Fausto Coppi

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Fausto Coppi (September 15, 1919 in Castellania, province of Alessandria - January 2, 1960, Tortona) was an Italian racing cyclist. Nicknamed Il Campionissimo ("champions of the champions"), he was one of the most successful and most popular cyclists of all time. He twice won the Tour de France (1949 and 1952), and five times the Giro d'Italia (1940, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953).

1 Professional success
2 Tragedy
3 Legacy
- 3.1 The Coppi-Merckx debate
4 External links

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Professional success

Fausto Coppi celebrated his first large success in 1940, winning the Giro d'Italia at the age of 20. In 1942 he set a new world hour record (45.871km) which held for fourteen years (broken by Jacques Anquetil in 1956). His promising career was then interrupted by the Second World War. In 1946 he resumed bicycle racing and in the following years achieved a series of remarkable successes which would be exceeded only by Eddy Merckx.

Twice, 1949 and 1952, Coppi achieved a "double" - winning the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in the same year. The "Campionissimo" totalled five victories in the Giro; together with Alfredo Binda and Eddy Merckx he holds the record. His record also includes nine Classic victories: he won the Tour of Lombardy five times and took first place three times in Milan-San Remo and once in Paris-Roubaix. In addition he was the 1953 World Road Champion.

Fausto Coppi's racing days are generally referred to as the beginning of the Golden Years of the Cycle Racing. An important factor for this is the competition Coppi had with the five years older Gino Bartali (who helped win Coppi an appointment as a domestique in his team at the end of the 1939 season, and supported Coppi's 1940 Giro victory after an early crash had robbed Bartali of any chance of overall victory). When Bartali and Coppi, probably the greatest Italian cyclists of all time, met one another it was the most famous rivalry of cycle racing history and the enormous Italian fan base (tifosi) divided into camps of the "bar valleyists" and the "Coppists".

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Tragedy

In addition, Coppi's career was shaped by strokes of fate: in 1951 his teammate and younger brother, Serse Coppi, fell in a sprint in the Giro del Piemonte. After returning to his hotel, Serse suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died (a curious parallel with Bartali, who also lost a brother, Giulio, in a 1936 racing accident). Fausto suffered countless bone fractures in the process of his career. In 1953 it became public that Coppi had left his wife, to live with Giulia Occhini, la Dama Bianca ("the lady in white"). In the Italy of the 1950s this was quite a scandal. Their love story was portrayed in the 1993 film "Il Grande Fausto". Coppi and his companion were condemned legally and morally. Coppi continued his career, but he could never match his old successes.

At the end of 1959, while on a cycling and game hunting trip in the African Upper Volta (now known as Burkina Faso), Coppi caught malaria. When the illness broke out, after his return to Italy, it was not recognized in time for effective treatment. Coppi died at the age of 40 years.

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Legacy

Although the success list of Eddy Merckx is without a doubt longer than Coppi's, many experts call Fausto Coppi the greatest cyclist of all times. To this day, the Giro remembers Coppi as it goes through the mountain stages. A special mountain bonus, called the Cima Coppi, is awarded to the first rider who reaches the Giro's highest summit. In 1999, Fausto Coppi placed second in balloting for greatest Italian athlete of the 20th century.

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The Coppi-Merckx debate

Despite the impressive wins of Eddy Merckx, some (mostly in Italy) believe that the best cyclist of all-times is Fausto Coppi. How can this be possible if the Belgian has won a far bigger number of races? This conviction is founded on three points:

Logistics: Fausto Coppi raced in a period when traveling (particularly across international borders) was far more difficult than twenty years later. Like Gino Bartali, Coppi lost five years of his career due to World War II.
Longevity: while Eddy Merckx won his first Giro d’Italia when he was 23 (in 1968), and arrived second in a major stage race when he was 30 (1975 Tour de France, behind Bernard Thévenet), Coppi won his first Giro (his first professional race) when he was 20 (1940 Giro d'Italia) and lost a Giro d’Italia by only 11” when he was 35 (1955 Giro d'Italia, behind Fiorenzo Magni).
The quality of competition: Eddy Merckx created his devastating victories beating true great racers—apart from his Italian archrival Felice Gimondi, the Belgians Roger De Vlaeminck (great one-day racer), Herman Van Springel, Lucien Van Impe, French Bernard Thevenet, Dutch Joop Zoetelmek, and Spanish Luis Ocaña and José Manuel Fuente. The greatest stretch in the cyclism of the last 60 years: Anquetil, Hinault, Indurain and Armstrong all defeated foes undeniably inferior. But Fausto Coppi won all that he won in the greatest stretch of all-time. First, in a century of cyclism, only in 1940 there raced simultaneously two champions like Coppi and Bartali—in Italy it was impossible to not choose between the two men. At that time there were other cyclists who would have dominated other periods: the Italian Third Man Fiorenzo Magni, all-time Swiss Greats Ferdy Kubler and Hugo Koblett, Belgians Rick Van Steenbergen and Sten Ockers, French Jean Robic and Louison Bobet.

All that does not mean that Eddy Merckx is inferior with respect to Fausto Coppi, but rebalances the situation. An Italian Cyclism historian, Gian Paolo Ormezzano says that the Italian has been the Greatest of all times, while the Belgian has been the strongest.

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