7

Fausto Coppi Takes on All Comers (1946–53)

Within 24 hours of Coppi’s great victory in 1940 Mussolini had taken Italy to war with England and France and the sporting landscape changed overnight. Although some of the smaller stage races and the big one-day races continued in Italy to a greater or lesser degree during the war, the Giro itself was shelved and it was six years before Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi would renew their nascent rivalry, one that is still debated endlessly in Italian cycling circles.

But first they had to survive the war. For decades details of Bartali’s war were unknown and the only war-related story that surfaced was a curious incident at Dachau concentration camp in 1943 when his name alone was credited with saving the lives of 21 Italian Jews, mainly from around Florence. A German officer, presumably a cycling fan, suddenly asked one of the inmates, Antonio Davitti, if he knew of Bartali, the great cyclist from Florence. Davitti said he did and even produced a faded press cutting of the star from inside his breast pocket. The German officer then instructed Davitti to draw up a list of 20 fellow prisoners who were to be spared the gas chamber and who were to work in the Dachau factory instead.

Initially, Bartali just got by. Bizarrely, when called up in October 1940 he failed the Italian Army medical with an irregular heartbeat. This would usually disqualify a man from duty but both the medical officer and Bartali realised that wasn’t really an option given his reputation as one of the fittest men imaginable. Eventually a compromise was reached whereby he served as a messenger at an aeroplane factory near Lake Trasimeno, some 120km to the south-east of Florence. He could have used a motorbike to run his errands but persuaded a senior officer that it was nearly as quick on a pushbike, which also had the advantage of keeping him in training for the limited racing programme that was still being organised. The surrender of Italian forces to the Allies, closely followed by the occupation of Italy by the Nazis in 1943, changed all that. Bartali was demobbed and moved back to the Florence region where he was soon contacted by his good friend Archbishop Elia Dalla Costa who had become heavily involved with the Italian resistance movement, which was trying to save the lives of the many Jews in the area who were either being rounded up and sent to concentration camps or summarily shot. It was a personal plea for assistance from Dalla Costa and Bartali answered with action not words. His most regular duty was to tog up in training gear wearing a jersey emblazoned with his name just in case the Germans were in any doubt as to his identity: he was Gino Bartali, recent Giro and Tour de France champion, out on one of his famous long-distance training rides. While out for such a ride he would stop at a remote Franciscan friary, which was secretly housing many Jews, to collect the photographs of them that were needed for forged documents if they were to have any hope of escaping. These would be carefully rolled up and concealed in his bike frame and handlebars, and later that day he would ride back into Florence and pass them over to Giorgio Nissim, a Jewish accountant originally from Pisa, who coordinated the production of the forged documents. Bartali continued to act as a courier, on other occasions delivering the finished documents themselves. Lucca, Genoa and the Vatican – where the secret printing press was situated – were all regular destinations for Bartali. Dangerous work indeed, as was his decision to hide the Jewish family of his friend Giacomo Goldenberg in the cellar of his Florence apartment until the liberation of Florence in 1944. The true extent of his exploits only came to light after his death in 2000 when Nissim’s sons were going through the diaries of their father who had also recently died. There in the diaries were neatly listed some of Bartali’s trips and the tasks assigned to him. In September 2013 Bartali was posthumously awarded the honour Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and education centre in Jerusalem. His deeds certainly offer a searing insight into an elusive and seemingly dour individual.

Coppi, meanwhile, also endured an eventful war and, like Bartali, initially it was simply a case of muddling through. He was called up just two days after his Giro victory – Infantryman 7375 – but for two years or more he was spared combat with postings at Limone Piemonte and then Tortona, close to Novi Ligure. There was ample time to train, race and even to get his daily massage from Cavanna and for a while his was a comfortable enough war combining military duties with racing domestically. But eventually, in March 1943, his unit was shipped out to North Africa where he briefly experienced the heat of battle before he and many others were captured and made prisoners of war at Cap Bon on 13 April. Coppi was held captive at Majaz al Bab for the best part of two years where he was put to work as a lorry mechanic and occasional barber. The British cyclist Len Levesley serving at the camp was astonished to find Coppi giving him a haircut one morning as he recalled in Fausto Coppi: The True Story, by Jean-Paul Ollivier:

I should think it took me all of a full second to realise who it was. He looked fine, he looked slim, and having been in the desert, he looked tanned. I’d only seen him in cycling magazines but I knew instantly who he was. So he cut away at my hair and I tried to have a conversation with him, but he didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Italian. But we managed one or two words and I got over to him that I did some club racing. And I gave him a bar of chocolate that I had with me and he was grateful for that and that was the end of it.

On 1 February 1945 Coppi was moved back to the Italian mainland to an RAF holding camp at Salerno just outside Naples. There he was briefly a batman for a British officer but the war was coming to an end and he was released in April, free to continue his cycling career. Within weeks he was racing again in the south, weak though he was, and picking up useful appearance money before he decided it was time to cycle home to Castellania regain his strength and continue his career in earnest. A truly remarkable career, rudely interrupted, was about to be relaunched.

In his pomp Coppi was perhaps the greatest natural talent the sport has ever seen, and his fortunes on and off the bike became the great soap opera of Italian sport, in fact of Italian life itself. Could anybody or anything beat the great man? He was always the one to beat, his stick-like body sometimes failed him, he was self-obsessed to a sometimes alarming degree, could be both vindictive and generous, suffered personal tragedy in the shape of his brother’s death and was to embark on the most celebrated extramarital affair in sport. Yet by 1953 he had still amassed a record five Giro titles. And in two of those years he famously doubled up and took the Tour de France as well. The ageing Bartali resisted with some panache for a few years while Fiorenzo Magni, a great rider in his own right, was rarely cowed and was rewarded with his occasional hard-earned moments of glory. There was even a win for the stylish and charismatic Hugo Koblet who became the first overseas rider to win the Giro in 1950. But always it was Coppi who loomed largest, either dictating the race or the storyline, usually both.

Given their varied war experiences you might have thought that both Coppi and Bartali would have mellowed in their personal relationship when they started racing again in 1946. Life was manifestly too short for such bad humour and ill grace. But that is to ignore the inevitable rivalry when two of the greatest ever performers in a given sport find themselves competing in the same era. The media from Gazzetta downwards stoked the fires, and their lifestyles and what they were perceived to stand for divided Italy so naturally that perhaps they were condemned to eternal enmity. Bartali would never refer to Coppi by name, he would always call him l’altro, the other one. They were also both as stubborn as mules and very difficult people in their own ways.

The great Alfredo Binda, called upon to manage the duo at the Tour de France and at various World Championships for the Italian team, summed it up best with his astute comment: ‘It was like being asked to put a cat and a dog in the same sack. It was no good pretending they were friends. Their rivalry wasn’t an attitude they adopted out of vanity, it was real and neverending.’

Clearly Bartali and Coppi could not race in the same team, so at the start of 1946 the latter had moved to Bianchi, taking his favourite mechanic Pinella di Grande with him and negotiating a place in the squad for his younger brother, the light-hearted but worldly Serse, who was in any case a strong, loyal gregario well worth his place in any team. The guru-like Cavanna was, of course, also omnipresent. Coppi is often described as a solitary figure, trapped in an unhappy marriage and at odds with the cycling establishment, but he certainly didn’t lack for close confidants and soulmates in his corner.

The scene was set and the 1946 race optimistically dubbed the Giro della Rinascita (rebirth) although in reality there was very little new on offer. Even the venerable Cougnet was still in charge although his anointed successor, Vincenzo Torriani, was shadowing him and was poised to take over in 1948. War had raged through Europe and the wider world for six years but it was still Bartali racing against Coppi, the rest nowhere. The older Bartali had a couple of very good years left at best and was determined to make the most of them. He certainly looked strong and decided to make his move on stage nine, a mountainous day from Chieti to Naples. Reports differ as to whether Coppi was suffering illness or got delayed with a puncture and was unable to cover Bartali’s attack but, whatever the reality, he lost 4 minutes to Bartali that day and, as it turned out, the race with it. Coppi rode strongly for the rest of the Giro, taking two of the mountain stages in the Dolomites but could never quite break Bartali who arrived back in Milan with a 47-second lead. It was a sweet moment of vindication but at nearly 32 the slim margin didn’t augur well for the future; and, indeed, although he was to claim the runner-up spot three times in the coming years, Bartali’s remaining Giros were to be a glorious raging against the dying of the light. He was never to stand atop the podium again.

Even in victory Bartali remained ever-suspicious of Coppi, as he revealed in an interview in Miroir des Sports that year. On the stage from Genoa to Montecatini Terme, Bartali observed Coppi drinking from a glass phial while rounding one of the hairpins on the Passo del Bracco and after the stage finished Bartali drove back to the spot in a team car to look for, and find, the phial:

With the meticulous care of a detective collecting evidence for fingerprinting I picked it up, dropped it into a white envelope and put it carefully in my pocket. The next day I rushed round to my personal doctor and asked him to send the phial to a lab for analysis. Disappointment: no drug, no magic potion. It was nothing more than an ordinary tonic, made in France that I could have bought without a prescription.

I realised that I should have to try to outsmart him and I devised my own investigation system. The first thing was to make sure I always stayed at the same hotel for a race, and to have the room next to his so I could mount a surveillance. I would watch him leave with his mates, then I would tiptoe into the room which ten seconds earlier had been his headquarters. I would rush to the waste bin and the bedside table, go through the bottles, flasks, phials, tubes, cartons, boxes, suppositories – I swept up everything. I had become so expert in interpreting all these pharmaceuticals that I could predict how Fausto would behave during the course of the stage. I would work out, according to the traces of the product I found, how and when he would attack me.

Extraordinary, paranoiac, and disturbingly obsessive behaviour from Bartali you might think although you might also argue it was the same hyper-alertness and attention to detail that probably saw him through his clandestine war activities.

Coppi’s candid public confession later in his career of regularly using drugs more than confirmed Bartali’s basic suspicions. Quite how much the crude use of amphetamines – la bomba – influenced a cyclist’s performance is, however, a moot point as more often than not they would cause a rider to collapse and abandon the following day or to fall ill. It is also commonly accepted that many, perhaps the majority, of riders at the time resorted to using drugs in some form. Following the Second World War an estimated 90-million surplus amphetamine tablets appeared on the black market, originally shipped to Europe from the USA for use by American combat troops. They were not hard to obtain and at this stage doping in cycling was essentially the search for a magic potion or short-term tonic that would make the difference rather than anything we would recognise today as the systematic use of performance-enhancing drugs. Coppi, it should be added, was also genuinely interested in and at the cutting edge of nutrition, diet and hydration and at one stage even experimented with vegetarianism. Anything in the pursuit of victory.

The unfolding Bartali–Coppi rivalry was gripping enough but there was excitement elsewhere in this 1946 race when the organisers, full of patriotic fervour, decided to take the race into Trieste which was essentially still a war zone. The former Yugoslavia also claimed the city, which was occupied by Allied forces, and sporadic fighting was commonplace. On the day – stage 14 from Rovigo to Trieste – the Giro turned ugly when Yugoslav partisans stopped the race at Pieris, blocking the road and throwing stones and bottles at the peloton. Armed guards accompanying the race in turn fired over the protesters’ heads by way of warning. Belatedly the organisers realised the possible error of their ways and declared the stage over there and then with all riders to receive the same time. A number of riders however, led by Trieste native Giordano Cottur and his Wilier Triestina squad, were determined to finish in the city itself where a considerable crowd had gathered. Which is exactly what they did, with reports indicating that Cottur was awarded the stage with 16 other riders crossing the line in Trieste itself. Although the finish passed off peacefully enough there was extensive rioting once the Giro left and headed for the Dolomites. It was a very volatile arena into which the race had strayed.

The following year featured another head-to-head between Bartali and Coppi, and the interest and excitement escalated further. Armed police were assigned to each rider to protect them from their fans and Bartali invested in earplugs in an attempt to get a decent night’s sleep such was the noise of the crowd that gathered outside his hotel at night. In terms of time difference it was close in 1947 but there had been a shift in power. For much of the race Coppi seemed to toy with Bartali, waiting patiently for the moment to strike. From stage four, when he and Coppi were a class apart on the Abetone climb and bossed the stage from Reggio nell’Emilia to Prato, Bartali wore the maglia rosa and there was the illusion of an equal contest. At the end of stage 15 his lead in GC over Coppi was 2 minutes 41 seconds – a big deficit to make up on a rider of Bartali’s class, but Coppi remained unflustered. He had done his homework and knew that nobody would be able to stay with him on stage 16 from Pieve di Cadore to Trento, a 194km ride which included the Falzarego and Pordoi passes. Coppi went initially on the Falzarego when Bartali’s chain fouled but Coppi himself dropped a chain on the descent which allowed Bartali to regain contact, albeit only temporarily. Coppi was off again on the Pordoi and this time there was no stopping him as he rode into Trento 4 minutes 24 seconds ahead of the chasing pack that Bartali had gathered in an attempt to limit his losses. It might have been more but bad weather had seen a third climb planned for that day, the Sella, cancelled at the last moment. With no more mountain stages left, the race was his. Game, set and match Coppi.

Perhaps you can have too much of a good thing, however, and Fiorenzo Magni’s win in 1948 was no bad thing for the Giro. Bartali and Coppi had arguably become a little complacent and made no attempt to animate the race in the first week, content no doubt to wait for the inevitable battle royal in the mountains in the final week. After stage eight they were both well over 7 minutes off the lead held by Giordano Cottur. But no stress: it would all be sorted in due course. The Giro was all about them and they would choose exactly when battle commenced. It was their show. At which point Magni, an emerging talent but at that point not really on the main contenders’ radar, played his hand and set off with Vito Ortelli on an audacious break midway through the long stage to Naples taking in the Ariano Irpino ascent. The big hitters paid no attention which was a mistake because Magni moved into second place overall, well over 10 minutes ahead of Coppi and Bartali, and it transpired he was too good a rider to take liberties with.

Ezio Cecchi and Magni embedded themselves at the top of the GC but there was still stage 17, with the Falzarego and Pordoi to negotiate and Coppi, at 8 minutes 29 seconds with Bartali a little further back, was still capable of anything on such terrain. And Coppi in particular was beginning to hit his stride having won the short, sharp mountain stage from Auronzo to Cortina d’Ampezzo the previous day. He certainly rode beautifully again on stage 17 but was shocked at the end to see Magni roll in just 2 minutes 31 seconds later to regain the maglia rosa from Cecchi. Observers had Magni up to 5 minutes behind Coppi going into the Pordoi climb and everybody knew that Coppi was far superior going uphill. How did that happen? How indeed. That Magni benefited from fans pushing him up the ascent of the Pordoi is beyond dispute but that was hardly anything new, either at the Giro or the Tour de France. Some fans had always spontaneously rendered assistance. What is in doubt is whether Magni’s sponsor Wilier Triestina – with an unexpected Giro win so close they could almost smell it – orchestrated the whole affair by bussing in supporters and placing them strategically up the mountain to lend a hand when their man was in trouble. Coppi and Bianchi suspected the latter and lodged an angry complaint but the judges had little hard evidence to go on and docked Magni just 2 minutes.

Far from mollified, Coppi stormed out of the race in disgust, taking his team with him. It’s easy to understand their frustration but Coppi was in some ways the architect of his own downfall. It was he and his team who had snoozed on stage nine and let Magni get into that vital break and it was he who had banked on still being able to deliver the coup de grâce on the Pordoi. He was leaving it very late and such tactics can backfire. He could just as easily have had a mechanical or crashed on the Pordoi and lost his one chance to make good the time gap that way. And, finally, his decision to quit the race also rather ignores the fact that, regardless of any issues with Magni, his carelessness earlier in the race meant he still trailed the blameless Cecchi by 1 minute and 9 seconds with two flattish stages left. Magni eventually beat Cecchi by just 11 seconds, and Bartali, having long since accepted that the 1948 Giro was a lost cause, finished eighth overall.

Like many great winners, Coppi wasn’t a very graceful loser. He didn’t get much practice. Nor would his humour have improved a great deal later in the year when Bartali was reinstalled as the nation’s hero with his stunning Tour de France victory ten years after his earlier triumph across the border. There was life in the old dog yet, and it was an angry and highly motivated Coppi who started preparing for the 1949 season. He decided to reduce the number of lucrative appearances he made on the track in the winter to start his road preparations early. He headed off to North Africa – Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt – with brother Serse to train in the winter sun and ride in a number of low-key races. He was determined to hit the 1949 season running and end all debate as to who was the greater rider. He intended to win the Giro and Tour de France back to back.

Coppi in his pomp as he takes Giro/Tour double

Mindful perhaps of his twin aims, Coppi rode within himself initially at the 1949 Giro but this was a course so loaded in his favour – huge mountain stage mid-race, the mother of all mountain stages towards the end and then a long time trial on the penultimate day – that there was more wriggle room if anything untoward happened. He was both relaxed and focused at the same time, a very dangerous combination. He went to work in earnest on stage 11, a forbidding mountain day from Bassano del Grappa which took in the Rolle, Pordoi and Gardena when he put 6 minutes into the field to move into second place behind Adolfo Leoni who he stalked all the way to stage 17. No slip-ups or loss of concentration this time.

And then the sporting world witnessed a genius at work. The new race director Torriani – perhaps wanting to make a name for himself and possibly also determined to ensure a win for either Coppi or Bartali after Magni had slipped through unannounced in 1948 – had designed the mother of all mountain stages from Cuneo to Pinerolo, 254km of undiluted pain taking in five major passes and climbs – the Maddalena, Vars, the Izoard, Montgenèvre and finally Sestriere. For Coppi it was payback time. Primo Volpi led the peloton onto the Maddalena but thereafter it was Coppi all the way as he took off into the murk and sleety blizzards on the high tops. There were still 190km to go but Coppi wasn’t hanging around. For the best part of nine hours Italy came to a grinding halt as people crowded around radios to discuss the regular updates and marvel at Coppi’s virtuosity. By the time he arrived in Pinerolo he was 11 minutes 52 seconds ahead of Bartali who was himself another 7 minutes 52 seconds ahead of the third man home, Alfredo Martini. With a generous 4-minute time bonus for the win, Coppi now led second-placed Bartali by 23 minutes 20 seconds. Coppi seemed almost to be from another planet.

Italian novelist Dino Buzatti best captured the moment and the wider significance of Coppi’s coup de grâce at the 1949 Giro:

There is nothing left to do but to accept the fact and assign to Coppi the position he is entitled to: numero uno in Italian cycling, or rather, in world cycling. Today there is a gap between him and Bartali but also a gap between Bartali and all the others; and both are the pride of Italian sport. Everybody envies us our two champions, starting with the French. We only hope that Bartali will hang in there, he is the necessary element of comparison for determining Coppi’s class.

The Coppi–Bartali rivalry was now over, in the Grand Tours at least, as was demonstrated later that summer when Binda somehow managed to get the two protagonists to call a truce and for Bartali to ride at the Tour for Coppi. Coppi swept to yet another stunning victory, this time by nearly 11 minutes, with Bartali in second place – himself a further 15 minutes ahead of third-placed Jacques Marinelli. From this point onwards when they lined up in the same race the real threat to Coppi would come from elsewhere.

1950: first overseas winner

Switzerland’s dashing Hugo Koblet, never knowingly seen with a hair out of place and with his sponsored comb and scented sponge always close to hand, was the next rider to step up to the plate. The music-hall artist Jacques Grello nicknamed him the pedaleur du charme, a moniker which stuck and became the title of a documentary film made in 2010 depicting his life. Koblet was a playboy but he had immense style on a bike and his warm-hearted personality made him popular with fans and opponents.

A lover of all things American, where he frequently holidayed, there was bizarrely more than a whiff of the all-American West Coast boy about the man from Zurich. Koblet was box office and for a couple of years he blazed a trail, an aesthetically pleasing but hard-as-nails roadman before he gradually lost the ability to climb effectively at high altitude. Some date this incipient weakness back to a trip to Mexico where he developed a respiratory problem; others are more cynical and believed that, as a notoriously overenthusiastic user of drugs and medication, his health was ruinously damaged. Certainly the Swiss documentary leaned towards the latter. It’s difficult to be certain.

Koblet’s story had the saddest of endings when he died in a car crash in 1964, aged just 39, an incident thought by some to be suicide, with one witness insisting Koblet deliberately drove his white Alfa Romeo sports car into a tree. It’s possible. His marriage had broken up, a reconciliation had failed, he had squandered his money and the taxman was in hot pursuit. Life had certainly turned very sour for the man who once had the world at his feet. Back in 1950 he was a smiling, tanned, sporting god and a glorious, debonair antidote to the introspective Coppi, the moody, stern Bartali and the grimacing hard man Magni.

Before the 1950 Giro, although well regarded by Italian fans, Koblet hadn’t really been considered among the main contenders. The three big beasts of Italian cycling were all in good form. The ever-versatile Coppi had enjoyed a profitable Classics season winning Paris–Roubaix and Flèche Wallonne and was the clear favourite; the granite-like Magni had won the second of his three Tour of Flanders titles and was going like a train, and even the old campaigner Bartali, enjoying an Indian summer of a season with the expectation of victory removed, had looked sprightly in winning Milan–San Remo.

Koblet kept his nose clean early on, avoided crashes, and made his first move on stage eight from Brescia to Venice when the climbers came alive on the Pian delle Fugazze climb. With Koblet and Pasquale Fornara escaping the select bunch at the end to nick 20 seconds, Koblet went into the maglia rosa. The following day Koblet repeated his excellent form in the mountains proper, finishing alongside the stage winner Bartali after a stage containing the Rolle, Pordoi and Gardena. That underscored his race-winning potential but the drama of the day concerned Coppi and a crash that caused him to abandon. Some way before the major climbs, near the village of Primolano, Coppi was manoeuvring his way to the front of the peloton when he collided with Armando Peverelli and fell to earth. Paverelli had lost the sight of his left eye after a crash in the 1949 Tour de France and might not have seen Coppi as he routinely went to pass on his left. The crash was neither high speed nor spectacular but Coppi immediately knew he was in trouble when he tried to remount. Something was definitely broken, and an X-ray revealed three distinct fractures to his pelvis. Not only was his Giro over but his season as well.

Racing accidents happen but as ever the circus quickly moved on. Koblet was still riding beautifully and cleverly crested the two major climbs on stage 13 ahead of the bunch to pick up further time bonuses and push his lead in the GC out beyond 7 minutes. Not that he and his Guerra colleagues particularly needed any help, but it was quite noticeable that Coppi’s Bianchi team were now ‘riding for’ the new Swiss star rather than assisting Bartali. This started to cause quite a stir as it suddenly dawned on the tifosi that the Giro d’Italia was about to be won by an overseas rider. Bartali wasn’t too pleased either, claiming that it was only his intervention with officialdom that had prevented a couple of the Bianchi team being asked to leave the race after they had missed the cut on the day Coppi crashed, when they had waited with their leader before he was taken to hospital. Bartali chipped a couple of minutes off Koblet’s lead before they returned to Milan and in fact in terms of actual elapsed time got around the 3,981km course fractionally quicker than Koblet, but the pedaleur du charme had ridden a near-flawless race, tactically and physically, and hadn’t missed a beat. With the aid of his cannily won time bonuses it was Koblet who stood atop the podium at the finish. And still not a hair out of place.

Coppi was up against it again in 1951. Not only had a mighty field assembled, with Louison Bobet leading the French charge and a team of hard nuts from Belgium spearheaded by Rik Van Steenbergen intent on mounting a challenge, but he was again struggling physically. He had broken his collarbone crashing at the finish of Milano–Torino on 11 March which torpedoed his preparations and saw him arrive at the start seriously undercooked. Everything needed to go Coppi’s way if he was to have any chance. In the event it proved to be an entertaining tussle between Magni and Van Steenbergen who both found inspiration and rode above themselves along with Switzerland’s other world-class star Ferdi Kübler who had won the 1950 Tour de France. Kübler was the complete opposite of the languid Koblet – unkempt, wild, hair everywhere and drenched in sweat. Coppi won a couple of stages and eventually finished fourth but could never quite get on terms. Bad weather in the Alps saw a couple of climbs cancelled, which also worked against him a little, but essentially it was that early season crash that did for the campionissimo.

Magni took the Giro without winning a stage and his victory, as well as being a triumph for consistency in mountains and in the two time trials, was down largely to a virtuoso display of descending on stage 17 from Trieste to Cortina d’Ampezzo. This was meant to be the crucial stage of the race – the Tappone – but the wintry weather prevented the peloton going up the Pordoi, Falzarego and Rolle, much to Coppi’s dismay. The Mauria and Misurina were still testing enough climbs and Coppi and Bobet were out front all day but on the last descent Magni, although with no hope of winning the stage, decided it was now or never in terms of the GC and took his life in his hands in an attempt to put some time into Van Steenbergen. By cycling standards Magni was a muscular, thickset athlete and there is no reason why he should not have been an exceptional descender, but this was something out of the ordinary as he went for broke. Descending is very technical and a great skill but sometimes it also comes down to a state of mind and who wants it the most. On this occasion Magni was that man, as he put 3 minutes into the great Belgian to open up a lead of 1 minute 46 seconds. The Giro was his.

Coppi bounces back after personal tragedy

Fausto Coppi’s life took a dramatic and tragic turn on Friday 29 June 1951 when his extrovert younger brother Serse died after a seemingly innocuous crash in Turin at the end of the one-day Giro del Piemonte. Serse was racing alongside his famous brother when his front wheel went into a tramline and he went to ground.

Serse had signed the finish sheet when he rolled in and was having a bath when he started to complain of a headache and quickly became unconscious. There was an agonising delay when he reached hospital; there was no suitable blood plasma available and Serse died before he could reach the operating table. A younger brother he may have been but Serse was much more than that to Fausto Coppi. He was the grounded, earthy, profane and worldlier member of the double act, a perfect foil to his complicated and fretting elder brother. He was a training partner, loyal gregario and room-mate. Serse was Fausto’s sounding board and dispenser of common sense and arbiter of his wildly fluctuating emotions and passions. Now he was gone. In cycling terms it was touch and go for a while as to whether Fausto would continue but when he made the decision to ride on it was with a vengeance and anger. The cycling world needed to look out in 1952. As for his personal life, the shackles were off. He was unhappy at home and had already spotted Giulia Locatelli who, although married and often travelling with her doctor husband, made little attempt to disguise her passion for the unhappy Coppi.

Coppi was off the leash in all respects and 1952–3 saw the final great flowering of his extraordinary talent with two Giro wins, a second Tour de France title and the most crushing of wins in the World Championship.

The 1952 Giro was a controlled masterclass as Coppi looked to win well without emptying the tanks because he fully intended winning the Tour again shortly afterwards. He finished the race off in one fell swoop fairly early on in proceedings when, already in pink, he put 5 minutes into all his main rivals in winning the Venice–Bolzano stage which took in the familiar Falzarego, Pordoi and Sella passes. By this stage he was already over 8 minutes ahead of second-place Fiorenzo Magni. He was in cruise control and on stage 14 he effectively wrapped the race up by winning a long ITT and adding nearly 2 minutes to his lead over Magni. The last week was a virtual promenade to Milan, a gentle warm-down as he started planning and plotting for the Tour.

Sadly, the 1952 Giro will also be remembered for the Giro’s first racing fatality when Orfeo Ponsin, a second-year professional with Frejus, was killed after a high-speed crash. It occurred on stage four, on Tuesday 20 May, some 30km from the finish in Rome when Ponsin was descending off the Merluzza climb and his front wheel hit a foot-high concrete block alongside the road. Ponsin was catapulted into a nearby tree and pronounced dead in hospital later that evening.

The 1953 race was a very different proposition for Coppi. Koblet was enjoying his last hurrah as a truly competitive Grand Tour rider and took the maglia rosa after stage eight, a very Koblet-friendly 48km time trial when he put 1 minute 20 seconds into Coppi. The 1950 winner retained the jersey without serious alarm all the way to the much-anticipated finale in the high mountains with stages 19 and 20 both monstrous affairs in their own way. The race proper would begin there.

Stage 19 incorporated four old friends – the Misurina, Falzarego, Pordoi and Sella – and Koblet went to the start line with a lead of 1 minute 59 seconds over Coppi which, although useful, was far from being decisive given the terrain that awaited. The duo rode alone together at the front of the race with Koblet setting a fierce pace on the Pordoi. Coppi then comfortably overtook him on the Sella only for Koblet to get back on terms with a brave descent. Koblet was the aggressor, wanting to close the race out there and then, although he was left hanging on at the end. Come the stage finish at the Bolzano velodrome, Coppi won an uncontested sprint and here the intrigue starts ahead of stage 20.

The accepted Giro story is that the two had spoken en route during stage 19 and that there was an understanding that Coppi would take the stage with Koblet now the Giro champion-elect. ‘My compliments, the Giro is yours. You are the strongest,’ Coppi reportedly said to Koblet at the finish. Very odd if true. It was only half-time so to speak in the epic mountain double-header that would decide the 1953 Giro and the toughest test by far was yet to come, on an incredible new climb, the Stelvio, which was making its long-awaited debut. Approaching from the north-east, from Ponte di Stelvio, the Stelvio is an epic cycling challenge by any criteria: 24.3km at an average of 7.4 per cent seeing an altitude gain of 1,808m topping out at 2,758m before the high-speed 22km descent to the finish in Bormio. The height was such that altitude – and the ability of a rider to cope with it – was a very real factor as much as the steepness of the climb and descent. The Stelvio – often featured in car adverts and named the ‘greatest driving road in the world’ – also takes in 48 hairpin bends. By way of comparison the Alpe d’Huez, one of the marquee climbs on the Tour de France, has 21 hairpins. The pass is normally closed from early October to the end of May so it’s often touch and go whether it’s in condition to race in the Giro.

Before the start of the epic stage 20 which traversed this visual treat came Act 2 of this favourite Giro mythology. Coppi had apparently settled for second place overall but his Bianchi team-mates were still convinced he could not only win the Stelvio stage but the Giro overall and started chivvying him up. Why wouldn’t they? Their cut from the team pool would be considerably more if Coppi won rather than finished runner-up. At which point Coppi’s grizzled gregario Ettore Milano decided to wander over and ask the ever-obliging Koblet to pose for a picture. With your sunglasses off please, Hugo. A quick comb of the hair first and the deed was done.

Having got Koblet to whisk off the shades, Milano was then apparently able to instantly divine, simply by looking into Koblet’s eyes, that the race leader had overcooked the amphetamines the previous day. Dilated pupils were often a giveaway and Milano, also observing Koblet’s red eyes and frequent yawning, also reported back that Koblet had not slept at all well. Koblet also appeared to be glugging water like it was going out of fashion, often the sign of dehydration which in turn was often a result of using amphetamines. In short, Milano felt Koblet was there for the taking. Come the stage itself Coppi, perhaps as motivated by the sight of an unaccompanied Giulia Locatelli standing on the mountain roadside in her distinctive white coat as much as anything, rode an inspired race, attacking finally and decisively some 11km from the summit of the extraordinary climb. The pictures of Coppi effortlessly climbing ever upwards – through what appears on occasions to be a tunnel of snow, so high are the banks of snowdrift – are among the most iconic in the sport and sealed his legendary status.

It should be noted, however, that Koblet looked strong for most of the day as well but rode a shocking race tactically. His sole objective should have been to shadow Coppi, instead he at one stage burned up valuable reserves of energy chasing down an utterly irrelevant break from the young Nino Defilippis who had possibly been encouraged to attack by Coppi. Koblet paid dearly for his profligacy when Coppi finally, gloriously, went on the attack but his was not a total collapse. Koblet finished the stage fourth, 3 minutes 28 seconds behind Coppi. Like the rest of the field, he had simply been beaten hollow by the manifestly superior man but Koblet had still ridden a half-decent stage for a man who was already beginning to exhibit problems riding at very high altitudes. That night, staying in the same hotel, they apparently bumped into each other in the lift and not a word was uttered. There was nothing left to be said.

That is the version of Coppi’s final Giro win that has gone down in Giro legend but it would be staggering if 1 June 1953 hadn’t loomed large in his mind for months beforehand. The greatest climber in Giro history – perhaps in cycling history – on the greatest climb the Giro has ever produced. On its race debut? Coppi was always going to give it his all and if he rode at his best nobody on the planet would live with him. At the age of 33 this might also be his last chance to take a Grand Tour. Already he had won two previous mountain stages on this 1953 Giro and, although Koblet had stayed with him the previous day, could the mercurial Swiss rider back it up? Coppi could ‘go again’ in the mountains, that was for sure. He had proved it time and time again. Coppi started the day just 1.59 behind Koblet, not a great deal when the world’s best climber goes to work in his natural habitat. Do we really accept that Coppi was so intimidated by the challenge of Koblet and had given the race up before his Bianchi colleague Milano started his pep talk? As a canny champion he might talk his chances down a little, but he was on a roll, had made the world’s best riders look as if they were going backwards the previous year at the Giro and Tour, and his confidence would have been high.

What is beyond doubt is the virtuosity of the ride and his form that year. Coppi circa 1952–3, in the Giro and elsewhere, was as good as it gets. He was riding in a state of grace en route to his final Giro title with a World Championship to follow later in the year when he soloed home by over 6 minutes, the rest of the world nowhere. After 1953, however, there were no more Grand Tour wins and just one more Monument, the 1954 Giro di Lombardia. He wasn’t getting any younger and his personal life was becoming both complicated and distracting. He remained a sublime athlete who still enjoyed many great days on a bike but to a degree he was sated. The overwhelming hunger to win was ebbing away.