A Race for All Shapes, Sizes and Nationalities (1954–66)
Fausto Coppi wasn’t gone yet, he was still a factor and continued to make the headlines one way or another, but his dominance had ended and as the shadow he cast receded a wonderfully rich variety of riders emerged blinking into the limelight: from Carlo Clerici and Arnaldo Pambianco to a rather unheralded star of track and road in Ercole Baldini and the perennially competitive and enduring hard man of Italian cycling, Fiorenzo Magni. In addition two quirky, occasionally downright odd, superstars of the sport in Charly Gaul and Jacques Anquetil stepped forward. Suddenly the Giro became a very eclectic race. During this fascinating period competitors from three nations other than Italy won the race – Clerici (Switzerland), Gaul (Luxembourg) and Anquetil (France) – while every style of rider had his day. Clerici was a very good gregario who enjoyed his day in the sun after which he tasted success just once more in his entire cycling career; Magni was a tank of a Classics rider who clung on heroically in the mountains; Baldini was an extraordinary hybrid of world-class track pursuiter and successful road racer; Gaul was one of the greatest climbers in cycling history, and finally Anquetil was virtually untouchable in time trials and had the ability to suffer in silence and survive in the highest mountains. Nobody could accuse the Giro of spawning stereotypical winners. It was a riot of diversity and character types.
Clerici’s victory in 1954 was essentially an accident. Born in Italy to an Italian father and Swiss mother, his family moved to Zurich when he was young and as a result Clerici was dual qualified. It was, however, a time of plenty for Italian cycling and, having received little or no encouragement from the Italian Federation, he chose instead to become a naturalised Swiss citizen and completed the paperwork just a couple of months before the 1954 Giro. As a rider he was better than average but in no way a star. Going into the 1954 Giro his best result in a stage race of any substance was a third place at the 1952 Tour or Switzerland and a win in the GP de Suisse. Good-looking and easygoing, he was firm friends with Koblet and a natural ally for the 1950 champion as they lined up together in the Guerra team at the Giro start line in Palermo. Indeed, he had already rendered valuable and controversial assistance to Koblet the previous year when, although then riding for an Italian team, he helped pace Koblet back to the peloton after a crash. Clerici and his Welter team were much criticised for this supposedly unpatriotic act – despite the fact that the entire peloton up the road had slowed to allow the popular Koblet back – and eventually Welter reacted to a hail of criticism by withdrawing Clerici from the race.
Discontent was in the air at the start of the 1954 Giro. The riders and teams weren’t happy at its 4,337km length, the longest in Giro history, with only two rest days being scheduled en route. Additionally, there were strong rumours – which subsequently proved to be true – that Gazzetta were paying Coppi appearance money which went against the concept of the race always being bigger than the rider. A rematch with Koblet and the possibility of a record-breaking sixth Giro success for Coppi had the potential to make the 1954 Giro a classic, but it was still an odd bowing of the knee by Gazzetta. Were they still so lacking in confidence about the intrinsic worth of their race? Having paid one dominant campionissimo – Binda – not to race the Giro in 1930, they were now paying Coppi to ensure his participation. Logic, consistency and the Giro are not always happy bedfellows.
Anyway, these best laid plans backfired. The opening stage, a 36km team time trial around the Monte Pellegrino circuit, went off as hoped with a crushing win for Coppi’s Bianchi team and the campionissimo back in pink. That evening, however, he dined on oysters, seldom a wise move when involved in a sporting event, was violently sick during the night and only just made it to the start line in Palermo for the run to Taormina. An ailing Coppi lost 11 minutes to the stage winner Giuseppe Minardi that day and dropped to tenth in the GC, nearly 10 minutes behind. Still, he was being paid handsomely whatever the result, so it was no great personal disaster.
And so with the reigning champion already on the back foot, the peloton reached stage six, a rugged mountainous run from Naples to L’Aquila over difficult Abruzzi countryside. Arbos team rider Nino Assirelli had embarked on a long, seemingly irrelevant solo break, when Clerici broke away from the peloton to bridge the gap, at which point they started working hard together. Coppi might still have been suffering from food poisoning or simply resigned to the fact that 1954 wasn’t to be his year. Also his affair with Giulia Locatelli was coming to a head with both parties on the verge of leaving their respective spouses, and it’s not unfair to suggest that Coppi’s mind might have been elsewhere. Koblet, meanwhile, was very sanguine about the break. Firstly he was wholly supportive of anything that could further damage Coppi but, more importantly, he acknowledged that he was in Clerici’s debt from the previous year. All these factors were playing out on the road as Assirelli and Clerici put the hammer down and a becalmed peloton failed to respond. By Naples the duo were over 11 minutes ahead of the next chaser – Edward Peeters – and had put a jaw-dropping 35 minutes into the main contenders. In terms of GC, Clerici, who had started the day handily placed in sixth, was now 34 minutes ahead of Magni in tenth with Coppi and Koblet languishing even further behind.
In one fell swoop Clerici’s coup sucked the life out of this mystifying race with nobody either willing or able to raise a head of steam and challenge the young rider whose Swiss status now rather mocked the Italian fans. Interest in the race began to wane although the appearance of Locatelli, following Coppi in the Bianchi team car, in the individual time trial around Lake Garda, stoked up reports of their now open affair which was gripping Italy. There was a thought – or, rather, a desperate hope – that perhaps Clerici would crack on stage 20 when the ride from San Martino di Castrozza to Bolzano crested the Rolle, Pordoi and Gardena but, although Coppi rode strongly that day to take line honours, Clerici rode comfortably enough with Koblet to finish just under 2 minutes behind. He was too competent a rider not to make the best of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
The disgruntled peloton, meanwhile, was still miffed at their general treatment and the nadir came the following day on the penultimate stage when the peloton staged a go-slow taking well over 9 hours to negotiate the 222km from Bolzano to St Moritz which traversed the Bernina Pass. Koblet was allowed to slip away to take the line honours in his homeland while the veteran Bartali, riding his last Giro, also went up the road at the end to acknowledge the applause of the crowd, but generally there was huge dissatisfaction on a day that was quickly dubbed the Bernina Strike. Just under 24 hours later the peloton were greeted with jeers as it rode into the Vigorelli Velodrome in Milan. Clerici was the victor and no blame attached to him but what on earth had been going on with the rest of them? The Italian Cycling Federation were not happy and refused to allow an Italian team to ride at the Tour de France that year while initially it announced a two-month ban for Coppi although that was later quashed. The glory was Clerici’s but it wasn’t the Giro’s finest moment – or indeed Coppi’s.
The 1955 Giro was a much more satisfying affair. Gastone Nencini was the talented and much-hyped new kid on the block – the first of many to be dubbed ‘the next Coppi’ – and Coppi himself at 36 had set his sights on one last glorious swansong win. In the event both were upstaged by Magni. Like Bartali and Coppi he also tended to polarise the Italian fans on the roadside mainly on account of his self-confessed Fascist sympathies which came out during a war-crimes trial in 1946 when he was among those accused of being responsible for the killing of Italian partisans at the ‘Massacre of Valibona’. Magni was acquitted of any part in the killings but not before he had admitted to being a former member of the Fascist militia. Prematurely bald, stern-looking and with an authoritarian manner, he was not a man to be messed with. Strangely one of his claims to fame is that he was the first big-name rider to cajole a big sponsor from outside the cycling industry to support a team: rather incongruously Nivea, the skin product company, decided to align themselves with this beast of a rider and alpha male.
In 1955 Magni acquired the maglia rosa early on without particularly seeking it and was happy enough to pass it on to Nencini when the young tyro stormed to victory on stage nine. Magni knew that quality survival was the priority in the big mountain days ahead if he was to stay competitive, and that was best achieved without the distractions and strains of being the race leader. By pushing himself to the limit on every descent Magni managed to keep in touch on big mountain days. In fact he was one of the first specialist descenders who made a real virtue of the additional speed their extra weight could generate and were skilful and brave enough to pick the optimum line. And Magni had a plan. If he could stay in contact with the maglia rosa until stage 20 – which he achieved being just 1 minute 29 seconds behind Nencini – he and his team had spotted a 15km stretch of road just outside Thiene that was rough and rutted even by Italian standards and akin to the terrain on which he was so successful at the Tour of Flanders, which he had won for three years in succession from 1949 to 1951. This was a rare opportunity to use those Classics skills on the Giro and an unexpected gift from the organisers. How to make best use of this good fortune? Firstly the Nivea mechanics installed wider, heavier tyres on Magni’s bike and that of the team to guard against punctures because it was clearly going to be chaos. Then he and his team put feelers out among members of the peloton they felt might be ‘friendly’, notably Koblet who was well out of contention in the GC but was capable of thwarting Magni’s best-laid plans if he led a chase in the hope of a face-saving stage win after a disappointing Giro. If he backed off, Koblet could expect every assistance in winning the final stage.
The scene was set. Just as expected it was chaos at Thiene and Magni, as one of the few riders not to suffer a puncture, took flight with Coppi. The two big beasts of the peloton were away in a glorious break dripping in nostalgia for their fans. Nencini tried to give chase but flatted and then waited for the fractured peloton in the hope that it would regroup and chase down the leaders. The maglia rosa was to be sorely disappointed in that respect. Up front the two legends rode hard together for the best part of 160km. They both knew this was the decisive moment and there was no stopping them. On the roadside fans, listening to radio coverage of the approaching race, quietly put away their ‘Forza Nencini’ and ‘Viva Nencini’ signs and hurriedly scribbled new words of encouragement on pieces of cardboard. Forza Magni and Viva Coppi. It was a wonderfully poignant dash for glory by the past masters. On the day, Magni was manifestly the stronger rider taking the longer turns but Coppi, in good spirits after a fine stage win in the Tappone or Queen stage the day before, was going nicely as well and Magni would be unlikely to consolidate such a long break without the five-time champion’s considerable assistance. Both men of the world, the deal was quickly done. There was never the angst between Coppi and Magni that there was between Coppi and Bartali; they were much more able to coexist. In return for services rendered Coppi would, of course, be allowed to take the stage win and indeed there at the stage finish you can see Magni applying his brakes before the line to ensure the deal was honoured. The duo finished 5 minutes 37 seconds ahead of the next group home which included a tearful Nencini. Magni was now 13 seconds ahead of Coppi in GC but with only the final flat stage into Milan remaining Nencini was marooned some 4 minutes back. Theoretically it was close between the two front-runners but effectively the day was done, the race was lost and won. Coppi knew that and made no effort to animate the final stage which Koblet, with Magni’s Nivea team lending a well-moisturised hand, duly won.
Glory in defeat as Magni defies serious injury
Magni’s stock was high after such a dramatic win but his finest moment was to come the following year, in 1956, when he finished runner-up to Gaul. This was the race when he simply refused to quit despite not one but two serious injuries. It was on stage 12 – Grossetto to Livorno – that Magni crashed and broke his left collarbone. He still managed to finish but was taken to hospital and his retirement from the race seemed imminent. In hospital, however, he refused the offer of a plaster cast and opted instead for an elastic bandage arrangement, believing he could race on. To an extent he could but he was inevitably short on power on the left-hand side of his body – a particular problem when going uphill and in time trials – so his chief mechanic Faliero Masi cut out and fashioned a piece of inner tube so that one end could be attached to the handlebars. The other end was then free for Magni to bite into when the going got tough to provide the extra purchase needed to bring his back muscles and glutes fully into action. It was odd-looking but ingenious and extremely effective. Magni kept riding, literally through gritted teeth, although applying the left brake was still extremely painful; but it really did look all over on stage 18 – Lecco to Sondrio – when the cycling gods again toyed with him. Not only did Magni crash again but he landed heavily in a ditch on his left side and this time manage to break his humerus, basically the upper left arm. Unsurprisingly, Magni temporarily passed out with the pain and only came around in an ambulance which was called to the scene, at which point he angrily demanded to be let out, remounted his bike and pedalled gingerly back to the peloton which had slowed. The Giro was going through a more gentlemanly phase.
Magni made it to the finish but surely had to call it quits; but, no, he insisted on going on. ‘The Lion of Flanders’ was roaring defiance. Magni knew full well that he had broken another bone but refused to undergo X-rays when taken to hospital to assess the damage. With confirmation of a second break, the team doctor would be almost duty-bound to order his withdrawal from the race. It is difficult to fathom quite what was driving him on because at this juncture – before the historic events of stage 20 – Magni was outside the top ten and in no way a podium contender. But when pride and obstinacy combine with the inherent obsessiveness of a top cyclist the result can be extreme and often inspiring.
This was the case in the racing deciding stage 20, a full-blown mountain epic from the spa town of Merano to a summit finish on Monte Bondone, a remarkable day in which Gaul displayed his genius to come from nowhere to win and Magni demonstrated his courage to finish an incredible third on the day and move into second place overall. Suffering horribly both climbing and descending, he gave chase to Gaul over the Costalunga, Rolle and Brocon before the finish at 1,660m on the Bondone. The one thing perhaps in his favour was the bitterly cold and snowy conditions and high winds which saw the stage reduced to a battle of survival because Magni had already been in survival mode for a while. There had been calls for the stage to be cancelled on account of the weather but after a race in which Magni’s injury had been just about the only point of interest – Coppi had crashed out and abandoned during stage six – race director Torriani found the prospect of an epic showpiece stage irresistible. In one way Torriani was totally wrong. There were 44 abandons on a frozen, snowy day when riders were pushed beyond what is acceptable and were left fighting for their lives rather than merely finishing a race. But in another way he was thoroughly vindicated: Gaul waged war with the mountains while Magni’s dogged resistance in the face of impossible odds sealed the stage’s legendary status. Monte Bondone 1956 lives for ever more in cycling’s history.
Even for Gaul, who climbed from 11th and over 16 minutes behind overall to first place overall, it was a close run thing as René de Latour wrote in Sporting Cyclist:
A search was going on for a missing man. The searcher-in-chief was former world champion Learco Guerra, now manager of the Faema team. The man he was looking for was Charly Gaul, who had not been seen for the last twenty minutes. Guerra was driving his car up the mountain pass, peering through the clogged-up windscreen when, by sheer chance, he saw a bike leaning against the wall of a shabby mountain trattoria. ‘That’s Charly’s bike!’ he exclaimed to his mechanic.
They rushed into the bar and there, sitting on a chair sipping hot coffee, was Charly Gaul, exhausted, so dead to the world that he could hardly speak. Guerra knows bike riders. He talked gently to Gaul. ‘Take your time, Charly,’ he said. ‘We’re going to take care of you.’ While a masseur was ripping off Gaul’s wet jersey, Guerra had some water warmed and poured it over the rider’s body. Then, rubbed down from head to toes, Gaul’s body gradually came back to life. He lost that glassy look and in a few minutes he was a new man again.
Extraordinary stuff. Later, just over the finishing line, Gaul had to be helped from his bike and his frozen jersey cut off his shivering body as the medics sought to treat his hypothermia. Tour de France director Jacques Goddet, a guest of the Giro that day, insisted that Gaul’s ride ‘passed anything seen before in terms of pain, suffering and difficulty’. But at least Gaul was one of cycling’s greatest ever climbers and operating in his element. Magni was a non-climbing specialist riding for well over 9 hours with a broken collarbone and arm. The victory and honour were Gaul’s but the glory belonged in equal measure to Magni.
Monte Bondone featured the following year – 1957– but this time it was a much less happy experience for Gaul who was leading Nencini by 56 seconds at the start of stage 18 from Como to the summit finish. The weather was set fair and the day was largely rolling rather than mountainous, with just the one set-piece climb to the finish. The margin of victory seemed the only matter of debate and Gaul was possibly off his guard a little. Nobody could match him on the mountain he had conquered just 12 months earlier.
Early in the day Gaul stopped for a ‘natural break’ during which time proper race etiquette insisted that he should not be attacked. Having climbed off the bike and found a suitable hedge, Gaul’s bitter rival Louison Bobet, who had started the day in third place just over 1 minute behind, and Nencini rode past and according to Bobet’s faithful gregario Raphaël Géminiani some fairly profane language ensued. Bobet, his French team and Nencini had themselves stopped for a natural break a few kilometres earlier when Gaul decided against stopping but kept riding tempo.
When Gaul stopped, however, Bobet decided to dispense with etiquette and put the hammer down along with the talented Géminiani, Nencini, Baldini, Miguel Poblet and Lino Grassi – a mighty sextet to be up front and off the leash. Suddenly Gaul was in serious trouble so early in the day and he gave chase in vain. By the end of the day he trailed the stage winner Poblet by 10 minutes and had plummeted to fourth in GC over 7 minutes behind Nencini who now had a slim 19 seconds lead over Bobet. Gaul fumed. Barring an act of God he now had no chance of winning a race he had been controlling comfortably.
The following day was the final mountain stage from Trento to Levico Terme and although the San Lugano, Rolle and Brocon offered plenty of potential for Gaul he held out no hope, especially as Bobet was supported by a climber of Géminiani’s ability. At best he could try and make mischief, which is precisely what he did when the opportunity arose. All the main contenders found themselves in an elite group of six climbing the San Lugano and Rolle, but coming down the latter Nencini suffered a puncture. Bobet and Géminiani went for the jugular and increased the pace but Gaul decided to wait for Nencini and render what assistance he could. Anything to irritate Bobet and possibly deny him the Giro.
Together they started riding hard in tandem, there was just a chance Nencini could still salvage this Giro. Up front the French team, although going well, were getting no assistance from Baldini who had effectively downed tools and was hanging off the back, unwilling to ride against fellow Italian Nencini. The odds still strongly favoured Bobet who was going well with Géminiani in close attendance, but as they powered up the Brocon to ‘victory’ they glanced back and there was the maglia rosa, tucked in behind Gaul, closing at a rate of knots, so much so that Gaul swept by to win the stage and Nencini dropped into Bobet’s wheel to finish on the same time. Nencini, with a massive assist from Gaul, had preserved his lead and effectively won the Giro. Gaul had taken his revenge and denied Bobet and although that could not compare with victory itself it was sweet enough. He was much less happy, though, with the change of nickname he underwent as a result of this stage. Before he started he was ‘the Angel of the Mountains’. After the race, for evermore, or at least in France, he was ‘Cheri Pipi’ or ‘Monsieur Pipi’. Much less flattering and a permanent reminder of a race that went badly wrong.
Gaul was some way short of his best the following year when Ercole Baldini, who had finished third overall in 1957, managed to claim an underrated win against all the big hitters. Baldini was a thoroughly modern rider and 1958 was his annus mirabilis with an Italian National championship and later in the year a World Road race title in Reims. His versatility was always his strength, as he had demonstrated from the start of his career with a World Pursuit title on the track in Copenhagen in 1956, which he followed up with an Olympic road-race title in Melbourne later that year. Nicknamed ‘the Forlì train’, he also relieved Jacques Anquetil of the world Hour record in 1956, logging a distance of 46,394m at the Vigorelli Velodrome. Unsurprisingly, stage victories in the two longer time trials kept Baldini well in contention in the 1958 Giro, but it was in the mountains that he unexpectedly shone, taking the leadership on stage 15 when he won the Apennines stage from Ceserna to Verona which negotiated the Bosco Chiesanuova ascent. Baldini was unstoppable as he powered his way uphill and finished 46 seconds ahead of Gaul and more than 2 minutes ahead of a group containing defending champion Nencini, Bobet and Géminiani. What’s more he also took a tightly contested Dolomites stage two days later to complete a job well done.
For a few short years Baldini was a class act on the road and, with two podium finishes in the Giro in his first two years as a professional, he quickly superseded Nencini as ‘the next Coppi’ but his road career tailed off quite sharply from 1959 onwards. As a pursuiter on the track he kept going for a few years with World Championship bronze medals in 1960 and 1964 but his was a curious career possibly not helped by a lucrative and indulgent contract with Ignis from 1959 onwards which allowed him to choose his racing schedule. A big man and always prone to weight problems, Baldini needed to race regularly and his physical condition became an issue, but in fairness combining elite track and road careers is a fiendishly difficult act to pull off. His 1958 Giro win, however, was a consummate performance against a very strong field.
That year, an ageing Coppi limped home nearly 1 hour behind the leader in 32nd position, not so much a lap of honour as a sad farewell to old haunts, and 1958 was the last time he competed in the Giro. His racing career was spluttering to a close and by the end of the following year he was gravely ill after contracting a particularly lethal strain of malaria while on a joint cycling/hunting trip to Burkina Faso, western Africa. There was a delay in diagnosing Coppi on his return and he died on 2 January 1960. He was just 40.
Baldini had shown that riders with a strong time trial who can hang tough in the mountains could win the Giro and the following year there was nearly a repeat performance from Jacques Anquetil in the 1959 race. The enigmatic but stylish Frenchman had contested the maglia rosa with Gaul right from the start, but had seemed to take control of the race in the latter stages after a strong ride on a mountainous stage 15 projected him back into the lead which he reinforced in the 51km TT from Torino to Susa when he put over 2 minutes into Gaul. Anquetil was one of the first exponents of ‘big gear’ riding, and wasn’t notably aerodynamic in his style although his feet were always pointed down in the style of his great hero Coppi. The final showdown was to be on the penultimate stage from Aosta to Courmayeur, a whopping 296km mountainfest taking in Gran San Bernardo, the Forclaz and the Piccolo San Bernardo. Gaul, nearly 4 minutes down, was nonetheless in gung-ho mood and was predicting a 5-minute victory over Anquetil. Much to the latter’s chagrin, the margin was nearly double that but in many ways he only had himself to blame after neglecting to eat properly and suffering a calamitous bonk on the final climb. Even though Gaul flatted twice climbing to the summit, he won the stage and finished 9 minutes 48 seconds ahead of Anquetil to claim his second Giro. The Frenchman, who had been well and truly routed, just about hung on to second place overall.
Anquetil becomes the first French winner of the Giro
Not everybody had enjoyed watching a battle so heavily loaded in favour of the pure climbers. Anquetil was a great champion and popular ‘box office’ rider and his continued presence in the race helped the Giro’s prestige. So in 1960 an attempt was made to balance things up with two time trials, the second a lengthy 68km affair from Seregno to Lecco on stage 14, which clearly had the potential to significantly affect the GC battle. To deflect possible criticism of the corsa rosa being too ‘Anquetil friendly’, however, a massive new climb was introduced on the penultimate stage, the Passo di Gavia, which at 2,621m was slightly lower than the Stelvio but which included passages that were steeper. At the time an inferior road surface added further to the challenge. It also ‘boasted’ a fearsome descent into Bormio made even more dangerous by the condition of the rutted and sometimes muddy road, so much so that it was decided in advance that no team vehicles would be allowed down in support of their riders. Instead competitors would have to carry spare inner tubes and tools if they wanted to guard against inevitable punctures. Old-style. In future editions of the Giro the Gavia was to gain a reputation for epically bad weather but on its debut it was unusually benign; indeed, the rather underwhelmed La Stampa correspondent thought the Gavia ‘did not live up to expectations although beautiful and majestic’. The climb itself, though, was murderous and it was a stage deliberately set up to encourage a drama or two and it succeeded wonderfully in that aim.
After duly destroying the field in the long time trial on stage 14 – over half the field would have been eliminated had the cut been enforced – Anquetil was in the driving seat but not quite home and hosed as they prepared for the Queen stage. Second-placed Gastone Nencini was at 3 minutes 40 seconds and was a good climber and descender while Gaul was in fifth place at 7 minutes 32 seconds. Who knows what he might be capable of on the Gavia if the mood took him?
The race was far from won. Firstly, Imerio Massignan, an outrageously gifted young climber who had finished second to Gaul in the decisive penultimate stage the year before, went on the attack, helped initially by Rik Van Looy. Dubbed gamba secca, skinny legs, when racing the year before, Massignan was 1 minute 25 seconds ahead of the chasing group of lead riders at which point the youthful-looking Italian took off in search of the stage win. Riding brilliantly, he piled on the pressure while further back it was chaos as quality riders struggled in his wake. Gaul was chugging along but not looking a world beater and Nencini had slipped to more than 5 minutes behind the stage leader despite numerous pushes from Italian fans. Further back still, Anquetil was fighting for his Giro life. Help came in the unexpected form of Angelo Coletto, a good quality rider who had endured a poor race, but who was going well that day. Coletto decided to ride with Anquetil and offer him a little support. Anquetil was an enigmatic but generally popular member of the peloton and although he could be difficult he also had a reputation for not forgetting favours and services rendered. It was a decisive moment as Anquetil rallied just a little but just enough.
Meanwhile, up front Massignan was dominant but enduring wretched luck on the much-hyped and feared descent, suffering not one, not two but three punctures, all of which delayed him considerably. His misfortune certainly cost him a crushing stage win and possibly even a remarkable charge at the overall title. Agonisingly, right at the end he was slowed again by a flat for Gaul to deny him even the stage win. Nencini was next over the line at 1 minute 7 seconds and then Coletto and Anquetil hoved into view at 3 minutes 41 seconds. Anquetil had defended the maglia rosa with 28 seconds to spare and France had its first winner of the Giro d’Italia. As for Massignan, a nation had been captivated by his courage and appalled at his bad luck. His nickname was quickly upgraded to ‘il Ragno delle Dolomiti’, ‘the spider of the Dolomites’, which could hardly be bettered.
Finishing an unremarked seventh in the 1960 Giro was Arnoldo Pambianco who had been a member of Italy’s 1956 Olympic squad with Ercole Baldini when he finished seventh behind his team leader. He was a former Italian amateur road-race champion and also finished second in the World Amateur championships so he was a rider of some repute, and on turning professional he immediately established himself as a gregario di lusso variously for Baldini, Nencini and Massignan. Busy helping others, the professional cycling world had not really seen him at full throttle but this was a man who in the space of three months in 1960 finished seventh as an unprotected rider at the Giro and seventh again at the Tour de France riding in support of Nencini, the winner. Pambianco was a seriously underrated talent but that was to change at the 1961 Giro, one of those glorious occasions when the underdog has its day.
The returning champion Anquetil started as favourite but with just one TT, a 53km run from Castellana Grotte to Bari, the race was by no means loaded in his favour and after publicly declaring his intention of repeating Coppi’s Giro/Tour double he was hoping to expend as little energy as possible in the process. Everything seemed on course when he moved up to second place in GC after the time trial on stage eight, at which point Pambianco was over 5 minutes adrift in ninth place, seemingly out of sight and out of mind. He was, however, competing as a protected rider on this occasion for his new team Fides and was biding his time. By stage 14 Pambianco had stealthily moved up to third place, 78 seconds behind Anquetil who had now assumed the lead. Still the alarm bells were not ringing for the reigning champion, however, and, remarkably, he and his Fynsec team happily allowed Pambianco to join an otherwise anonymous seven-man escape consisting of Silvano Ciampi, Dino Liviero, Armando Pellegrini, Renato Giusti, Mario Bampi and Marino Fontana on the seemingly innocuous stage from Ancona to Florence. That septet enjoyed themselves hugely while the peloton dozed, and eventually finished nearly 2 minutes ahead of the bunch, a result which saw Pambianco take the maglia rosa. Anquetil, for whatever reason, had been caught napping.
Pambianco’s lead of 28 seconds was a slender one but he then confounded the sceptics by improving that advantage by a further 16 seconds during the first big Dolomites stage. This was getting interesting and the excitement was building. There was still a sting in the tail to the 1961 route with the penultimate stage negotiating the Pennes and Giovo climbs before its denouement on the Stelvio again. There was still scope for almost anything to happen. Rik Van Looy took off in search of glory but tore a calf muscle on the early slope of the snow-plastered Stelvio which left Gaul chasing the stage win, the last major triumph of his career. Pambianco, though, was well used to pacing himself on these big mountain days and judged his effort well, finishing in second place just 2 minutes behind Gaul. Anquetil had been beaten fair and square.
Pambianco never soared to those heights again but one so-called lesser light who did build on a first unexpected Giro success was Franco Balmamion – ‘the Eagle of Canavese’ – who followed up a shock win the following year in 1962 with a repeat triumph twelve months later. Balmamion had finished 20th behind Pambianco riding as a gregario for Bianchi in 1961 so at least had that experience under his belt when he was hired by Carpano to ride in the 1962 Giro with a slightly nebulous role but basically in support of Nino Defilippis who would play it by ear. Defilippis was the bigger name and a fine one-day racer well capable of bagging a few stage wins but had flattered to deceive in big stage races. Meanwhile, the Giro organisers had temporarily fallen out of love with time trials – there were none and therefore Anquetil absented himself – but no fewer than seven hilltop or mountain finishes were scheduled. It was a climber’s delight.
Balmamion’s race started with a seemingly disastrous bonk on stage two, as he failed to eat properly on a spitefully cold and wet day, and after losing the best part of 12 minutes to the leader his support role now seemed set in stone. Which is how it continued until a catastrophic stage 14 which had seven significant climbs lined up – the Duran, Aurine, Forcella Staulanza, Cereda, Rolle, Valles and San Pellegrino passes. The weather forecast for the eastern Dolomites was dire, initially cold and wet with the snow starting in earnest on the Staulanza. There had been talk of a cancellation earlier in the morning but these are the conditions that make the Giro special and different, and the organisers were loath to give up on their Queen stage. The riders, of course, had almost no say in the matter. They were just expected to perform. The stage went ahead but the weather was off the scale. No fewer than 57 of the 109 riders remaining abandoned, including the normally indomitable Gaul. Belgian hard man Rik Van Looy also decided enough was enough, a pretty good litmus test as to the severity of the conditions. Eventually, as the blizzard intensified, Torriani relented and ended the race on the Rolle, some 40km short of the planned finish. The surviving riders were stopped and helped off their bikes, they were to be spared the Passo Valles and San Pellegrino. Vincenzo Meco was the hero who took the stage with Baldini having one of his inspired days in second place and Imerio Massignan third.
The race leader before the stage start had been Armand Desmet, another tough Belgian rider, but he suffered terribly in the cold and his team had forgotten to pack any change of kit and warm clothing in their car to dispense at one of the earlier summits. He dragged himself over the line in 29th having lost 18 minutes, but on such a day simply finishing was worthy of praise. Earlier in the day Defilippis had climbed off his bike at one stage and looked set to abandon but Balmamion – going very well – and the team’s other gregari insisted he continued. There was a race to win and money to earn. Defilippis remounted and prevailed to such an extent that he came fourth to move into a handy fifth place overall.
This was also the day of a little sideshow that has gone down in Giro folklore featuring Nencini, one of the best descenders in the peloton, and Henry Anglade, one of his few equals in that respect. As Anglade – who rejoiced in the nickname ‘Napoleon’ – recalled it in the Belgian cycling magazine Coup de pedals:
I couldn’t tolerate the idea that Nencini was the best descender of the peloton. I said to him, call the blackboard man, we’ll do the descent together and whoever comes second pays for the aperitifs this evening. So he called the ardoisier and asked him to follow us. The road was of compressed earth. We attacked the drop flat out. I let Nencini take the lead so that I could see how he negotiated the bends before attacking him. In the end I dropped as though I was alone. At the bottom, I had taken 32 seconds out of him, written on the blackboard. I was really tickled. I had beaten Nencini. The next time I saw him was that evening in the hotel I was staying at. He had just bought me an aperitif.
Two relatively uneventful Dolomite stages followed as the survivors licked their wounds, at the end of which Balmamion, the talented gregario, had moved into seventh position behind Graziano Battistini. In touch but still flying nicely under the radar. Stage 17 was where Balmamion won the Giro in remarkable style. Defilippis had burned his matches early in the stage with an audacious break, which had been followed by GC contenders Massignan and Battistini and when the peloton regrouped Balmamion had no hesitation in joining another break that sprinted off down the road. His ‘leader’ Defilippis had made his play and been found wanting; now it was his turn to have some fun and so strong was the attack that the breakaways raced into Monferrato nearly 7 minutes ahead of the pack, giving Balmamion the overall lead by more than 2 minutes. A staggering ride. By the time he reached Milan that was nearer 4 minutes with Massignan in second place and Balmamion’s disgruntled team leader Defilippis in third. Balmamion, the gregario who lost 12 minutes on stage two and who never actually got around to winning a stage, had only gone and walked off with his first Giro d’Italia.
Balmamion’s second Giro title the following year was fashioned on exactly the same terrain as the infamous stage 14 just 12 months earlier except this time the weather was kinder and all six classified climbs were completed as planned. It was a matter of honour for Torriani that this be the case. On this occasion Balmamion tracked the maglia rosa Vittorio Adorni for the best part of a long day as Adorni panicked and chased down a breakaway by Vito Taccone – who was no threat to the lead – and then struck on the final climb to put 3 minutes into Adorni and assume a Giro winning lead. It was an exemplary ride and Balmamion’s back-to-back Giri stirred the Italian nation. The last rider to achieve successive Giri wins was, of course, Coppi and there was a natural desire to anoint a successor. Balmamion was never that – he was not quite so enduring on the flat and had none of Coppi’s time-trialling excellence – but he was a charismatic crowd-pleasing climber who claimed another five top ten finishes in the years to follow, including a runners-up spot in 1967. A rider to be reckoned with.
Although entertaining and eventful, the 1962 and 1963 Giri had felt a little in-house and parochial and to tempt Anquetil back therefore it was decided to plan a flattish 50km TT on stage five in 1964 which should, barring accidents, see him take the maglia rosa early in proceedings. The generosity would end there but the fireworks in the mountains were saved for the end, giving Anquetil time to consolidate his lead and prepare for the battles ahead. All this was very timely because Anquetil was now at the very height of his considerable powers and wanted to mount a final serious attempt on that elusive Giro/Tour double. He had demonstrated when winning the 1963 Tour de France, when he had ridden brilliantly in the mountains to limit his losses to his strongest rival Federico Bahamontes, that through sheer willpower and aerobic capacity he could handle the big mountains in his own idiosyncratic way. It was now or never for the double.
Anquetil’s 1964 Giro went like clockwork. He headed the GC after winning the 50km Parma to Busetto TT and defended it for 17 days all the way back to Milan. The attacks came from all quarters and various riders came within sniffing range of the jersey – Renzo Fontona got to within 33 seconds, Renato Pelizzoni 19 and Guido De Rosso 17, but Anquetil repelled all boarders not least on the climactic stage 20 which included five huge climbs – Maddalena, Vars, Izoard, Montgenèvre and Sestriere – in nearly 8 and a half hours of toil from Cuneo to Pinerolo. It was difficult that day to try and anticipate where the biggest threat would come. On paper Italo Zilioli at 1.22 and Balmamion lurking at 3 minutes 3 seconds would have caused concern but Anquetil’s real challenge was to pace himself perfectly all day so that he arrived at the finish completely spent. As a non-specialist climber, if he reacted too aggressively to attacks he could quickly put himself in the red. It would involve a huge amount of stoical suffering as he dug deep but he always knew that. Zilioli was the most active of the main contenders and came very close to putting Anquetil out the back on the Vars climb although ultimately he overcooked it slightly himself and couldn’t ram home the advantage. Balmamion missed his chance on the Izoard which he had pinpointed as his battleground when he had to answer an ill-timed call of nature and eventually it was Franco Bitossi, a fine climber but no threat to GC, who put the hammer down. Anquetil just ploughed on in the elite chase group with one of the gutsiest rides of his career, finishing just 2 minutes down alongside Vittorio Adorni and Zilioli with Balmamion a further 3 minutes back. The worst was over and he preserved his 1.22 advantage over Zilioli in the final two stages. Victory in the 1964 Giro, if not quite the ultimate – that was to follow later in the year when he completed the double at the Tour – was one of Anquetil’s finest moments. As his colleague Raphaël Géminiani said in interview in 2003: ‘People said he was cold, a calculator, a dilettante. The truth is that Jacques was a monster of courage. In the mountains, he suffered as though he was damned. He wasn’t a climber. But with bluffing, with guts, he tore them to shreds.’
Vittorio Adorni was a very fine rider who had been knocking on the door of a Grand Tour success and his moment came the following year when he was a dominant winner of the 1965 Giro. In fact, an excited Gazzetta declared him ‘The best maglia rosa since Coppi.’ In terms of winning margin – 11 minutes 26 seconds ahead of Italo Zilioli – it is difficult to argue with that assessment. It was a career-best performance from a very good rider. Young tyro Felice Gimondi, riding as a gregario di lusso for Adorni, claimed afterwards, however, that if his Salvarani team had let him off the leash he could have won the race but that’s a big claim. Not only did Adorni win by a distance, he seemed to be riding well within himself most of the time.
Adorni took the jersey on a very lumpy stage six but was happy enough to hand it over to Bruno Mealli for a while after a fuga di bidone – an innocuous looking break that actually contains a potential GC winner – on stage eight saw a low-key and unheralded break finish nearly 15 minutes ahead of the bunch in Catanzaro. That gave Adorni a breather before he really went to work winning the 58km time trial in Sicily between Catania and Taormina while virtually closing out the race by putting over 3 minutes into his rivals on stage 19, a testing day in the mountains. It meant Adorni had plenty of leeway on the Stelvio the following day when he rode comfortably with the podium contenders behind Battistini and Ugo Colombo. Battistini took the stage and in so doing became the first winner of the newly introduced Cima Coppi, a prize which henceforth was to be presented to the first rider over the highest point of any Giro. The drama of the day – and a memorable set of images – came in the final 350m when a snowslide blocked the road. The riders had no option but to dismount and carry their bikes over and through the snow to reach the finish.
Vin Denson claims a first British stage win
The following year, 1966, was a curious affair indeed, won by Gianni Motta from Zilioli but featuring a strong-looking Jacques Anquetil who nonetheless appeared to make little or no effort to contest the race. His Ford France team had become involved in an acrimonious rivalry with Ford Italy. They shared the same parent company as Ford Italy but were in fact bitter commercial rivals as Ford Italy looked to ruthlessly undercut their French neighbours. Another triumphant Giro for Anquetil would be massively beneficial for Ford Italy in terms of reflected glory but in fact make little impact back across the border in France. Anquetil did lose 3 minutes on stage one – from Monaco to Diano Marina – after a crash but he was unhurt and stage one is a little early for such a classy rider to decide the race was unwinnable. What is beyond doubt, though, is that fairly early in proceedings he abandoned aspirations to win the Giro and started riding for team-mate Julio Jiménez and indeed occasionally offered help to Gianni Motta from the Molteni squad. High among his priorities appeared to be stopping Gimondi. After the glory and purity of Adorni’s win the previous year this 1966 Giro appeared a tainted affair.
The politics and machinations were not edifying and further evidence that the Giro was still a pretty raw sporting event come from Vin Denson, Anquetil’s popular British gregario and the first British rider on the Giro since Freddie Grubb in 1914, the hardest race in history. Writing in his memoirs The Full Cycle, Denson recalled trying to defend Jiménez’s maglia rosa riding into Naples at the end of stage eight:
We got into Napoli and were going down through the old dock area, where the streets are really narrow, and the Italian spectators were standing on their Romeo and Juliet balconies and pelting us with the contents of their rubbish bins. We held on to the pink jersey but I ended up covered with old damp spaghetti, tomato juice and banana skins. I must have stunk. We stayed in a really high-class hotel that night and I’ll never forget the look on the doorman’s face when he went up in the lift with me. I was standing there gently humming with all this rotten food on me, and he kept trying to hold his breath or tilting his head upwards to get some fresh air.
The following day brought a much happier memory and Britain’s first-ever stage win at the Giro when, with the race becalmed, he, Antonio Bailetti and André Messelis were allowed to take off on a break between Naples and Campobasso. Denson might have been fairly inexperienced in Grand Tour racing but pulled off a nice trick when, at the crux of the race, he dropped back behind the duo and then deliberately dropped his bidon to distract them. This was his cue to attack just below a short climb and, having crested that in the lead, he descended like a demon to claim a famous victory, winning by 44 seconds.
The novelty of a British stage winner struck a chord with the Italian media and the always chatty Denson provided good copy. A sturdily built rider who enjoyed his food, Denson had begged permission for another bowl of pasta the previous evening with the apparently tongue-in-cheek promise that he would win the forthcoming stage by way of thank you. La droga di Denson e un piatto di ravioli (Denson’s drug is a plate of ravioli) read the Gazzetta headline the following day. In his book Denson also records the odd goings-on with the two Ford teams. On one occasion all the Ford France gregari were told in advance when Motta would attack and that they were not to react to protect Anquetil’s position. Much to his surprise Denson records later that he and other team members received a surprise bonus payment for their ‘efforts’ – or lack of them – at the Giro, a lump sum he used to help finance a bar he was opening up in Ghent. The Giro, even as it matured, still had that Wild West feel about it. Anything could and did happen, which clearly included receiving a generous bonus from your team leader who, for whatever reason, had decided not to contest the race that year.