Fallen Angel Read online

  WILLIAM FOTHERINGHAM

  * * *

  FALLEN ANGEL

  THE PASSION OF

  FAUSTO COPPI

  FALLEN ANGEL

  CONTENTS

  * * *

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Also by William Fotheringham

  List of illustrations

  A note on currencies

  Fallen Angel

  1 The Letter and the Photograph

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

  3 The Blind Man and the Butcher’s Boy

  4 ‘A very regrettable phenomenon’

  5 Jousting in the Rubble

  6 The Imposter

  7 The Mystic and the Mechanic

  8 Summer Lightning

  9 Extinction of the Worthy Brute

  10 Loss of the Lucky Charm

  11 A Man Alone

  12 The Outlaws

  13 In the Dock

  14 Decline and Falls

  15 Give Me Air

  16 The Icon and the Myth

  17 Epilogue

  Bibliography

  Index

  Plates

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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  Epub ISBN 9781409077459

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  Published by Yellow Jersey Press 2009

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  Copyright © William Fotheringham 2009

  William Fotheringham has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  Every effort has been made to contact all copyright holders, and the publishers will be pleased to correct any omissions brought to their notice at the earliest convenience.

  First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Yellow Jersey Press Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780224074476

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  To Caroline, who took me to Italy

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  * * *

  This book could not have been written without the assistance of the riders who gave up their time for interviews over the last few years, in some cases on several occasions. My most sincere thanks are therefore due to Alfredo Martini, Ubaldo Pugnaloni, Fiorenzo Magni, Sandrino Carrea, Raphael Geminiani, Jean Bobet, Ettore Milano, Nino Defilippis and Michele Gismondi.

  Of the immediate Coppi family, Piero Coppi, Faustino Coppi and Marina Bellocchi née Coppi were unstintingly helpful. To Marina go particular thanks for showing me the letter quoted at length in the first chapter.

  To my colleague Marco Pastonesi at La Gazzetta dello Sport I must add particular thanks for facilitating interviews with various former cyclists and members of the Coppi family, and opening the way to the archive at his newspaper.

  At Yellow Jersey, I am indebted to Tristan Jones and Juliet Brooke for their patience and help. Thanks are also due to the sports editor at the Guardian, Ben Clissitt, and my agent John Pawsey, for their support.

  As ever, though, it is to Caroline, Patrick and Miranda that I owe the most, for putting up with yet more absences and yet more hours chained to the desk.

  Also by William Fotheringham

  Put Me Back on My Bike: In Search of Tom Simpson

  Roule Britannia: A History of Britons in the Tour de France

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  * * *

  1 Coppi on the front cover of Miroir-Sprint magazine.

  2 Coppi and his four siblings in a family portrait (courtesy of Offside); Coppi and friends after a hunting trip (courtesy of La Gazzetta dello Sport); Casa Coppi in Castellania

  3 Bianchi’s 1946 team line-up; early team postcard of the young Coppi

  4 Coppi in La Rochelle during the 1949 Tour de France; Coppi with his French fans (both courtesy of Offside)

  5 Coppi in the Alps on the 1949 Tour de France; Coppi celebrating at Nancy (both courtesy of Offside)

  6 Biagio Cavanna massaging Coppi, with wife Bruna looking on (courtesy of Offside); Coppi and his mother, Angiolina (reproduced in Miroir-Sprint); Coppi bathing his feet (courtesy of Offside)

  7 Serse Coppi kissing his brother; Coppi and Gino Bartali at a race start; Coppi and Bartali at the Giro d’Italia (all courtesy of Offside)

  8 Coppi and Bartali in one of the legendary ‘bottle’ shots in 1949 (courtesy of Offside)

  9 Coppi in the Alps in 1952 (courtesy of Offside); Coppi on the world championship podium with Giulia Locatelli in 1953 (courtesy of La Gazzetta dello Sport)

  10 Coppi with his wife Bruna after the 1946 Giro di Lombardia (courtesy of La Gazzetta dello Sport); Coppi with Giulia Occhini (courtesy of Olycom)

  11 Coppi’s children, Marina and Faustino (reproduced in Miroir-Sprint)

  12–13 Coppi at the Tour of Spain in 1959 (courtesy of Offside)

  14 Giulia Occhini with Coppi’s body (courtesy of La Gazzetta dello Sport); fans in mourning around Coppi’s coffin (courtesy of Offside)

  15 Caricature of Coppi (reproduced in The Treasures of the Tour de France); idealised magazine cover La Domenica del Corriere; Coppi’s bike at the Bianchi bicycle factory

  16 Crowds outside the cemetery in Castellania surround Coppi’s coffin (courtesy of Offside)

  A NOTE ON CURRENCIES

  * * *

  I have used both Italian lire and French francs throughout as appropriate.

  It should be noted that, pre-war, the Italian lire was worth roughly 100 to the pound sterling, and roughly 20 to the dollar.

  After the Allied invasion, the initial exchange rate was set at approximately 500 to the pound, or 120 to the US dollar; this rate was reset at 625 lire to the dollar in 1949.

  The French franc was revalued in January 1960; in Coppi’s era the currency is what was known as the ‘old franc’. In 1949, when Coppi won the Tour de France for the first time, the exhange rate was roughly 1000 to the pound sterling (350 to the US dollar); by the end of the 1950s, it had declined to approximately 1400 to the pound (roughly 500 to the dollar).

  CHAPTER 1

  * * *

  THE LETTER AND THE PHOTOGRAPH

  At a quarter past four on 25 May 1949, Aunt Albina sits down next
to her radio and begins to write on a single sheet of squared paper. Soon the afternoon’s coverage of the Giro d’Italia will begin, and the announcer, Mario Ferretti, will tell her how Faustino and Serse have fared on the road to Salerno in Italy’s national tour. This is the time of day the Coppi family shares with its two boys; in another house in the little village of Castellania, their mother, Albina’s sister Angiolina, is also sitting, waiting for Ferretti to pick up his microphone. Just outside, in the little field they call Campo del Mù, Albina’s husband Giuseppe is cutting the hay; for the three weeks of the race, each day’s work is planned so that he will be within reach of the house now, ready to run to the radio.

  How to tell Faustino and Serse what they all feel? The boys are always on their minds. What could be more natural? The Coppi brothers have won such fame, Faustino with his Giro d’Italia wins and his Italian national titles, Serse with his unstinting work in support. Each time they come back from their great races – as far away as Naples or Rome, sometimes even France or Switzerland – they bring back fine things: Angiolina’s fridge, her radio. The family have such good clothes now and want for nothing; no one in the village has seen anything like Faustino’s new Fiat. But it is not so long ago that the brothers were at Albina’s school, inseparable even then. Faustino had always been mad about that bike of his; one day, she had had to mark him ‘absent’ in the register when he went out cycling and forgot to come back. How she had told him off.

  Giuseppe is certain Faustino will win on the climbs; Albina can say that in her letter. She must tell them of the prayers the family say each day for their boys’ safe return, the tears she and Angiolina shed each time Faustino wins, and she can remind them to wear their medallions with the image of the Pilgrim Madonna. She must be sure to have Angiolina sign the letter, and Giuseppe, so that the boys know they are all thinking of them. Above all, she must make a point of including Serse, so often in his elder brother’s shadow, but so loyal, and as lively still as when Faustino first brought him to school.

  Aunt Albina writes with a script so close and neat it might have come off a printing press. A lady of precise mind, she times and dates the letter. Many years later, it will be passed on to Faustino’s daughter Marina. Sixty years on, the letter seems surprisingly formal. Perhaps it is because Albina is the village teacher and thus elected to write on the family’s behalf. She sends the ‘most fervent’ prayers of this ‘church family’ – Albina and Angiolina’s uncle is a priest. The Immaculate Madonna will bless them, will give Faustino the strength to be victorious, to pull on the pink jersey awarded to the race leader.

  ‘Obviously we discuss what is going on,’ she continues. ‘Your uncle talks about you with a fervour and affection that you cannot imagine. On the days you finished first I cried, and I’m still crying for joy. Well done, Faustino, well done, and go on. You will be carried along the way you have chosen by your intelligence, your good sense and your experience.’

  To Serse, she writes: ‘With your good character, your willpower, your strength, you will be the finest and greatest help to your big brother. You will give him encouragement even if you go through difficult times.’ She sends hugs and kisses, ‘with the greatest affection, your most affectionate uncle and aunt Giuseppe and Albina’. There is a scribble from Angiolina on the bottom of the letter: ‘love from Mamma, hope all goes well’. Uncle Giuseppe’s signature is heavier, thicker.

  Aunt Albina’s close, regular handwriting evokes a lost world, a pastoral idyll of summer haymaking. The women sit in the parlour, listening for news, waiting for the return of the men who have left the land to seek their fortunes. Whether they quite understand the intricacies of the faraway world of bike racing is unlikely. That does not matter. Faustino and Serse may be a long way from home, but they will understand their importance to their family, feel the simple power of their relatives’ love, know the depth of their Catholic faith.

  * * *

  The photograph, on the other hand, is more troubling. Four years later, Fausto Coppi stands on the podium of the world road race championship in Lugano. He has just pulled on the winner’s rainbow-striped jersey. As he waves the victor’s bouquet, his face comes as close to a smile as he ever manages to muster. The lower lip curves; the upper remains straight; only the creases in his cheeks show that this is a moment of pure joy. He has just clinched the only major title that has so far eluded him. There can now be no debate: he is the greatest cyclist ever. His title, campionissimo – champion of champions – is not mere hyperbole.

  By 30 August 1953 Coppi had twice achieved the ‘double’ everyone thought was impossible: victories in the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia in the same year. At the World’s that day he dominated the race in the style that was to become his hallmark: he waited for the moment until he felt the opposition tiring, then dramatically raised the pace until no one could stay with him. The final fifty miles were a triumphant, if painful, procession in front of the hundreds of thousands of fans who had flocked over the Italian border.

  Coppi’s rainbow jersey doesn’t quite fit over the deep blue tunic of the Italian team, stained with sweat after 165 miles in the sweltering heat on the hilly circuit above the lake. Alongside the cyclist are the usual dignitaries in suits and ties, the mayor of Lugano, the cycling federation president; behind are onlookers craning their necks.

  At the shoulders of the men in suits, however, stands a woman. A woman with immaculately coiffed dark hair swept back from her forehead, eyebrows tightly plucked into two perfect lines, dazzling teeth, a chunky gold bracelet on her right wrist, a distinguished black dress and a jawline that hints at the unstoppable force of a battleship’s prow.

  It was the presence of the woman, Giulia Locatelli, which made a routine podium photograph into one of the most reproduced images in Italian sport. To this day, no one quite knows how Coppi’s mistress cajoled, argued, pushed her way into forbidden territory to pass him the flowers in an almost peremptory gesture captured by the television cameras. She was alongside her lover in his moment of triumph, to share the acclaim of the hundreds of thousands of Italian fans, to be pictured alongside him in the next morning’s newspapers. It was the moment their love affair became public, because she had decided that it should be so. For an Italian, the image has the same power as the moment in the Profumo scandal in Britain in the early sixties when Mandy Rice-Davies answered: ‘He would say that, wouldn’t he?’

  The affair had been going on for some months. It had been rumoured in the closed world of cycling that the biggest name in the sport had a dark-haired mistress. All was not well, it was said, with his marriage of nearly eight years, in spite of Coppi’s love for his daughter Marina. Cycling champions often strayed as they flitted from race to race, and in most cases what happened on the road remained hidden. They were good husbands at home so people turned a blind eye. But Giulia’s determined move put the affair in the public gaze. In 1950s Italy adultery was still illegal. This was an act of colossal daring, many would say sheer folly.

  When Coppi left his wife Bruna for Giulia soon afterwards, such an act of open immorality could not be allowed to go unchecked. The Pope publicly expressed his displeasure and became involved in fruitless moves to restore the marriage. The police dragged Giulia and Fausto from their beds in an attempt to prove their illicit liaison. The woman, the guilty party in the eyes of the law, was briefly thrown into prison. The adultery trial was brief but vicious, the bitter little details of marital breakdown mulled over in public. The children were called as witnesses. The sentences were suspended, but the case remains a landmark nonetheless: a major public figure and his mistress prosecuted for adultery just as Italy was turning into a secular society, developing into a modern European state.

  The Lugano world championship marked a turning point for Coppi in another sense. It was one of the last major races he won. He was nearly thirty-four: his glittering career was all but over, his decline inexorable in spite of his best efforts, the more marked because no m
atter how poorly he performed he could never be anonymous. When he struggled, it was noticed. Inevitably, the scarlet woman was blamed for his decline; even for his premature, controversial death. Within cycling, she would never be forgiven, not on moral grounds, but for emasculating the champion of champions.

  Coppi is Italian sport’s immortal hero. ‘Coppi viva, Coppi il mito’ – Coppi lives on, Coppi the myth – say the placards at the great races, the Giro, the Tour de France, and they are right. He remains a mythical figure nearly fifty years after his death. Walk into the reception at La Gazzetta dello Sport, the paper that embodies the spirit of Italian sport, and there in front of you is a life-size black and white picture of a man on a bike: Coppi. Not a Ferrari, not a footballer, but the cyclist. In the Giro each year, the highest mountain is given the title Cima Coppi, the Coppi summit. No French or Spanish champion is remembered this way in their home Tours. And who can count the number of Italian cycling clubs called Gruppo Sportivo Coppi?

  Every era is marked by the emergence of a possible ‘new Coppi’ amid much speculation. On the fortieth anniversary of his death, a video of his life sold 60,000 copies in a few days. Half a billion lire was spent on an elaborate memorial in Turin. And it was Coppi who was voted the most popular Italian sportsman of the twentieth century, ahead of the great skier Alberto Tomba and the motor racing legend Enzo Ferrari. Not a footballer within a mile of him.