Cyclopedia (12 page)

Born:
Castellania, Italy, September 15, 1919

 

Died:
Tortona, Italy, January 2, 1960

 

Major wins:
World road race champion 1953; Tour de France 1949, 1952, 9 stage wins; Giro d'Italia 1940, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 22 stage wins; Milan–San Remo 1946, 1948–9; Giro di Lombardia, 1946–9, 1954; Paris–Roubaix 1950; Flèche Wallonne 1950; GP des Nations 1946–7, world pursuit champion 1947, 1949; world hour record 1942

 

Nicknames:
Faustino,
il Campionissimo
, the Heron

 

Interests outside cycling:
football, shooting

 

Further reading/viewing:
Fallen Angel, the Passion of Fausto Coppi
, by William Fotheringham, Random House UK, 2010;
Coppi's Angel
, Ugo Riccarelli, trs Michael McDermott, Middlesex University Press, 2009; DVD,
Il Vero Fausto

 

Voted Italy's greatest sportsman of the 20th century, the CAMPIONISSIMO is famed for becoming the first man to manage the apparently impossible Giro-Tour DOUBLE, in 1949, with a repeat in 1952. Coppi's story, “a novel” said his good friend Raphael Geminiani, includes love, war, scandal, phenomenal success, and personal tragedy and ended with his bizarre death in 1960 when he caught malaria and the doctors did not diagnose it. The cocktail of emotions he arouses among fans in his native Italy has made him an inspirational figure, with his tale retold in biopics, television documentaries, novels, plays, and even an opera. There are numerous Coppi memorials across Europe as well as sculptures, paintings, and lyrical descriptions such as this, from the Tour winner turned journalist André Leducq: “He seems to caress the handlebars, while his torso seems fixed by screws in the saddle. His long legs stretch to the pedals like the limbs of a gazelle. All the moving parts turn as if in oil. His long face is like a knifeblade as he climbs without apparent effort, like a great artist painting a watercolor.”

Born into a peasant farming family in Liguria, Coppi won his first GIRO D'ITALIA at 20 with the help of the SOIGNEUR Biagio Cavanna, who was to remain a key influence. He broke the world HOUR RECORD in 1942 as Allied bombs fell on Milan and was sent to fight in North Africa, where he was captured by the British. After the war he relaunched his career together with his brother Serse. As Italy rebuilt its economy and society, Coppi forged his greatest wins in the Giro and MILAN–SAN REMO. He also managed a record five wins in the GIRO DI LOMBARDIA. For all Italians, his RIVALRY with GINO BARTALI symbolizes a golden era when the country emerged from the war and classic designs such as the Fiat 500 and the Vespa left the drawing board. Coppi's 1949 TOUR DE FRANCE win included overturning a 37-minute deficit on the early leader Jacques Marinelli; it came after he had taken his third Giro with a crushing stage win over Bartali on an Alpine loop between Cuneo and Pinerolo. In 1952 as he rode to his second Giro-Tour double, Coppi's form was so devastating that the organizers doubled the prize money for second place in an attempt to restore a little interest in the race.

Tragedy stalked Coppi as he raced: his father Domenico died not long after his first Giro win in 1940, and Serse was killed in a seemingly innocuous racing accident in 1951. In 1953 and 1954 he scandalized Italy by ending his marriage and beginning a relationship with a doctor's wife, Giulia Occhini, immortalized as “the white lady.” Both were married at a time when adultery was illegal:
they ended up in court and Giulia was taken briefly to jail. Coppi's career never recovered, but when he died after catching malaria at a criterium in Africa, his country was overwhelmed with grief. His name lives on in Coppi bikes and in the Giro d'Italia, where a special prize is awarded each year on the “Coppi summit,” the highest pass crossed by the race.

Coppi's enduring popularity can be seen by the plethora of memorials to the man all over Italy: at the Madonna del Ghisallo chapel, in his home village of Castellania and the nearby town of Novi Ligure, outside the cycle track in Turin, on the Pordoi and Stelvio passes, on the Bocchetta pass near Genova and the Macerola near Amalfi, on the Col d'Izoard in the French Alps, the summit of the Puy-de-Dôme mountain in central France, and at the Milan–San Remo monument on the Capo Berta.

 

(SEE
MEMORIALS
FOR MORE PLACES WHERE CYCLING GREATS ARE REMEMBERED;
POETRY
FOR ANOTHER WAY IN WHICH COPPI IS CELEBRATED)

COURIERS
Funny hair, scruffy faces, big bags on their backs, the way they annoy car drivers and pedestrians as they swoop in and out of the traffic: that may be how outsiders see cycle couriers, but in fact they are part of a long-standing tradition of deliveries by bike. That goes back to the 1890s, when Western Union delivery boys began zipping around New York City. Cycle courier races might seem a novelty, but in Paris, the hordes of newspaper delivery boys—some of them half-decent amateur cyclists—raced criteriums for over 50 years, enjoying massive popular support.

The peak days for couriering were the 1980s and early 1990s, before fax and e-mail enabled documents to be sent reliably by wire. At one point in the 1980s there were 7,000 couriers in New York; among them was Nelson Vails, who made the jump from
messaging to become Olympic sprint champion at Los Angeles in 1984. Vails reckoned he was in the top 10 of couriers, carrying out 35 to 60 drops a day, giving 40 percent of his earnings to his dispatch company.

In London in 2003 there were an estimated 400 bicycle messengers: that figure is understood to have contracted during the recession of 2008–9 so there are probably between 300 and 350. Earnings are about the mininum wage, unlikely to exceed $400 per week without taking equipment costs into account. It is also a dangerous job: a 2002 Harvard School of Public Health report into couriers in Boston estimated that the rate of injury requiring time off work was 13 times the US average.

Couriers use personally adapted bikes. Gear has to be as indestructible as possible, and easy to service and replace. So couriers often ride fixed-wheel for the added control it gives in city riding. Additionally, a single gear has no cables to rust up, even if it is used in all weathers (see FIXED-WHEEL to learn how courier-type bikes became trendy in the early 2000s). Frames may be taken from mountain bikes or track machines, with bars anything from “cowhorn” time trial bars to radically cut down straight off-road bars.

The first courier world championships were held in 1993 in Berlin, testing messenger skills such as speed, navigation, and the ability to work under pressure. The annual gathering led to an awareness of the courier subculture worldwide; informal courier races known as “alleycats” became more common.

Further information
:
movingtargetzine.com

CRITICAL MASS
Widely perceived as mass protests by cyclists in major cities worldwide, Critical Mass rides are informal, leaderless events that participants insist are celebrations and spontaneous gatherings, which means they fall outside rules that may require organized protests to be notified to local police. The aim is simply to reclaim road space from motorists, if only for a while. Critical Mass rides are usually held on the last Friday of every month and have a nonhierarchical structure: the routes may simply be decided by whoever happens to lead the group or by a vote from a variety of routes handed out to each participant. All that matters is that enough cyclists turn up and ride together so that they can “occupy” the road.

The first Critical Mass ride was held in San Francisco in 1992 with a couple of dozen cyclists. Now over 300 cities worldwide host Critical Mass rides, with a biennial event in Budapest drawing over 80,000 cyclists. Sometimes as the cyclists roll along small groups will block traffic on side roads for a few moments to enable the others to pass through junctions without stopping, a practice known as “corking.”

There are now variants on Critical Mass including Critical Manners rides in the US, which aim to encourage cyclists to observe road laws; Critical Sass is an all-women ride in Louisiana; NUDE CYCLING campaigning rides have adopted the names Critical Ass and Critical Tits.

CURSE
Cycling lore has it that the rainbow jersey of professional road world champion carries a hex, a belief based on the number of pro road world champions who have suffered a poor season immediately after taking the title.

The list begins with FAUSTO COPPI, 1953 world champion and never again a major winner after a spate of crashes and illness. The notion of the curse started with the 1955 world champion Stan Ockers of Belgium, who
died the winter after winning the title; he crashed and cracked his skull while track racing, throwing Belgium into a state of mourning. The 1987 winner STEPHEN ROCHE barely raced in 1988 due to a knee injury that he said flared up the morning after his victory; he was never the same athlete again.

TOM SIMPSON, 1965 champion, broke his leg skiing over the winter and missed most of 1966. The 1997 rainbow jersey Laurent Brochard was embroiled in the Festina DOPING scandal, while the 1970 title winner Jean-Pierre Monsere died in a racing crash in 1971.

The 1981 world champion Freddy Maertens slumped into obscurity after that win, the 1990 winner Rudy Dhaenens was barely seen in action again after contracting a virus, and the 1994 rainbow jersey winner Luc Leblanc's sponsor went bust the next season. The 1969 world champion Harm Ottenbros was unknown when he won and quickly went back that way.

The 1996 champion Johan Museeuw was plagued by troubles that included an infected scratch in his knee, tangling his wheel in another rider's quick-release mechanism, punctures, and a urinary infection. More recently, Romans Vainsteins (2000) and Igor Astarloa (2003) disappeared without trace, while 2003 time trial world champion David Millar was busted for drugs the following year.