Fallen Angel Read online

  ‘When we came back Cavanna would come to us. He would be waiting with his hands to feel whether we had sweated, whether we were thin, whether we were dry, in form, or still had work to do,’ said Riccardo Filippi, whom Cavanna guided to a world amateur championship. If the blind man’s hands felt that a cyclist’s neck was dry, he would be sent out to sweat some more. One protégé recalls that they would sometimes get round him by wetting their collars with water.

  Cavanna was paid in kind – a basket of fruit, a chicken, a demijohn of wine or a big bottle of oil – and he would take a cut when he placed cyclists with professional teams. His allievi would put their prize money into a common pot to pay for their rent. As aspirants to the senior categories – they would make the transition via the intermediate category of independent – theirs was a primitive, relentless life: riding to races with their kit on carriers on the front wheel, sleeping in schools on overnight trips further away. But it was better than labouring, and it was not without its lighter moments. On one occasion the allievi caught a goose while they were out training and brought it back to the master, who could tell from its terrified protestations that it was not a young bird. He was right: it took three days to cook.

  * * *

  Soon after he began working with Cavanna, Faustino gave up his job at the butcher’s and began working part-time on the farm, riding down from his home in Castellania to meet the maestro and his fellow pupils for training. At this time, having saved up 300 lire from his earnings to buy his first racing bike, he had to deal with poverty as well as the demands his new master made on him. He would ride home from races in the dark, because he did not have the cash to rent a room for the night. Sometimes he and his family would be unable to find the ten or twenty lire he needed to enter a race. He would leave home with only the start money and a few hard-boiled eggs in his pocket, and most often he would return with his pockets empty.

  If the scruffy young amateur lacked style, he did not lack ambition. Coppi took his first win in a race on the official calendar early in 1938 at the age of eighteen at the town of Castelletto d’Orba, racing in the jersey of the Dopolavoro di Tortona (one of the sports clubs set up by the fascist government to improve the moral and physical health of the nation). It earned him an alarm clock with a statue of a hunchback on it, which he gave to his mother. Il gobbo, the hunchback, is a symbol of good fortune for Italians, and Aunt Albina said the figure would bring him luck. It did not do so immediately, however, as after that successes were few and far between: he won only one more race that season, and had eight near misses.

  In most of his races, Coppi was affected by crashes, punctures or mechanical problems; this is perhaps because he was still learning to keep his eyes on the road, or because he was unable to afford the best equipment, at a time when the quality of a cyclist’s machine mattered far more than it does now. Bikes, and particularly tyres, took far more of a hammering because of the poor-quality roads, and, in the event of a problem, assistance from team vehicles was slow at best, and could not be taken for granted anyway. As a result of the lessons learned during these early setbacks, at his peak Coppi was obsessed with the quality of his kit, and would hire the finest mechanic of the time, Pinella di Grande.

  It was not the races but the return trips home that enabled the young man to keep faith. As he rode back towards Novi with the other local boys, trying to save money on train fares and board and lodging, he would notice that towards the end his legs always seemed stronger than those of his companions. Not surprisingly, however, with no return for his money and his effort, he would often wonder if it was worth continuing to compete.

  More worryingly, so too did his family, according to Cavanna. ‘They didn’t have a great belief in cycling, were afraid he was wasting time and only got enthusiastic when he won.’ His mother was already worried that cycling was not a proper career and her son would be better off working in the fields or behind the counter of a butcher’s shop. One day towards the end of 1938, Coppi came to the blind man ‘with the look of a dog that had been beaten’ and told him his family wanted him to stop racing and to work. Such is the nature of subsistence agriculture: there is no room for passengers.

  At this, Cavanna lost his temper, went to Coppi’s parents and offered to pay the boy’s keep himself and provide his equipment, as long as he could continue to race. As he pointed out later, it was hardly a risky investment. Coppi’s rise was meteoric: less than eighteen months after his first win in an official race, he was being tipped for stardom. The breakthrough came in 1939, when the nineteen-year-old Coppi moved up from amateur to independent, an intermediate category of riders who were permitted to compete with the professionals. ‘He was incredibly thin, long legs, big thighs, no superfluous weight, like a tall wading bird,’ says Fiorenzo Magni, who competed with him that year. Another observer noted that he was a ‘skinny little thing who looked pretty funny in his kit. His calf muscles didn’t promise much, because they were pretty scrawny.’ ‘More like a thin, starving goat than a cyclist,’ said another.

  Whatever Fausto’s looks, Cavanna believed in him. The blind masseur wrote to Giovanni Rossignoli, the organiser of a race in Pavia: ‘Dear Giovanni, I’m sending you two of my colts. One is called Coppi and will take the first prize, the other will do what he can. Watch Coppi: he is like Binda.’ In 1939 the nineteen-year-old won seven races, including the Italian independents’ championship at Varzi in early May, in which he opened up a seven-minute lead over the next man. This was heady stuff for a youth with only eighteen months’ apprenticeship behind him. Each victory demonstrated the pattern that would be his hallmark in future: not only the ability to race alone at great speed, but also, most importantly, his instinct for choosing the right moment to attack the field. Just as promising, however, were his placings in his first one-day races against professionals: second in the Coppa Bernocchi, third in the Giro del Piemonte and the Tre Valli Varesine.

  Well before the end of 1939, two professional teams were vying for Coppi’s services. In late May, Cavanna’s old squad Maino, now managed by the blind masseur’s former charge Girardengo, approached Coppi through his family. An agreement was reached, a contract signed, but Cavanna was outraged and turned up shortly after Girardengo had left Castellania to demand that the family renege on the deal: Cavanna had negotiated a contract for Coppi with Eberardo Pavesi, manager of Gino Bartali’s Legnano team. In any case Coppi stayed with Maino the night before the Giro del Piemonte, sleeping on a camp bed pushed in between two of the riders’ beds.

  The pipe-smoking, garrulous Pavesi was a major figure in Italian cycling, a team manager into his eighties, variously nicknamed ‘l’Avocatt’, the lawyer, ‘il mago’, the mage, and ‘il Papa’, the Pope. His racing career had begun in the pioneering days of the Giro and Tour, just after the turn of the century, and as a manager he had been in charge of such legendary figures as Alfredo Binda, winner of six Giri and the first world professional road title, as well as, ironically enough, Girardengo. As for Bartali, he was the Italian No.1, winner of two Giri d’Italia and the Tour de France in the last three years. Coppi was to wear the olive green of Legnano from the start of 1940, for 700 lire a month, on a deal that provided for him for ten months of the year. The rest of the time he would have to earn a living like anyone else. Cavanna’s commission was 1,000 lire and a bike from Legnano.

  On the road, the transition from impoverished also-ran to budding champion took less than five weeks. At the Italian national championship for independents on 14 August at Varese, the head of the Italian cycling federation (FCI, the Federazione Ciclistica Italiana) came close to throwing Coppi out of the race, because his jersey was so scruffy it was considered to contravene the rules that contestants had to present themselves in a fit state. Coppi was allowed in, under protest, and duly won. The next day he took the flowers to the church in Castellania. His mother, befitting a careful peasant woman with an eye for appearances, said ‘they must be worth at least ten lire; pretend you hav
e bought them’.

  Soon there would be no need to pretend: on 17 September, two days after his twentieth birthday, he was paid appearance money for the first time, to start the Circuito di Susa, which he also won. On his first attempt at track racing, he raised eyebrows by finishing third in a pursuit match, on a borrowed bike, to the Italian champion Olimpio Bizzi. In his final race of the season, again on the track, he beat Bizzi by forty metres.

  By the end of the 1939 season, the newspapers were tipping Coppi for great things. Il Lavoro of Genoa described him as ‘a formidable climber in spite of his height and weight’. ‘We watched him racing: he has a supple pedalling style, effortless and stylish, he is one of those youths who are born to race a bike,’ wrote Guido Giardini in La Gazzetta dello Sport on 11 November, noting, as so many other journalists would, that Coppi was ‘a man of few words, shy, meek-mannered’. It had, said Giardini, only taken the few minutes in which he matched the best in the Giro del Piemonte ‘to make us understand that Coppi had the makings of a champion’.

  * * *

  Gino Bartali and his ‘greens’ in the Legnano team had been Coppi’s heroes in his amateur days. Bartali would spur him onwards and upwards for the rest of his cycling career. Their lives would be entwined for more than twenty years: initially as leader and gregario (team worker), then friends and legendary rivals, finally, ephemerally, team manager and team captain. They had raced together on 9 April 1939 in the Giro della Toscana; Coppi broke a wheel after 140 kilometres so there had been no confrontation. They had first come head to head in the Giro del Piemonte on 4 June. The youngster, wearing a bright yellow jersey, made an experimental attack on one of the hills and went into a solo lead, only for his chain to come off. He had to stop, and put it back on the wrong gear; even so he eventually finished third behind Bartali. That evening he went to the Legnano team’s hotel with Cavanna to sign his first professional contract for the 1940 season.

  Bartali told the journalist Rino Negri that, given everything Cavanna had said about the youngster, it was probably better to have him in his own team than riding against him. After all, Coppi was already being described as ‘the most elegant pedaller in Italy’ and had ambitions that went beyond merely enabling his team leader to win. At their first team meeting, before the opening one-day Classic of the year, Milan–San Remo, Coppi raised his voice, questioning the older man’s choice of tactics. But as that year’s Giro d’Italia drew near, there was nothing to suggest that the slim youth from Piemonte might be about to usurp his leader’s place. Bartali had won Milan–San Remo and the Giro della Toscana in fine style. Coppi’s preparation had been held up by a training accident. He had been well placed, but nothing more, finishing eighth in Milan–San Remo and twelfth in the Giro del Piemonte; his selection for the Giro in his first professional season showed that Pavesi felt he had made rapid progress in spite of his lack of wins.

  The three-week Giro hinged on a single split second, during the second stage between Turin and Genoa, when Bartali hit a dog, crashed and dislocated his elbow. He was advised by his doctors to quit the race, as they estimated he would need three weeks off to recover. He refused to go home, although he rapidly lost fifteen minutes after failing to stay with the leaders as a consequence of the injury. Coppi, meanwhile, suffered more than his fair share of problems – two crashes, a broken handlebar – but had ridden consistently enough to lie in second place by the start of stage eleven, from Florence to Modena, where the riders had to cross the Apennines over the Abetone Pass.

  It was on the slopes of the Abetone, in snow, cold rain, thunder and lightning, that the pattern for the rest of the race was set. Coppi had been told by Pavesi to ride his own race and escaped alone; Bartali had briefly stopped because he had a mechanical problem, with a crank coming loose. Once Coppi had flown, the older man had no choice but to remain with the other team leaders as they spent their energy chasing his teammate; if they caught Coppi, it would be his turn to attack.

  Bartali later claimed he was at least as strong as Coppi on the day, but what is not in doubt is that this was the moment Coppi emerged from obscurity. Orio Vergani wrote in Corriere della Sera: ‘He seemed to be whistling as he went … on the road lashed by the frozen, cutting rain. People at the roadsides huddled under umbrellas, trying to read the number stamped on his frame, looked for his name in the paper that corresponded to the number … Coppi, an unknown … Fausto, an even more unknown name …’ Another commentator recalled spectators yelling ‘Isn’t that the skinny guy who rides for the green rats?’ At the finish, he took over the pink jersey of race leader amid general astonishment.

  Coppi was as shocked as anyone else. The only time he had spoken about wearing the pink jersey was as a joke, shared with his roommate Mario Ricci. Ricci had noticed that his young team-mate only wore black socks and asked him why. Coppi replied that as an independent he could not afford white ones, which got dirty far more quickly and were harder to wash. ‘We joked that when he won the pink jersey, he would get white socks to go with it.’

  As the Dolomites approached, Coppi grew stronger and Bartali’s strength declined. The Legnano leader began to mutter about quitting the race but was told that his public image would be better served by staying where he was and assisting his young, inexperienced team-mate. He and Pavesi also had in mind that a three-week Tour was a test of stamina better suited to the more mature man. Debutants who are given the unaccustomed responsibility of leading a major Tour tend not to be up to the pressure, and, although Bartali was half an hour behind, there was still a strong chance that the youngster would not be able to make it to Milan without falling apart.

  Coppi’s crisis came on the stage to Pieve di Cadore in the Alps, when he made two elementary errors: firstly, eating too much at once, secondly, stopping for a moment. He had a stomachful of chicken sandwich when a rival, Vicini, attacked at the feeding station. He panicked. ‘Trembling, I began to chase him,’ he wrote. ‘These were terrible moments – the cars in the caravan had created a dreadful traffic jam on the road and got in the way of the chase. And the chicken I had eaten was weighing on my stomach like a brick.’ By the next mountain pass, the Col de Mauria, he had caught up with Vicini, but he was already exhausted; as the leaders tackled the climb, he was left behind.

  ‘Overcome with sickness, I had to stop by the ditch, vomiting up all the food that I had tried to get down. One by one, all my fellow competitors overtook me as, bent double with sickness, unaware of what was going on, my eyes swimming, I barely realised that I was losing the pink jersey.’ It was Bartali who saved the youth. Their roles had been reversed: it was the man who had begun the race as leader who performed the loyal team-mate’s duties that Coppi had been hired to carry out for him. By a lucky coincidence, the older man had been delayed by a series of punctures. ‘He stopped next to me … put his arm around my shivering shoulders and passed me a bottle of water. As I lay on the grass and tried to recover, Gino Bartali, the great Gino Bartali, gently began to lecture me, to persuade me that I should go on and win.’

  The pink jersey was saved, but next day came the toughest mountain stage of the entire race, finishing in the town of Ortisei; only 110 kilometres long, it included three massive climbs, the Falzarego, Pordoi and Sella. With only a rest day and two more days’ racing to follow before the finish, this was where the race would be decided. To make sure his riders would have the extra kick they needed, Pavesi set out the night before and drove up both the first two passes. In a café at the top of the Falzarego he provided the café owner with two bottles and told him to fill them with coffee and hand them to the first two riders over the pass. ‘How do you know they will be your riders?’ asked the proprietor. ‘One will be wearing red, white and green [Italian national champion, the jersey worn by Bartali] and the other will be in pink,’ answered the manager.

  He was correct in his prediction that Coppi and Bartali would ride the stage together, but the precise account of what happened depends on the point of view: Ba
rtaliano or Coppiano. Bartali made the running early in the stage, with Coppi struggling to follow him. Twice Coppi punctured, with Bartali waiting. On the final climb, however, it was Bartali’s turn to have a flat tyre. Coppi attacked at once, only to be told by Pavesi that he must wait: ‘Pacts are things that you must respect!’ In his autobiography, Bartali was adamant: ‘If I’d been from another team he wouldn’t have won the Giro. He was not experienced and had his limits on the climbs, he would suddenly have nothing in the tank. When that happened in the Dolomites I was the one who saved him from disaster. I didn’t do it for him, but for Legnano who paid my wages.’ He added that if he had helped Coppi he had done so unwillingly, ‘because he asked for things he shouldn’t have’.

  One eyewitness, Beppe Pegoletti, writing for La Nazione, described how Bartali waited for Coppi, shouting encouragement, pacing him ‘with patience, even with love’ as the young man struggled to hang on to his wheel. At one point Coppi stopped, and Bartali took a handful of snow and rubbed it on Coppi’s forehead, then he dropped it onto the nape of his neck. Towards the end of the stage, on the descent to the finish in the little town of Ortisei, Coppi missed a turning and punctured: it was Bartali who gave him his wheel.

  Coppi rode into the vast Arena in Milan two days later, the clear winner of the Giro at his first attempt at the age of twenty. The 27,000-lire first prize was his, including a 10,000-lire Premio del Duce. The entire Coppi family had travelled to Milan to welcome him in the great open-air stadium, deliberately built to resemble an ancient Roman amphitheatre, on the edge of the Sempione park. The men of the family – Domenico, Uncle Fausto, Livio, Serse – had listened to the mountain stages around the one radio in the village, which was kept in the schoolroom. They had received occasional postcards from their Faustino, two or three of them with a brief message: ‘Don’t worry, the maglia rosa is on its way.’