Eighth Army which was in and around the city at that time. He was kept in the nearby prisoner of war camp at Ksar Saïd. In the camp he met other cyclists, including Silvio Pedroni, who had previously given Coppi a tyre after the latter had suffered a puncture in a race in 1939, and Ilio Simoni, who would later become a team-mate of Coppi's at Bianchi.[26] He also shared plates with the father of Claudio Chiappucci, who rode the Tour in the 1990s. He was given odd jobs to do. The British cyclist Len Levesley said he was astonished to find Coppi giving him a haircut.[27] Levesley, who was on a stretcher with polio, said:
In April 1944, Coppi fell ill with malaria, however this was quickly diagnosed and treated. In November of that year he returned to Italy, arriving at a POW camp in Naples to work as a driver for the Royal Air Force.[26] The British moved Coppi to an RAF base at Caserta in Italy, based in the city's royal palace, in 1945.[26] There he worked as a truck driver and as a personal assistant and handyman for an officer, Lieutenant Ronald Smith Towell,[26] who had never heard of him. Despite this, the two struck up a mutually beneficial relationship: Coppi's popularity in Italy was helpful to Towell in achieving his goals as an administrator, whilst Towell was able, via S.S.C. Napoli footballer Umberto Busani, to help Coppi make contact with local sports journalist Gino Palumbo, who would later become editor of La Gazzetta dello Sport. Coppi wrote to Palumbo asking if he could assist with obtaining a racing bicycle for him as he only had an army bicycle with heavy tyres which was causing him pain. Palumbo wrote a newspaper article appealing for help: Coppi then received a Legnano racing bike from a Somma Vesuviana carpenter.[26] The war being as good as over, Coppi was released in 1945. In addition he had distanced himself from Mussolini's government during his time in British custody, which often resulted in beneficial treatment compared to those who had continued to profess their loyalty to the Fascist regime.[26] On release he cycled and hitched lifts home. On Sunday 8 July 1945 he won the Circuit of the Aces in Milan after four years away from racing. The following season he won Milan–San Remo.[28] Personal life Coppi's beloved, "The Woman in White" was Giulia Occhini, described by the French broadcaster Jean-Paul Ollivier as "strikingly beautiful with thick chestnut hair divided into enormous plaits". She was married to an army captain, Enrico Locatelli. Coppi was married to Bruna Ciampolini. Locatelli was a cycling fan. His wife wasn't but she joined him on 8 August 1948 to see the Tre Valli Varesine race. Their car was caught beside Coppi's in a traffic jam. That evening Occhini went to Coppi's hotel and asked for a photograph. He wrote "With friendship to ...", asked her name and then added it. From then on the two spent more and more time together. Italy was a straight-laced country in which adultery was thought of poorly. In 1954, Luigi Boccaccini of La Stampa saw her waiting for Coppi at the end of a race in St-Moritz. She and Coppi hugged and La Stampa printed a picture in which she was described as la dama in bianco di Fausto Coppi—the "woman in white of Fausto Coppi". It took only a while to find out who she was. She and Coppi moved in together but so great was the scandal that the landlord of their apartment in Tortona demanded they move out. Reporters pursued them to a hotel in Castelletto d'Orba and again they moved, buying the Villa Carla, a house near Novi Ligure. There police raided them at night to see if they were sharing a bed. Pope Pius XII asked Coppi to return to his wife. He refused to bless the Giro d'Italia when Coppi rode it. The Pope then went through the Italian cycling federation. Its president, Bartolo Paschetta, wrote on 8 July 1954: "Dear Fausto, yesterday evening St. Peter made it known to me that the news [of adultery] had caused him great pain". Bruna Ciampolini refused a divorce. To end a marriage was shameful and still illegal in the country. Coppi was shunned and spectators spat at him. He and Giulia Occhini had a son, Faustino.[29] Death In December 1959, the president of the Republic of Upper Volta (now known as Burkina Faso), Maurice Yaméogo, invited Coppi, Raphaël Géminiani, Jacques Anquetil, Louison Bobet, Roger Hassenforder and Henry Anglade to ride against local riders and then go hunting. Géminiani remembered:
Both caught malaria and fell ill when they got home. Géminiani said:
Géminiani was diagnosed as being infected with plasmodium falciparum, one of the more lethal strains of malaria. Géminiani recovered but Coppi died, his doctors convinced he had a bronchial complaint. La Gazzetta dello Sport, the Italian daily sports paper, published a Coppi supplement. The editor wrote that he prayed that God would soon send another Coppi.[31] Coppi was an atheist.[32]  In January 2002 a man identified only as Giovanni, who lived in Burkina Faso until 1964, said Coppi died not of malaria but of an overdose of cocaine. The newspaper Corriere dello Sport said Giovanni had his information from Angelo Bonazzi. Giovanni said: "It is Angelo who told me that Coppi had been killed. I was a supporter of Coppi, and you can imagine my state when he told me that Coppi had been poisoned in Fada Gourma, at the time of a reception organised by the head of the village. Angelo also told me that [Raphael] Géminiani was also present... Fausto's plate fell, they replaced it, and then..."[33] The story has also been attributed to a 75-year-old Benedictine monk called Brother Adrien. He told Mino Caudullo of the Italian National Olympic Committee: "Coppi was killed with a potion mixed with grass. Here in Burkina Faso this awful phenomenon happens. People are still being killed like that". Coppi's doctor, Ettore Allegri, dismissed the story as "absolute drivel".[34][35] A court in Tortona opened an investigation and asked toxicologists about exhuming Coppi's body to look for poison. A year later, without exhumation, the case was dismissed.[36] LegacyThe Giro remembers Coppi as it goes through the mountain stages. A mountain bonus, called the Cima Coppi, is awarded to the first rider who reaches the Giro's highest summit. In 1999, Coppi placed second in balloting for greatest Italian athlete of the 20th century. Coppi's life story was depicted in the 1995 TV movie, Il Grande Fausto, written and directed by Alberto Sironi. Coppi was played by Sergio Castellitto and Giulia la 'Dama Bianca' (The Woman in White) was played by Ornella Muti.[37] A commonly repeated trope is that when Coppi was asked how to be a champion, his reply was: "Just ride. Just ride. Just ride."[38] An Italian Restaurant in Belfast, designed with road bike parts and pictures, is named Coppi. Asteroid 214820 Faustocoppi was named in his memory in December 2017. The village of his birth, previously known as 'Castellania', was renamed Castellania Coppi by the Piemont regional council in 2019, in preparation for the centenary of his birth.[39] Doping
Gino Bartali, Miroir des Sports, 1946,[40]
Coppi was often said to have introduced "modern" methods to cycling, particularly his diet. Gino Bartali established that some of those methods included taking drugs, which were not then against the rules. Bartali and Coppi appeared on television revues and sang together, Bartali singing about "The drugs you used to take" as he looked at Coppi. Coppi spoke of the subject in a television interview:
Coppi "set the pace" in drug-taking, said his contemporary Wim van Est.[43] Rik Van Steenbergen said Coppi was "the first I knew who took drugs".[44] That didn't stop Coppi's protesting against others using it. He told René de Latour:
Career achievementsMajor results
Grand Tour results timelineSource:[47]
Monuments results timeline
See also
Notes
References
Bibliography
Further reading
External links
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
.jpg)
