The Story of the Giro d'Italia

by Carol McGann

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.

  Photo credits: cover, Fotoreporter Sirotti; all remaining photos are from the collection of and copyright Fotoreporter Sirotti, and are reprinted with his permission.

  Published by McGann Publishing

  P.O. Box 576

  Cherokee Village, AR 72525

  USA

  www.mcgannpublishing.com

  Excerpts from other McGann Publishing titles you might enjoy

  * * *

  Cycling's 50 Craziest Stories

  by Les Woodland

  Available from amazon.com in both print and Kindle versions

  Chapter 15: HOW TO WIN A CLASSIC

  It’s never too far to go to see a good bike race. You don’t often come home disappointed. But equally you don’t often come home with as much to talk about as the fans who paid to sit in the vélodrome to wait for the finish of Paris–Roubaix in 1949.

  There’s more to a day at Roubaix than just the finish of the mud-and-blood stars who’ve ridden from the capital. There is a program of minor races and constant news of the stars of the road who all that time are getting closer and closer. These days the crowd can see the same television pictures that you and I see at home, but in 1949 there was no live television coverage and so all afternoon the crowd strained to hear the telephoned bulletins read out over the loudspeakers. The fans knew what was happening on the road, that the leaders were entering the city, that they were approaching the track, that they were about to burst through the square tunnel that led to their last laps around the track. And they were on the edges of their seats with excitement.

  Would it be one man alone, or a group? Would they be all outsiders or would the stars be there? Would their favourite be there? The tension was unbearable. Imagine that crowd in 1949, therefore, staring at the way into the track only to be distracted by a growing commotion from people who were looking elsewhere. Nervously, because they didn’t want to miss anything, they turned their eyes from the track entrance and looked for what was causing the fuss. And then, to their disbelief, they saw the race leaders coming on to the track by a side entrance, looking around to see where the finish line might be, then racing off again.

  No race has ever finished in greater chaos. To this day the Paris–Roubaix of 1949 has two winners. The winners finished separately, they were separated by four other riders and they both reached the line by different routes. It took two international conferences to sort what to do about it.

  What the crowd knew was that three riders had reached the entrance to the track together. There had been no time to report, though, that an official had gestured them down a side-road intended only for officials’ cars and that the riders had gone that way instead. André Mahé, Jacques Moujica and Frans Leenen soon realised something had gone wrong and they looked for somewhere to go. But the road was narrow, it was filling with other traffic, and sorting out the error wasn’t simple.

  Moujica turned a tight circle, lost his balance, fell off and broke a pedal. Mahé and Leenen rode beneath the cliff-like concrete face of the outside of the track, looking for a way in, and in frustration opted for a small gate which, well, just happened to be there. And that was how they reached the banking, pushing through whatever and whomever they had to push through, then sprinting for the line.

  “C’est trop bête d’en parler [it’s just too stupid to talk about],” Mahé said as we sat around a low table beside the kitchen, where his wife was making us pancakes and coffee. “There was a break. [Serse] Coppi attacked. His brother Fausto gave him a push to get him away. He wanted his brother to win. I waited a bit and then I attacked and I caught him and the break. Then I went off by myself. I was going to win Paris–Roubaix. At the entrance to the vélodrome, there were crowds everywhere, blocking the way. I looked around for where to go and I was directed round the outside wall of the track, to where the team cars had to park. It wasn’t like nowadays, when there’s television and everything. Then it was more chaotic and the whole road was blocked.

  “People said I should have known the way into the track. But how do you know a thing like that at the end of Paris–Roubaix, when you’ve raced all day over roads like that? A gendarme signaled the way to go and that’s the way I went. Of course, the police never apologized afterwards.

  “It was a journalist on a motorbike who managed to get up to me. He was shouting ‘Not that way! Not that way!’ And I turned round in the road and I rode back beneath the outside wall of the grandstand and I saw a gateway that went into the track, a gateway for journalists. And that’s the way I went, except that it came out on the other side of the track from the proper entrance. The bunch came in and Serse won the sprint. But then his brother told Serse to go to the judges to object. He told Serse that I hadn’t ridden the entire and precise course and that therefore I should be déclassé. But that was below him.

  “Coppi wanted his brother to have a big victory. He was a great champion, Coppi, but to do what he did, to protest like that to get a victory for his brother, that wasn’t dignified for a champion. That was beneath him. A champion like that should never have stooped that low. I never spoke to him about it. Never did. Why should I?

  “It marked me, though, and I still feel marked by it. I was alone. I would have won alone. I had attacked alone and Serse couldn’t follow me. I had received my bouquet and I was even in the shower when I heard the news. For me, I had won Paris–Roubaix.”

  The judge, Henri Boudard, sent him on his lap of honour. What else could he do? But Serse wasn’t going to be persuaded he hadn’t won. He knew there were other riders ahead of him but he protested that he was the winner, that the others hadn’t completed the course and that he had. Novel though using another gate might be, it wasn’t part of the official route. He was sorry for them but they should be disqualified or demoted. No question about it.

  Boudard wavered and then sided with Coppi. It was perfectly true that Mahé and the others hadn’t followed the right course, and that’s the least a judge should ask of competitors. So he named Coppi the winner.

  “I only followed the rules,” Boudard protested as the world surrounded him with angry gestures (Frenchmen, Belgians) and grateful smiles (Italians). The organisers couldn’t miss the commotion and compromised. The judges could decide what they wanted but they would give Mahé and the others the prizes they would have won. Five days later the French federation followed suit and confirmed Mahé as winner. “It couldn’t be otherwise,” said Achille Joinard, the French cycling president.

  “It certainly can!” the Italians protested and they appealed to the UCI. Now, the race was in April. It took from then until August for the UCI to decide it had no option but to cancel the race and make neither man the winner. A non-race, a rejection of responsibility, wasn’t an answer, though. It was a decision to please nobody. The UCI, now as unhappy as Mahé, Coppi and the French and Italian federations, said it would make a proper and final decision in November. The French then poured insults on Joinard’s head. They called him a traitor for going back on the decision to award the race to a Frenchman and accused him of soft-pedalling Mahé’s cause because he didn’t want to spoil his chances of becoming UCI president. That gave the scandal fresh spin. It also made a decision impossible and in November the UCI said both riders had won. And that’s the way it remains until this day, officialdom unable to decide whether coming into the track one way rather than another was as good as following the official route.

  “Thank heavens there’s another Paris–Roubaix in four months,” said one official.

  * * *

  Bicycle History

  A Chronological Cycling History of People, Races, and Technology

  By James L. Witherell

  Available from amazon.com in both print and Kindle version
s

  1960

  Forty-year-old Fausto Coppi dies on the morning of January 2, 1960 from a misdiagnosed case of malaria or typhus. Coppi had been one of half a dozen cycling stars who’d traveled to French West Africa, where he finished second to Jacques Anquetil in a race at Ougadougou on December 12. The group returned home on December 18, and Coppi began feeling ill the day after Christmas. The only other member of the group to get sick was 35-year-old Raphaël Géminiani, all the other riders were in their 20s. When medication failed to help, Fausto Coppi was taken to the Hospital, where he died a few days later.

  Former French champion André Leducq had once described Coppi’s style on the bike: “His long legs extend to the pedals with the joints of a gazelle. At the end of each pedal stroke his ankles flex gracefully—all the moving parts turn in oil.” Thirteen years earlier, during his feud with Gino Bartali, Coppi had declared, “…I will try right up to my last stroke of the pedal to be the best.”1 More than 50,000 people attend the campionissimo’s funeral. Afterward, Italy’s La Gazetta dello Sport writes that “the great Heron has folded his wings.”

  Forty two years later, the Italian sports daily Corriere dello Sport would report that Brother Adrien, a 75 year-old monk in Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta) said that a man had confessed to poisoning Coppi as revenge for a racing accident which had claimed the life of a rider named “Canga” or “Kanga.” According to the 2002 report, the murderer gave Coppi a drink containing a slow-acting potion derived from a local grass, to which he succumbed following his return to Italy. Coppi’s physician and his son both “dismiss the report,” and Adam Diallo, secretary of the Burkina Faso Cycling Federation, would respond to the news with, “We don’t poison people.”2

  Jacques Anquetil (ACBB-Leroux-Helyett) wins the 43rd Giro d’Italia. He uses his prowess in the time trial to defeat Gastone Nencini by 28 seconds and become the first French winner of the event.

  Irishman Shay Elliot (ACBB-Leroux-Helyett) wins the Giro’s 10th stage.

  Belgium’s Frans De Mulder (Groene Leeuw-Sas-Sinalco) wins the 15th Vuelta a España.

  The French Cycling Federation has a special touring bike made for President Eisenhower.

  Belgium’s Rik Van Looy wins the 1960 world professional road championship in Hohenstein-Saschenring, East Germany. Runner-up André Darrigade of France finishes on the podium for a record fourth consecutive time (he had finished third in 1957 and 1958 and first in 1959).

  New York’s Central Park is closed to vehicular traffic for the first time since its construction in 1857 so 250 amateur cyclists can compete for six spots on the Olympic cycling team. Saturday’s tryouts for the two-man time trial have teams starting at three-minute intervals and riding ten circuits of a 6.2-mile loop around the park. The next day’s road race is 18 laps (112 miles), with the top four finishers making the road team. The 1964 Olympic trials would also be held in Central Park.

  Harlem’s Herb Francis is the United States’ first African-American Olympic cyclist.

  After sprinting for the “win” one lap early, the Soviet Union’s Viktor Kapitanov comes back on the next lap to win the 175-kilometer (108.5-mile) men’s road race at the XVIIth Olympiad in Rome. It is the first year that the medals are hung around the contestant’s necks. Knud Enemark Jensen, a rider on the Danish 100-kilometer team time trial squad, collapses in the heat and suffers a skull fracture. He later dies and an autopsy reveals traces of the blood circulation stimulant Ronicol in his system. “The doping of bike racers in Europe has been going on for years. It probably will continue. The only thing surprising about the case of the Danish Olympian, Kund Enemark Jensen, is that his coach, Oluf Jorsen, admitted dosing four Danish riders with a drug called roniacol [sic] before Friday’s 100-kilometer race. Jensen died. Two other Danes [Jorgen C. Jorgensen and Vagn Bangsborg] collapsed. Usually in cases like this, all involved swear that no drugs were used. Illness or even the death of racers is then ascribed to ‘food poisoning,’” French coach Robert Oubron said. “I’m not surprised to hear that Jensen had been drugged. A healthy young athlete does not die from sunstroke. Many pros are drugged, of course, but we don’t drug amateurs.”3

  Los Gatos, Calif.’s Mike Hiltner (Pedali Alpini) finishes 20th in a road race in Florence, Italy. “Hiltner won a hefty gold medal and made headlines in the local newspaper for being the first non-Italian finisher in an international race of more than 100 miles.”4 Hiltner would change his name to Victor Vincente of America in 1975.

  Hiltner also wins the Kugler-Anderson Memorial Tour of Somerville.

  France’s Jean Graczyk (ACBB-Leroux-Helyett) wins the Super Prestige Pernod Trophy. It’s the third and final year that the series consists of only French races.

  French cyclist Gérard Saint (Rapha-Gitane-Dunlop) is killed in an automobile accident on March 16. In the previous Tour de France, Saint had won the event’s newly-created combativity award and finished on the podium five times (stages 11, 14, 18, 19 and 21). He also finished second in the points competition and was third in the climbing competition. Gérard Saint was 24.

  The 1960 edition of Paris–Roubaix marks the first time that French television receives pictures directly from a camera in a helicopter. The race is won by the nearly 38-year-old Pino Cerami (Peugeot-BP), who’d become a Belgian citizen in 1956.

  Future Tour de France winner Pedro Delgado is born on April 15.

  Future Tour winner Laurent Fignon is born on August 12.

  Raymond Poulidor turns pro with Mercier-BP-Hutchinson. His career will largely coincide with those of Jacques Anquetil and Eddy Merckx.

  East Germany amateur Erich Hagen wins the Peace Race.

  When price cuts fail to stimulate sales of bicycles in the Soviet Union, production is cut 21 percent compared to the previous year’s levels.

  T.I. Raleigh is formed when Raleigh merges with British Cycle Corporation which is owned by Tube Investments.

  English Amateur Bill Bradley wins the Milk Race for the second straight year.

  British engineer Benjamin Bowden has about 600 of his futuristic Spacelander fiberglass bicycles produced by Bomard Industries of Kansas City, Mo. The Spacelander, which Bowden had designed in 1956, retails for $89.50.

  In the Tour de France:

  Italy’s Gastone Nencini is the third rider to win the Tour de France without winning a stage.

  The size of the major national teams is increased from 12 riders to 14.

  Following the ninth stage, the Tour de France makes its first train transfer, taking the race from Bordeaux to Mont-de-Marsan.

  Germany sends a full team to the Tour for the first time since 1938.

  Goran Karlsson is the first Swedish rider to compete in the Tour. He abandons during the eighth stage.

  Hour record holder Roger Rivière is seriously injured in a crash on the descent of Mt. Aigoual’s Perjuret pass in the Parc des Cévennes.

  French television uses a helicopter to cover parts of the race, and has cameraman François Magnen shooting the action from the back of a motorcycle during the 16th stage’s descent of the Col d’Izoard.

  Radio-Television Français begins paying a small fee to broadcast more than nine hours of the Tour, four of them live.

  Alphonse Steinès dies. It was Steinès who was behind the introduction of the Tour’s first major climbs, including those of the Col d’Aubisque and the Col du Tourmalet, over which he slogged through waist-deep snow in 1910 and reported them passable. Alphonse Steinès was 87.

  The yellow jersey loses its shirt collar (but will retain its two front pockets until 1970).

  * * *

  The Story of the Tour de France

  How a Newspaper promotion Became the Greatest Sporting Event in the World

  By Bill & Carol McGann

  Available from amazon.com in both print and Kindle versions

  1960. Jacques Anquetil won the Giro in May, beating Gastone Nencini by only 28 seconds. Anquetil not surprisingly took the lead in the Giro for good in the st
age 14 68-kilometer time trial. Charly Gaul had tried to find his usual rabbit in the hat when he won the penultimate stage that took the race over the Gavia pass. But for the master climber of his age, it was too little too late. He finished the Giro in third place, almost 4 minutes behind Master Jacques. Neither Gaul nor Anquetil chose to ride the Tour that year. It's thought that Anquetil didn't want a repeat of 1959 with the loyalties of the team split between Roger Rivière and himself. The rivalry between the 2 had ended in disgrace for Rivière and Anquetil when they let Bahamontes win the Tour.

  That left Roger Rivière the leader of the French team. Still, although Rivière had notable accomplishments on the track and he had won prestigious time trials, he had yet to notch a major stage race win. With riders like André Darrigade, Jean Dotto, Jean Graczyk and Henry Anglade on their team, if the French didn't win the Tour in 1960 it wasn't because their team lacked power. It would be because some other failing of theirs let another rider win.

  The major challenge to the French would have to come from the Italians. Nencini was now at the apogee of his career. Nino Defilippis, Ercole Baldini, and Arnaldo Pambianco were great riders in their own right and as part of a team they were doubly formidable.

  The British again had a team in the Tour. Most notably, this was the first Tour start for Tom Simpson (the year before, Simpson had moved from England, where road racing was almost unknown, to France). The move worked well for the ambitious Englishman. He won 7 minor races and came in fourth in the World Road

  Championships held in Zandvoort, Holland that year. Simpson was a man on the way up.

  The Belgians had no shortage of horsepower. Jan Adriaenssens was third in 1956, wearing the Yellow Jersey for 3 days that year. In 1959 he had slipped to seventh, but was only 10 minutes behind the winner, Bahamontes.