Authors: William Fotheringham
This was not Coppi’s first attack of malaria. He had had the disease while he was a prisoner of war, most probably the less severe
Plasmodium vivax
type which can disappear before recurring some months later. It has immunosuppressant effects so the recurrent bouts Coppi had in 1944 may have undermined his health in the long term, and may have contributed to illnesses and spells of weakness throughout his career. But the form that had now struck Coppi and his companions was
Plasmodium falciparum
, the most virulent of the three forms. The illness usually has an incubation period of around seven days; it was, however, at least eleven days between the night Coppi was probably infected and the first signs of sickness on 27 December.
Malaria is caused by a minute parasite, transmitted by infected mosquitoes such as those which had bitten Coppi, Geminiani and Laiolo. The parasite invades the body’s red blood cells and multiplies inside them, until the red cells burst and the parasites go back into the bloodstream to invade more red cells. As the immune system reacts the symptoms appear: fever, temperature spikes, chills, sweating, headaches, vomiting, diarrhoea, delirium, coma, respiratory distress. Death is rapid. The parasite’s lifecycle of reproduction and reinfection causes intermittent symptoms, with the paroxysms coming when the corpuscles burst, releasing a new cohort of parasites, which happens simultaneously for each generation, on a twenty-four, forty-eight or seventy-two-hour cycle.
Coppi’s decline was spectacularly rapid, the doctors’ confusion total. According to Gino Bailo’s impeccably researched account of Coppi’s final days,
L’Ultimo Dicembre
, Walter Almaviva, who returned to visit a couple of days later, recalled Coppi as being barely recognisable; he was unshaven and unwilling to get out of bed, his voice was hoarse and he had a raging thirst. Almaviva was left to watch over him for an hour on the evening of 30 December while Giulia went to the hair-dresser’s. Coppi began to be sick, and Almaviva called the doctor,
whose advice was to find some anti-vomiting medicine and inject it, fast. They had no solutions: as Giulia told it later, ‘Astaldi visited on the evening of 30 December and was worried. He thought it was pneumonia: then he began talking about a virus, an infection that he might have caught hunting in Upper Volta.’ There was talk of taking a urine sample, but nothing more.
Laiolo, meanwhile, was responding to quinine. So was Geminiani, although, as may have happened with Laiolo, the medicine had initially been administered by pure chance. Malaria does not seem to have occurred to his doctors, who thought he was suffering from a tropical fever of some kind. His temperature was coming down, but he was still vomiting. He had a blood test on 31 January, but there was no equipment in Clermont Ferrand that could detect the malaria parasite.
On New Year’s Eve, Coppi’s relations came to visit. First was Uncle Giuseppe, who advised the cyclist’s brother Livio to go to see him. Their mother, Angiolina, said later that she could tell he was trying to force himself to seem normal to prevent her worrying. On her way home, she went to the church and prayed, offering to give up her seaside holiday in Alassio if her son were to get better. Coppi remained convinced that he had flu, as the doctors had said.
The final decline set in as 1960 dawned. Fausto’s breathing became harsher, more laboured. Giulia stayed to watch over him as the servants went out to party and returned home in the small hours, trying not to wake him. She spent the night wiping his brow with a facecloth packed with ice, and dampening his lips with orange juice. At times, it seemed to her that he had stopped breathing. On New Year’s Eve he had advised Almaviva, over the telephone, to ‘enjoy himself’; on New Year’s morning he was not capable of recognising his brother Livio. His pulse had risen to 130 beats per minute. In the villa, panic began to set in; one specialist after another was called, but
there was thick fog, and it was not easy for them to get to his bedside. At Mass that morning in Castellania prayers were offered for the village’s celebrated son.
By now the doctors numbered three – Allegri and Astaldi having been joined by Aminta Fieschi from Genoa – but collectively they still had no idea what illness they were treating. Fieschi later told a reporter: ‘Coppi’s sudden decline meant I was brought in eighteen or nineteen hours before he died. His deterioration could be seen from severe symptoms in almost all his vital organs, a kidney problem with a serious reduction in his urine volume and pathogens in the urine; obvious jaundice which indicated that his liver was involved; variations in his pulse rate.’ The most serious symptom was his rapid, shallow breathing: Fieschi said it was akin to that of a patient being suffocated in the final phase of fatal influenza.
Coppi was dying in front of the mystified doctors. They could see that whatever illness he had was attacking his respiratory system. His breathing was rapid and shallow, so he was administered oxygen. The decline in his state had taken them by surprise: by the evening of New Year’s Day he was too ill to be transported to Pavia, the preferred hospital. Instead he was taken to Tortona, twenty-two kilometres from Novi. As the
campionissimo
was transported out of the villa, four-year-old Faustino saw his father for the last time. ‘He came down the stairs in a wheel-chair because his muscles were so weak. He stopped and said to me, “Be good, don’t do anything to make your mother cross”.’
* * *
Between Serravalle, just south of the villa, and Tortona was a stretch of motorway that was on the point of being opened; Giulia asked for special dispensation to permit Coppi’s ambulance to use it, to avoid bumping down the main road. It was a fine thought but ultimately to no purpose. The doctors were
still in the dark. A hospital worker later admitted they tried everything they could think of, even if it was possibly detrimental, although by this stage it was debatable whether anything could have saved Coppi. ‘We injected 150 milligrams of cortisone, something that can change everything in a normal man. We did it because there was nothing else to do, because when you are fighting a crazy, diabolical virus, you have to use all means available. There was nothing to lose; the only hope was to try things, even if that went beyond the limits of prudence.’
He was administered antivirals, antibiotics, antitoxins and medicines for the liver and heart, as well as cortisone. In a room down the corridor, a hysterical Giulia was being administered sedatives. In the background, there was the constant ringing of the telephone. The news that he had been taken to hospital was released that evening; Rino Negri was among the reporters who were summoned from whatever they were doing –
La Gazzetta’s
man was at the theatre – to travel to Tortona. Initial despatches spoke of food poisoning.
At some point that evening, as Coppi lay in hospital descending slowly into his final coma, a celebrated telephone call – or calls – took place. It – or they – came from France, and the episode has been amplified and modified in a never-ending version of Chinese whispers that adds a final twist to the Coppi legend. It is the telephone call from Geminiani’s family that, it is widely and probably wrongly claimed, could have saved the
campionissimo
. Geminiani told me: ‘I had blood samples taken, they were sent to the Institut Pasteur in Paris where they diagnosed
Plasmodium falciparum
, they gave me quinine in big doses and saved me. My brother, who spoke Italian, phoned the clinic where Coppi was being treated and said: “They have found out what is wrong with Raphael – he has malaria, so Fausto must have the same thing.” And the doctor said, “You deal with whatever your brother has, we will treat Coppi for what is wrong with him.”’
It is inevitable given the way the White Lady has always been viewed that there is another variant which has Giulia Occhini taking the call. Her response is said to have been something along these lines: I used to be married to a doctor, so I know what is wrong with Fausto.
It is not, however, quite that simple. Geminiani’s first interview after his illness, with
Oggi
, does not mention any diagnosis being communicated to Coppi’s doctors. Instead, Gem’ says that his father found out that Coppi was also ill, and his family decided to call the hospital in Tortona to see if the two cyclists had the same illness. According to Don Lorenzo Ferrarrazzo, the hospital chaplain, he took ‘at least’ two calls from Geminiani’s family that evening, asking for information. According to Bailo’s
L’Ultimo Dicembre
, the diagnosis of malaria did not reach Geminiani’s doctors until 3 January.
As news emerged late that night that Coppi was dangerously ill, fans began to gather in little groups outside the hospital. It was the ever-faithful Ettore Milano who took his master’s last order: ‘He said, “Give me air.” There was an oxygen mask and I changed the cylinder, it was two thirty in the morning.’ One of the final acts of the
gregario
was to go to the villa and collect Coppi’s most elegant suit. It was ultimately to be used to dress his corpse; as most accounts tell it, Milano left when Coppi was already dead. But in the version Milano told me, he went and found the suit ‘for superstition, not for his death’; he did it before Coppi actually passed away in the hope that, if he prepared for his boss’s death, he still might not die.
The controversy that had marred Coppi’s final years spilled over into his final hours. As he slipped in and out of a coma in the small hours of 2 January, the issue of his last confession was hotly debated. It might seem bizarre to argue over such a thing as a man lies dying, but it mattered, immensely, to both the priests and Giulia. For Coppi to receive final absolution, he had to repent all earthly sins, which included his relationship
with his lover. The matter had to be taken to the bishop, who took a while to respond via his secretary: after a long negotiation with Don Lorenzo, they decided that Coppi was to be asked one single question, and only a sign from him would be necessary for absolution to be given. Just before 2 a.m. Don Lorenzo asked him if he wished to confess and Coppi, he said, squeezed his hand. The priest made the sign of the cross over his forehead, hands and legs. It was sufficiently ambiguous for Giulia to remain convinced that her Fausto did not confess. She was adamant after his death: ‘Fausto did not answer.’
There was also Bruna, still Coppi’s legitimate wife. In a complex manoeuvre, to ensure she did not encounter Giulia, she was conducted to his bedside by Uncle Giuseppe and Milano at around 3.30 a.m. According to one version, her husband is said to have recognised her and covered his face in shame, but this seems fanciful; according to Negri he was unable to tell who she was. At 8.45, as day began to break, he stopped breathing; Giulia threw herself on to his body, screaming to the doctors to leave her alone with him.
* * *
As Rino Negri saw it, the entire crowd outside the hospital that morning had one thought: ‘He could have been saved.’ The questioning continues nearly fifty years on, and with good reason. Coppi’s life has acquired huge symbolic importance over the years, and his killer had huge importance in twentieth-century Italy as well. It is no coincidence that its name is Italian:
mal aria
, bad air, from the fetid swamps and pools where the mosquitoes bred. The diagnostic failure seems understandable now, but was shocking at the time; Italy was home to the world’s leading malaria experts. In the late nineteenth century the disease had affected the whole country, with almost 10 per cent of the population infected annually, and up to 100,000 deaths
a year. The dire effect on Italy’s economic performance prompted huge efforts to eradicate the disease; Italy became the centre of malaria science worldwide. By the end of the 1950s, malaria had been wiped out. Its elimination was symbolic of the country’s advance into modernity; brief re-emergences coincided with the social breakdown of the world wars, hence the unwillingness to believe that, undiagnosed, it had killed the greatest Italian sportsman. Surely something else was to blame?
Ettore Milano, for one, is clearly still seeking explanations for the death of the man with whom he shared a room. He talks of blood transfusions that should have been done, incorrect diagnoses, a temperature which confused doctors because it wasn’t high enough to indicate malaria, tests that were carried out for Geminiani, but not for Coppi. The searching underlines the fact that people are still trying to come to terms with this inexplicable, unlikely and avoidable tragedy.
Blood tests on Coppi’s samples were completed only after his death and meant the cause of death was not established until several days later. Clearly, the great mistake was that the doctors assumed he was suffering from severe influenza and never thought of malaria. Perhaps they were convinced it was a thing of the past, although the last major outbreak in Italy had taken place just four years before Coppi’s death. Tellingly, none of the experts consulted by
L’Equipe
in their reports of his death mentioned malaria, but they assumed Coppi and Geminiani had contracted something on a stopover on the way home.
Giulia Occhini twice told interviewers that she had suggested to the doctors it was malaria, but had been dismissed. This has to be taken with a pinch of salt, as the interviews were carried out a long time after the death (seven years and twenty years), and in her first interview, a week after the tragedy, she told Gianni Roghi of
L’Europeo
that she had suggested to Coppi it was malaria, only for him to reply that he had influenza.
As Roghi told it, malaria came as a shock to her. The most likely explanation is that once influenza was in the doctor’s minds, and in Giulia’s mind, it was not readily displaced.
Giulia also blamed the doctors for not responding to her worries. ‘I was constantly concerned, asked them to tell me something. Fieschi answered that they weren’t there for the fun of it.’ She was specific about the doctors’ alleged incompetence when interviewed by Jean-Paul Ollivier in 1978: her words, ‘They killed Fausto’, open his biography of the cyclist. She added: ‘The doctors and professors were not up to the job. They did not treat him as they should have. But you don’t need to be a great scientist to diagnose an unhealthy man who has just come back from Africa.’ However, this is at odds with her initial reaction: ‘When he was put to bed, Fausto insisted that he had influenza and he was treated for influenza until the Friday night when he was taken to hospital.’