Fallen Angel

by William Fotheringham

The Coppi myth has a momentum of its own. The man still makes headlines, with new twists to his story uncovered every year, usually on the anniversary of his death. There have been and still are lesser murmurings over the champion’s spiritual inheritance: the mausoleum, the establishment of the Casa Coppi museum and documentation centre, the cycle path built in his memory from Tortona to the village, which is better engineered than the road used by the residents.

  Most bizarre was the ‘revelation’, in January 2002, that Coppi had not died of malaria but had been poisoned by a witchdoctor during his racing trip in Upper Volta. The tale, which made the front page of Corriere dello Sport, hung on the evidence of an Italian Olympic Committee member, Mino Caudullo. He claimed to have been told by a Benedictine monk that, in the confessional, the latter had been informed that Coppi had been poisoned. ‘The monk explained to me that the potion was well known in Burkina Faso because it is derived from a local herb. It acts slowly and the fevers it induces can lead to death.’ This being Italy, a judicial inquiry was organised, amid speculation that the body of the campionissimo might be exhumed. Almost a year later, inevitably, the magistrates’ office in Tortona decided that Coppi had died of malaria after all.

  The best example of the mythologising is the never-ending debate about the ‘bottle picture’ from the 1952 Tour de France, in which a bottle of mineral water is being passed between Coppi and Bartali on the Col du Galibier. The moment itself is not important. This is a relatively common act. Cyclists continually pass bottles to and from each other as they ride up mountains. The bottle picture does not show a moment that defines an event, for example when a race is lost and won. In the context of the relationship between Bartali and Coppi, or of the victory in the 1952 Tour, the moment when the old man gave his young rival his wheel on the stage to Monaco the following day was more important. On that day Coppi could have lost the Tour, but Bartali was there and helped him out. But it is the bottle picture that has inspired the debate, the articles, the television programmes.

  It is not even as if this is the only ‘bottle picture’: there is another from 1952, an earlier one from 1949. What matters is not the incident, but what the photograph of it has come to represent, the way its continual exploration and exposition has turned a banal moment into something legendary. As Daniele Marchesini wrote in his chapter about the photograph in Coppi e Bartali: ‘It has become the defining moment of an unrepeatable season, the greatest cycling has ever known.’ As Marchesini tells it, the debate began a few days after the photograph was taken when the magazine Sport Illustrato published it, and the readers began writing in to ask who was passing the bottle to whom. The key element in the picture, says Marchesini, is that it shows Coppi and Bartali, the great rivals, joined together by the bottle.

  That has a deeper message: the photograph shows Italy united, in the cooperative act of sharing the bottle. That idea was important for a nation which had just been ripped apart by the war, and which was still uncertain about its physical boundaries. The picture shows Italians cooperating in spite of their apparent difference; in this Tour de France one of the deepest and longest rivalries cycling has ever seen was put aside in favour of shared national interest. It also shows Italy successful on the international stage, because the alliance ensured that Coppi and his Italians dominated that 1952 Tour de France.

  The image also encapsulates an era. The Coppi and Bartali years have a particular significance in the collective Italian psyche, one that goes beyond the merely sporting and is similar to the 1966 World Cup, Stanley Matthews or the Bannister mile for the English. The nostalgia is heartfelt, but there is a paradox: the late 1940s and early 1950s were not easy years in Italy. The nostalgia is for the aspiration and inspiration the men represented, not for their time. Cycling in the post-war years, at its popular zenith, boils down to two men: Gino and Fausto, the rivalry by which all others are judged. Whenever the Italian sports media whips up disagreement between two sports stars, their every pronouncement studied and hyped, it is done in the shadow of Bartali and Coppi.

  EPILOGUE

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  On the hilltop, the old men gather in the clear winter air. They have come in their dozens, muffled up against the January cold in green Loden coats, dark puffa jackets and hats of every shape, size and colour, from trilbies to flat caps via black berets. Echoing the scenes at Coppi’s funeral nearly forty-seven years before, their Fiats are lined up for half a mile, with two wheels in the verges among the sapless vineyards and the stunted oak trees. They gather, as they have done every 2 January for forty-seven years, since Coppi’s death. Most are regulars at this annual Mass in memory of the great cyclist and his brother Serse. They must have aged together, getting a little older and stiffer at the joints at each annual meeting in the little square.

  In fact, to call the space where the old men are gathering a square is an exaggeration: it is a car park. On one side is a small and apparently disused weighbridge; on the other stands the ugly brick chapel, a large wooden cross and the marble memorial where Fausto and Serse now repose. Their bodies were moved here ten years after Fausto’s funeral, when the number of tifosi making the pilgrimage became too much for the little cemetery.

  The gathering is solemn but not morbid, a reunion rather than a wake. The souvenir stand selling Coppi calendars, books, photographs and desk diaries is hidden tastefully behind the weighbridge hut. Coppi’s former gregari, the men who built his victories by serving him body and soul on their bikes, line up for what resembles a team photograph, joshing and jostling a little as they do so. They pose for photographs and sign autographs; once in Coppi’s shadow, now they can bask in reflected glory – ironically given that their raison d’être was to deny themselves any chance of glory and that they felt guilty if they so much as thought of victory.

  ‘We are like the Garibaldini,’ one told me, referring to the small army that began Italian unification in the nineteenth century. ‘Whatever else we have done, we are known because we raced with Coppi. It doesn’t matter that I won forty races including an Italian championship. I am known as Coppi’s team-mate.’ Like the Garibaldini; Coppi and his gregari stand for Italy at a certain stage in her history. They are the men of the reconstruction that finally united this diverse country after the Second World War.

  Inside the little brick chapel next to the memorial and the souvenir stand it is standing room only, shoulder to shoulder, on this January day as 10.30 approaches. It is not the most formal of ceremonies. The doors remain open throughout; close family members turn up late; mobile phones keep trilling. This is Italy in the twenty-first century after all. The buzz outside is a constant background to the chanted responses and prayers.

  It is hard to separate Roman Catholicism from cycling. The priest draws his own parallels: Christ as team leader, John the Baptist as the gregario. The denial of worldly temptation on the road to a Tour de France win compared with Christ’s refusal to turn the stones into bread; Coppi’s generosity to fellow competitors as a metaphor for his preparation for eternal life. La Gazzetta dello Sport is quoted as readily as the Bible. Behind the chapel, to the right of the monument to Fausto and Serse, stands the trophy room, its walls hung with glass cases containing jerseys donated by the men who have ridden in Coppi’s shadow in the last half-century. Not one of the Italian champions of the past half-century is missing.

  The inscriptions on the glass cases tell their own story about how Coppi is venerated. The ritual of dedicating a jersey to il campionissimo is described in terms that also refer to religious fervour: ‘reverente pellegrinaggio’ – a reverent pilgrimage. Almost every cycling champion has made the same journey up to the shrine that the old men and I have made this January morning, leaving something of themselves behind in the same spirit the fans show when they leave drinks bottles, caps, inscribed stones, at the various memorials. The fallen of il Grande Torino, who perished when their aeroplane crashed into a hillside near the Superga basilica in 1949, have inspired a similar kind of ‘c
ivic religion’. Again there is a museum, again there is an annual Mass, again the fans gather on the anniversary. But il Grande Torino was an entire team, who died together in a single instant of appalling tragedy while at the height of their powers; Coppi was just one cyclist, the best in the world in his heyday, but a shadow of his former self by the time of his death. No other cyclist’s passing is marked in this way; in the wider world of sport, few stars receive such honour.

  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.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

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  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 t
o 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.

  Footnotes

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