Fallen Angel (35 page)

Coppi’s early death has preserved him in a state of grace that has remained undefiled by everyday reality. Other cycling champions have grown old or senile or fat. Some have been tarnished by drugs scandals or blatant commercialism. Coppi remains pristine. Were Coppi among us now he would be just another old cyclist with a highly distinguished past. Instead, his premature death, and the strenuous efforts of the Coppi industry – the Italian media, cycle makers and his former team-mates – have preserved
il campionissimo
as if in aspic, his aura intact, his story endlessly told and retold, in books, paintings, operas, films, music, statues, interviews.

There are reminders everywhere. The Anglo-Italian professional cyclist Max Sciandri tells the story that, while out training one day, he stopped to answer nature’s call next to a
near derelict building high on a lonely Tuscan hill. Scratched into the stone at eye level were the letters W Coppi – w for
evviva
, ‘long live’. The graffito had been there at least forty years.

The Italian writer, Dino Buzzati, considered that in life the sporting champion,
il campione
, is a human being on a higher plane. ‘After the race he does not go back to being just any man. He remains
un campione
, alien to our everyday world … we consider everything they do in a special way … [we are in] the presence of something mysterious, sacred, a kind of grace, [a] supernatural authority.’

In life, Coppi had the champion’s mystique, the champion’s aura, and his death has left that aura unadulterated. At the same time, however, the public display of his frailties meant that he was anything but ‘alien to our everyday world’. His achievements on the bike were superhuman; he himself was all too human.

Only his remaining contemporaries can now truly understand what he achieved in sporting terms, because his greatest wins belong to a long gone era. We may feel we can imagine how hard it is to race up and down the mountains of the Great Tours, but the roads to the passes are now asphalted, not surfaced with clinging mud or choking dust, the descents are not littered with rocks and slithery gravel. Bikes have twenty-one gears instead of ten and are made of carbon fibre, not steel.

The context of the times in which Coppi raced is just as alien. Cycling will never again enjoy the popular monopoly it so briefly did in the post-war years. The focus is diluted. But the side of Coppi with which we can all empathise is the human side: his uneasy choice of a love that lay outside social norms, the abrupt change in his family life that could only cause pain to those around him and left him confused and not entirely happy, his love of his children, the protectiveness
of his friends even now, his moments of crisis even as he rode to his greatest triumphs. These, and the lengthy rivalry with Bartali, are universal in any age.

The man who unknowingly took Coppi to that early death, Raphael Geminiani, has one final comment on his old friend. ‘His life is a novel. If you wanted to create a real romance, you need only write his life story from A to Z.’ The old men will gradually pass away, taking their stiff limbs and their memories with them. With the grace of a heron in flight and the scrawny physique of a skinned cat, Coppi
il mito
will ride on.

The following list is by no means exhaustive. Of particular value as sources throughout were the following:

Le Drame de Ma Vie,
Fausto Coppi, Editions France-Soir, 1950;
Fausto Coppi, l’Echappee Belle: Italie 1945–1960,
Dominique Jameux, Denoel, 2003;
Fausto Coppi: La Gloire et les Larmes,
Jean-Paul Ollivier, Glenat, 2006;
Fausto Coppi: La Tragedie de la Gloire
, Jean-Paul Ollivier, PAC Editions, 1979;
L’Italia del Giro d’Italia
, Daniele Marchesini, Il Mulino, 1996;
The Sweat of the Gods
, Benjo Maso, trs. Michiel Horn, Mousehold Press, 2005;
Gli Angeli di Coppi
, Marco Pastonesi, Ediciclo Editore, 1999;
Bartali e Coppi
, Rino Negri, Reverdito Edizioni, 2001;
Parla Coppi
, Rino Negri, Anannia Editrice, 1971;
Vélo Gotha
, Harry van den Bremt and Rene Jacobs, 1984;
Caro Coppi,
Orio Vergani and Guido Vergani, Mondadori, 1995.

Newspapers consulted: principally
La Gazzetta dello Sport
,
Corriere della Sera
, and
La Stampa
.

The following were of specific reference in particular chapters; again the list is not exhaustive.

1 The Letter and the Photograph

Author interview with Armando Baselica, 2005, and Piero Coppi, 2005 and 2007;
Quando Coppi Correva in Bicicletta
, DVD,
La Gazzetta dello Sport
, 2003;
Love and War in the Apennines,
Eric Newby, Hodder & Stoughton, 1971; Marco Pastonesi interview with Armando Baselica, in
La Gazzetta dello Sport
, January 2005.

2 To Race a Bike, You Need to Be a Poor Man

Cavanna, l’Uomo che Inventa Coppi
, ed. Marco Pastonesi, Ediciclo Editore, 2006; author interviews with Michele Gismondi, 2006, Ettore Milano and Sandrino Carrea, 2005, and Alfredo Martini, November 2004.

3 The Blind Man and the Butcher’s Boy

L’Armata nel Deserto
, Arrigo Petacco, Mondadori, 2002; Les Woodland’s interview with Len Levesley in
procycling
, 2004;
Le Vèlo a l’Heure Allemande
, Jean Bobet, La Table Ronde, 2007;
Les Rendez-voux du Cyclisme ou Arriva Coppi
, Pierre Chany, La Table Ronde, 1960; author interviews with Alfredo Martini and Ubaldo Pugnaloni, 2006.

4 ‘A very regrettable phenomenon’

Les Rendez-voux du Cyclisme ou Arriva Coppi
, Pierre Chany, La Table Ronde, 1960; ‘La Triste Felicita di Giulia Locatelli’,
Oggi
, 9 September 1954; the image mentioned on page 65 can be found on pages 160–161 of
Guerra Civile: Una storia fotographica
, Pasquale Chessa, Mondadori, 2005;
L’Italia della Disfatta,
Indro Montanelli and Mario Cervi, Rizzioli, 2000; information on the state of Italian cycling in 1946 is quoted from
La Biblioteca del Ciclismo: Rinasce la Sfida, 1946
, Geo Edizioni;
Quando Spararono sull’Giro
, Paolo Facchinetti, Limina, 2006;
Il Sangue dei Vinti: Quello che accade in Italia dopo il 25 Aprile,
Giampaolo Pansa, Sperling, 2005.

5 Jousting in the Rubble

Author interview with Marina Bellocchi, January 2007;
Un uomo, un mondo, la bicicletta,
Giorgio Maioli with Gianetto Cimurri, GES Bologna, 1982.

6 The Imposter

Bartali: L’uomo che salvò l’Italia pedalando
, Leo Turrini, Mondadori,
2004;
Bartali: Il mito oscuarato
, Giancarlo Brocci, Protagon, 2000;
Don Camillo and the Prodigal Son
, Giovanni Guareschi, Penguin, 1962;
Gino Bartali: ‘Mille Diavoli in corpo‘
, Paolo Alberati, Giunti, 2006;
Coppi et Bartali: Les Deux Visages de l’Italie
, Curzio Malaparte, Pascuito, 2007; Philippe Brunel’s essay
‘
Il etait une foi, Gino Bartali
’
in
l’Equipe
, July 1998; Paolo Alberati’s interview with Giovanni Corrieri, ‘L’Amaro mondiale di Coppi e Bartali‘
,
Luciano Boccaccini,
Bicisport
, 2006; author interviews with Ubaldo Pugnaloni, Fiorenzo Magni, 2007, and Alfredo Martini.

7 The Mystic and the Mechanic

Author interview with Faustino Coppi, 2007;
Ero la Peccatrice de’Italia
, ghosted article by Giulia Occhini,
Oggi
, 25 March 1978;
The Giro d’Italia
, Dino Buzzati, trs. Velopress, 1999;
La Testa e I Garun
,
Alfredo Binda si confessa a Duilio Chiarada,
Ediciclo Editore, 1998; author interviews with Ettore Milano, Alfredo Martini, 2004, Raphael Geminiani, 2005

8 Summer Lightning

Author interviews with Jean Bobet, 2006, Ubaldo Pugaloni, Raphael Geminiani, Alfredo Martini and Fiorenzo Magni; Luciano Boccaccini’s interview with Vito Ortelli,
Bicisport
, October 1989; the section on Paris–Roubaix quotes
Les Rendez-voux du Cyclisme ou Arriva Coppi
, Pierre Chany, La Table Ronde, 1960.

9 Extinction of the Worthy Brute

Coppi
,
ma Serse,
Giuseppe Castelnovi and Marco Pastonesi, Litho Commerciale, 2001; author interviews with Nino Defilippis, 2006, Fiorenzo Magni.

10 Loss of the Lucky Charm

But et Club
’s special issue devoted to the 1952 Tour, particularly ‘Le Roman du Tour’ written by Felix Levitan; author
interviews with Ettore Milano, Nino Defilippis, Ubaldo Pugnaloni, Michele Gismondi.

11 A Man Alone

Debating Divorce in Italy: Marriage and the Making of Modern Italians 1860–1974
, Mark Seymour, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; author interviews with Faustino Coppi, Jean Bobet, Raphael Geminiani; ‘Ero la Peccatrice de’Italia’, ghosted article by Giulia Occhini,
Oggi
, 25 March 1978;
Coppi e Bartali
, Daniele Marchesini, Il Mulino, 1998.

12 The Outlaws

La Triste Felicita di Giulia Locatelli
,
Oggi
, 9 September 1954; ‘Parla il Marito della “Dama Bianca"‘
, Oggi
, 9 September 1954; ‘Non ho tradito nessuno’, Coppi in
Epoca
, November 1954.

13 In the Dock

Author interviews with Fiorenzo Magni, Nino Defilippis, Keith Robins, Michele Gismondi, Raphael Geminiani, Sandrino Carrea, Faustino Coppi; Beppe Conti in
Bicisport
on Coppi’s last Tour of Lombardy.

14 Decline and Falls

Author interviews with Raphael Geminiani, Ettore Milano;
L’Ultimo Dicembre,
Gino Bailo, Associazione Fausto e Serse Coppi di Castellania, 2004;
The Conquest of Malaria: Italy 1900–1962
, F.M. Snowden, Yale University Press, 2005;
La corsa piu pazza del mondo: Storie di ciclismo in Burkina Faso e Mali,
Marco Pastonesi, Cicloeditore, 2007.

15 Give Me Air

Author interviews with Jean Bobet, Faustino Coppi, Fiorenzo Magni and Paul Smith.

*1
Hence the French nickname
porteurs d’eau
– water carriers.

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