With Uncle Fausto the sea captain acting as intermediary, Coppi and Bruna formally separated on 23 September. In two agreements dated 1 and 5 August, he had already settled a sum of 50 million lire on her, more than six times his Bianchi retainer for that season, but not outrageous given that he was earning 500,000 lire for appearing at a single track meeting. Relief at resolving that major issue and the knowledge that Giulia was expecting his child may well have spurred him to his last, brief, spell of domination in Italian races.
His victory in the Coppa Bernocchi one-day race on 17 October lifted him to second overall in the rankings that decided the national championship. Two weeks later came his fifth and final victory in the Giro di Lombardia; he escaped in familiar style over the climb from Lake Como to the chapel of the Madonna del Ghisallo, but was reeled in by nine chasers. At the finish on the Vigorelli he had sufficient race craft to outwit them in the sprint. Four days after that he partnered his young team-mate Riccardo Filippi to take the Baracchi Trophy team time trial, from Bergamo to Milan.
They took two notable scalps. The team that finished second was prodigious: Coppi’s old friend and former team-mate Louison Bobet had just won his third Tour de France in a row; he lined up with the country’s youthful prodigy Jacques Anquetil, who would go on to win the Tour de France five times. Paying tribute to the Italians’ influence on him, Anquetil made a point of visiting Coppi’s old master Biagio Cavanna at his ‘college’ in Novi. The French duo were powerless as Coppi and Filippi smashed the event record. In contrast, the seemingly ageless Gino Bartali had reached his limits: he won nothing in 1954 and, while Coppi enjoyed a brief, competitive Indian summer, il pio was preparing for his final race, on 28 November. His retirement was official as of February 1955.
In an open letter to the magazine Epoca on 14 November 1954 – the cover feature – Coppi said he hoped his wins in the Giro di Lombardia and Baracchi Trophy had restored people’s faith, but added bitterly, ‘The way the fans have whistled has hurt me most of all, because I have betrayed no one. In the darker moments of my career people thought that I did not give a damn about the crowds and was just going to races to be there, devaluing the passion and the enthusiasm that brings thousands of people to the roadsides and hilltops. Now, however, I have found myself again, and the tightly packed crowds who cheer me on. I am happy and moved by it. I will never forget the corridor of people who spurred me on in the Baracchi.’
* * *
On 13 March 1955, the crowds of fans turned out in Alessandria for a different kind of trial: that of Fausto and Giulia. The fat police dossier was not used, in the end, to pursue Dr Enrico Locatelli’s charge of adultery. Having initiated proceedings against his wayward wife, he withdrew his suit in February as part of a complex deal that included a formal separation from Giulia, who henceforth reverted to her maiden name of Occhini. Giulia was made to sign two documents: in the first she renounced access to her children because her adultery put her ‘in a position of serious moral embarrassment’ and stated that their meeting at that time would ‘not be advisable for their peace of mind, which I do not wish to undermine’. The second was a letter admitting her misdeeds, which was to be read to her children on their eighteenth birthdays.
Having used the threat of the law to gain satisfaction, Dr Locatelli left the judges to it and asked not to appear in court. With the adultery plea dropped, Fausto and Giulia went on trial for abandoning their respective families and failing in their duties as parents. As with Giulia’s imprisonment, the charges were nebulous – this particular law was usually used to pursue absent fathers who did not support their children. (It was clear that Coppi had given 50 million lire to Bruna, while Giulia had no means of providing financial support to her children.) The couple’s maid, Tilde Sartini, joined Fausto and Giulia in court, on a charge of abetting them in their adultery, even though that offence was no longer the object of a legal plea. She was there simply because she took longer than might have been expected to open the door to the carabinieri.
Coppi continually made the case that the police investigation stemmed mainly from a prurient interest in him as a celebrity, rather than from any ‘crime’ on his part. ‘How many Italians sleep with other men’s women? I’m convinced that the trial is only happening because I’m involved and people want to be part of the story. What seemed a huge thing at one time no longer is, at least for many people. I repent nothing. If I was not called Coppi I would not be being tried.’
The immense detail of the dossier suggests he had a fair point. The list of interviewees included Giuseppe Coppi, Cavanna, the campionissimo’s team-mates at Bianchi, Binda, the policemen who raided the house, the nightwatchman at the villa, Giulia’s daughter Lolli – all were asked for their views on the relationship between Fausto and Giulia. Hotel staff were found to testify that Coppi and the White Lady had spent the night in the same room.
Not surprisingly, the case received huge publicity despite its flimsy foundations. The investigating magistrate received hundreds of letters from fans. One, from a group in Sardinia, railed bitterly against Coppi because he had performed poorly in a race on the island and – obviously – it was all because of his affair. In the papers, opinion was divided.
Coppi was heard first because he was racing in Milan–Turin the next day. He appeared in court wearing a grey suit and a Loden coat (bizarrely, there was a rumour that he kept a picture of Pius XII with him throughout), wiping the sweat off his hands with a handkerchief as he stood there. He was asked if he was aware he had deserted his family, and attested gloomily that the facts spoke for themselves. He explained it had ‘become impossible to live any longer with my wife. She kept on bombarding me with questions about whether there was another woman in my life. In the end I confessed I was having a relationship with Signora Locatelli and the situation became unbearable.’
The whole bitter picture of the breakdown is there in the court transcripts. The most intimate details of Coppi’s private life were raked over in public. He was questioned about whether he had helped furnish his and Bruna’s house – he answered no because the demands of a cyclist’s career meant he was rarely there – and then was asked why in that case he had furnished the house he was now sharing with the White Lady. He admitted that Bruna would barely ever let him back to his old house to see Marina – ‘twice, after massive arguments’. When Coppi was asked why he posted his wedding ring back to Bruna in an envelope which seemed to have been addressed by his mistress, he answered that it was retaliation: he had asked Bruna to send him his clothes and she sent them dirtied.
Giulia did not appear in court, on the grounds that her pregnancy meant she was not in a fit state of health. Instead, the court was read a letter from her and the transcripts of her police interviews. She had clearly – and understandably – stalled over any public admission of their relationship. ‘There has never been anything between us. I do however hope to become [Coppi’s] wife. Currently I am his secretary and am paid 30,000 lire a month.’ The questioning was prurient, going into Coppi’s gift of a bracelet and a car, which she claims he sold her, ‘but that doesn’t mean I am his lover’.
There were moments of bleak humour. Tilde Sartini was asked about Fausto and Giulia’s life together in the villa in Novi. Giulia, she said, lived in a guest room; when the carabinieri came to search the house Sartini would warn Coppi, and the room would not be searched because it was locked. This reflects the popular Italian myth of brainless policemen: had it not occurred to them that the person they are looking for might be in the locked room? There was also the farcical question of the pillows: when the carabinieri raided the house, they found no pillows in Coppi’s room and two in Giulia’s. Sartini stated that it took an hour to bring her master to the door because he was sleeping so soundly. ‘Without pillows?’ asked the court president, knowingly. In Biagio Cavanna’s testimony he told the police that he knew about the relationship. Signora Locatelli went to the races and was there when he gave Coppi massage afterwards
, but there was nothing surprising in that: lots of women liked to be there during the evening ritual. ‘What funny tastes these women have!’ commented the president.
Coppi had specifically asked that his daughter Marina, aged seven, should not be made to appear, but both she and Occhini’s daughter Lolli, nine, were publicly questioned. There was no particular reason for them to have been so as their testimony added relatively little to an already thin case. The two little girls spent the hours of waiting before their brief appearances playing together – they had already met before the trial. They breathed on the windows of the waiting room and in the steam they wrote words that they had learned at school.
The prosecution insisted that the girls’ testimony was a key part in establishing the severity of the ‘crime’ of their parents in abandoning their respective marriages, but that is hardly borne out by the transcripts. Lolli appeared in a blue coat with blue ribbons in her hair: she was asked briefly about when she had last seen her mother, and about her mother’s trips to Milan. Marina was asked why her father didn’t sign her school report: ‘He is not at home any more.’ ‘Are you unhappy that he is not there any more?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Have you been to see his new house?’ ‘Twice, and there were nice toys, even a bike.’ ‘Did you like the room he has made ready for you? Do you want to live in that house?’ ‘No, I want to stay with Mummy.’
It was a pitiless moment in a pitiless process, in which Bruna was made to describe publicly her husband’s desertion. That included an occasion after the separation at the time when Coppi had injured his head when she found him and Giulia together: she dared not be left alone with him for fear that she would be accused of damaging his health by making a scene. Coppi’s uncle Giuseppe spoke of his fears that Bruna might commit suicide. She confessed, ‘When we spoke about this relationship, I said to him, “Keep this woman as well, but don’t leave us.”’
Giulia Occhini’s character was publicly demolished. The doctor, appearing against his will, maintained that she was mentally unstable, capable of threatening suicide and of making the wildest requests (he even claimed that she had asked him to kill Coppi for her). She was, he said, ‘an un-restrained megalomaniac, unable to control herself’. Another witness, one of her maids, described her as a mother who had no interest in her children but would continually go out to enjoy herself.
In his summing up, the prosecuting judge was particularly vicious about Giulia, setting the tone for the way she has been seen in the subsequent half-century. ‘The behaviour of this woman has been contemptible, before and after she left her home. When she was under movement restrictions in Ancona, she asked for permission to go to Varese to see her daughter; instead she went shooting with Coppi.’ She had, he added, consigned her children to the maid when she left home. He was blunt: Giulia Occhini was a gold-digger. ‘The lovely Giulia was lying in wait for Fausto Coppi, because he is not only a superstar on his bike but has a big bank account. The lady says herself that she liked the fine restaurants and luxury hotels that her husband would not pay for.’
Coppi was publicly pilloried, his character belittled in humiliating style. Playing to the gallery, the prosecuting judge described the cyclist as Giulia Locatelli’s ‘slave’, ‘a poor little man who managed to win so many races but collapsed miserably the first time he had to fight against his own desires’. Coppi was a social climber, a man out to conquer the world but who ‘was conquered himself’. Coppi and Giulia had abandoned their families ‘when the adulterous act had been consummated, causing immeasurable damage to those who they left behind them’.
He accused Coppi of being an emotional illiterate, of deluding himself that he could buy his way out of the situation. ‘He should be under no illusions: money can buy him all the White Ladies he wants but it can’t buy him the affection of his family. His wife married him when he was still unknown, kept faith with him in moments of near poverty. The “White Lady” on the other hand came to sit next to him when he was on a golden throne, to enjoy the fruits of his success. It would be interesting to know how much he spends on la Occhini and how much on his family.’
Although Giulia had obfuscated over the relationship, Coppi’s defence was one of emotional honesty: rather than maintain the deception, the lawyers said, both Coppi and Giulia had followed their hearts. ‘What was Coppi supposed to do,’ asked his lawyer, ‘keep both women, lie to his wife and his lover?’ Coppi, said his lawyer, was a committed, fond parent who could not be heavily involved in running the home due to the demands of his profession. As a result, his wife and child did not suffer greatly from his departure. He was asked only to ‘pedal, win and earn money. He pedalled, won, and earned. How can he have failed to give moral guidance to the household?’ It was also claimed that Coppi had no choice but to live with the White Lady once her husband had thrown her out: ‘he welcomed her, protected her, motivated by a sentiment of knightly loyalty’. But Coppi as Parfit Gentil Knight was an embellishment of reality. ‘His defence was muddled; it did not convince anyone,’ was the view of Rino Negri, one of Coppi’s stoutest defenders at other times.
The couple were not helped by a nasty moment on the second day, when the prosecution revealed that Coppi and Giulia had shared a hotel room (room 12, the hotel is not named) in Milan over the weekend between hearings and before Milan–Turin. ‘They might at least have waited,’ said the prosecuting magistrate, acidly. Coppi’s lawyer termed it ‘persecution’, which seems reasonable enough. On the grounds that the couple had flouted the law even while their trial was in progress, the prosecutor called for three months in prison for Giulia, two for Coppi. This reflected a general feeling – widely held to this day – that guilt lay more with the White Lady than with Coppi, as the cyclist had ‘been chosen, led on by the White Lady, who was much more cunning and astute’. ‘There was no serious reason for either Coppi or Occhini to leave their homes. The decision of both parties was illicit and unjust.’ The outcome was a compromise: sentences upheld but prison suspended. Coppi did not comment, but later made it known that the only consolation he could find was in the fact that no one ever saw him and Giulia together in the dock.
Coppi was not a man who was given to expressing his feelings in public. That lends an extra strength to the diatribe about the hypocrisy of Italy and the Italians that he produced for Rino Negri in his book Parla Coppi. ‘In Italy, appearances are what count. In Italy, you have to know how to lie. In Italy, you have to be able to keep your mouth shut even if you don’t like something. In Italy, there is envy of anyone who has come from nothing to make something of himself even if he has made huge sacrifices. In Italy they don’t hesitate to throw you in the mud if you make a mistake that any man could make. When I needed understanding, I found doors closed in my face.’
CHAPTER 14
* * *
DECLINE AND FALLS
‘For guys like you and me, life means riding a bike’ – Gino Bartali to Fausto Coppi, 1950
In early April, Coppi responded to the trial verdict with one of his last great solo victories, in the Giro della Campania, with Magni more than five minutes behind. He was now allowed to travel abroad again, which meant he could ride Paris–Roubaix, where he managed second place to Bobet. Giulia’s passport was returned to her on 22 March; her destination was another continent. She flew to Argentina with the wife of Pinella di Grande, Coppi’s faithful mechanic at Bianchi, to give moral support as she prepared for the birth of her child. In Argentina at least, the baby could be registered as the legal son of unmarried parents. That meant that he would be viewed as her and Fausto’s child; however, it did not mean that Dr Locatelli would necessarily renounce his claim to paternity, as the child’s conception clearly pre-dated the legal separation. In theory Locatelli could be the father.
Giulia booked her return journey on the steamer Giulio Cesare, one of the finest transatlantic liners of the era, and had the birth induced so that she could board on time. Faustino was born on 13 May 1955, while Coppi was riding the Giro d’Ita
lia, and Giulia sent Coppi a telegram with the words, ‘Daddy, I’m waiting for my first pink jersey. Fausto.’ A few days later a photograph came through the post: Coppi showed it first to Gino Bartali, recently retired and following the Giro as a summariser for Italian television. For a few kilometres, as the peloton rode along, Coppi waved the picture at all and sundry, saying, ‘Look, it’s Faustino, the son of Fausto.’ This personal triumph probably made up for the fact that, when the race visited Rome, Pius XII made an unprecedented move. As if to remind the world that Coppi was persona non grata, the Pontiff refused to bless the peloton as before, because it included a ‘public sinner’.
Even though he was in his thirty-sixth year Coppi could still have won that Giro. Instead, the race went to Fiorenzo Magni, who made an epic attack on the penultimate day between Trento and San Pellegrino. The young climber Gastone Nencini had not managed to take an insurmountable lead in the Dolomites, although he emerged in the pink jersey. Early in the San Pellegrino stage, however, the race went along a stretch of strada bianca, one of the particularly rough, unsurfaced roads frequently encountered by cyclists. The weather was poor and the result was a spate of punctures: ninety-six in total in the four miles. Magni told me that he knew about the strada bianca, because such dangers were marked in the race guide. He had put on heavier tyres, as had Coppi. When Nencini, inevitably, punctured, the two older men surged ahead, and a dramatic four-hour pursuit ensued, at the end of which Coppi won the stage and Magni took the Giro, a mere thirteen seconds ahead of his old rival.
Fallen Angel Page 22