The Giro of Resurrection
- Cameron Hardy
- Oct 2, 2020
- 6 min read
The Giro d’Italia is arguably the most beautiful bike race in the world. This year, rolling out in October (I know), unfortunately some of its quintessential style may be unceremoniously scrubbed off. The lack of crowds, the masks and the Covid19 checks, however necessary, do remove a layer of mystique from the race. They all show a fragility to the riders, an aspect we do not normally see in the macho displays of professional cycling.
I have no doubts though, this year’s race will go ahead, for that is what the Giro does. It is ever-present. It has never been ‘just’ a bike race. Socially and politically, it is intertwined with its home country, forming a bond between fans and race unlike any other. The last time a Giro’s mere presence was required to uplift a populous as much as this year’s, was in 1946. And boy, what a race it was that year.
We pick the story up in what was an optimistic, but extremely volatile Italy. The country was in a crippling post-war depression, on its metaphorical hands and knees. Mussolini was dead. The Allies had just won the war, meaning the fascist regime was no longer dictating and on the 2nd of June, the first national election for 22 years had been held. The country, however, was still divided down the middle, both geographically and politically. On the 13th of June, Italy became a republic, by the slightest of margins. The monarchy was disbanded. Two days later the 29th Giro started.
The race organisers, La Gazzetta dello Sport, prayed for a race that would bond all the regions of Italy. One which would have Lombards racing Neapolitans, and Venetians competing with Torinesi. Giving a little national pride back to a country that was in dire need. In this vein, they planned two politically motivated new race concepts. First, the 1946 Giro was only open to Italian entrants. Not a bad idea seeing as Italy was still technically at war with most of the other European cycling powerhouses until the following February. And secondly, their slightly more brash idea was to take the race to some of the new northern Italian extremities; areas in which borders were still in a post-war blurry limbo.
The first 4 stages after leaving Milan were the type of stages fit for breakaways, and true to form small breaks won each of them. The pre-race favourites, the infamous rivals Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali, were still keeping their heads down about 3 minutes back. These first few days, as inconsequential to the final out-come as everyone knew they would be, gave an indication as to what Italy was like as a country, and to just how hard this next month would be.
The crowds that lined the roadside that year had an oxymoron of a face. Each person had the outward expressions of joy and excitement at seeing their sporting heroes after such a long hiatus. But the deep-rooted anger and despair at the situation in which they found themselves was also plain to see. Both genders were dressed in ex-army uniforms; ill-fitting and scratchy. Barely any of them wore shirts, as was the shortage at the time. So, the women covered their modesty in more uncomfortably hot khaki and the men went bare-chested in the June air. The race continued to scream past dozens of war cemeteries, each marked by a small plaque denoting the fallen men’s home country. Men in graves which had only been dug months before.
The broken roads the riders suffered down, gave off great dust clouds that are now synonymous with a dry Strade Bianchi or Paris-Roubaix course. This time though, there was to be no rest bite. The cloud continued to whip up endlessly, following the riders on through the towns and choking the local onlookers. Many towns had been completely abandoned, still lying empty after the war. Others, such as Ancona, which was the finish town of stage 5, had yet to have running water reinstalled. Nearly every bridge was a temporary one, occasionally these were shared by trains, and some forced the riders to shoulder their bikes and clamber up steps to cross. Far from ideal racing conditions, but both the riders and organisers knew the significance of this Giro. It was more than just a race; it was a unifying operation. If the riders could circumnavigate the country on these broken roads and still race at the end, then the country was proving to itself that it had formed ‘in the shortest of time spans, the minimum conditions needed to ensure that the nation could live together.’
Coppi’s Giro started on a mixed note, his first notable entry into the race was a fall in which he broke a rib. Somehow on that same 5th stage, he managed not only to dust himself off and not lose any time but also to painfully outsprint his biggest rival and local boy, Bartali, to take the stage win into Bologna.
It was a few days later though, that an ungentlemanly controversy lost him a great wad of time. Fausto’s rear brake was rubbing on the lower slopes of the Macerone. Feeling unthreatened, with 100km of the stage left to ride, he stopped to fix it. The eagle-eyed Gino saw this from across the pack. Then, sensing it as a potential race defining moment, he ripped up any of cycling’s unwritten rules and kicked on, taking some of the best climbers over the top alongside him. By the stage finish, Bartali et al. crossed the line in Naples four minutes ahead of a betrayed feeling and frantically chasing Coppi. The bitter rivalry between the pair of them had just reignited – the race to Milan was on.
Stage 12 was always going to be contentious. The finish town of Trieste was claimed by both Yugoslavia and Italy, yet at the time it was under United Nations control. Before the race, there were fears of en route protesters and political activists causing potential havoc, in displaying their beliefs about which country they belonged to and who should be leading that country. The desire to show all of Italy’s beauty prevailed however, and the race directors were not ones to back down. Trieste kept its stage finish. Common sense would have to be replaced by blind faith. It was Italy after all.
Sure enough, as the road neared the stage finish, a band of Yugoslav Communists, obviously unpleased with the Italian show of dominance, were blocking the road. This, however, was unlike the vanilla affairs that occasionally occur en Le Tour. Fewer hay-bales and mildly drunk farmers, more barbed wire and boiling tar. Soon, rocks started hailing down and then it quickly escalated. Gunfire started to echo down the roads and most of the riders, recognising the sound, prioritised their lives, jumping into cars and abandoning the race. Coppi and Bartali included, no race, not even the prestigious Giro, was worth this level of risk.
A few of the foolhardier participants, mainly members of the local Willier-Triestina team, tried to continue. Hiding in an American army wagon, they managed to smuggle themselves through the protesters and closer to the line, where a reduced sprint then occurred. The homeboy, Giordano Cottur, eventually won the stage (I’m not suggesting anything). Riots continued for several days in Trieste, while the whole reinstated bunch blundered on Milan bound. All belatedly given the same 6-hour stage winners time.
As the Giro drew on, Coppi began to find his climbing legs. On stage 14, in the Dolomites, he attacked; leaving the Catholic Tuscan, Gino, in his wake. With Bartali haemorrhaging time, Fausto was now in the virtual Maglia Rosa. Some 5 minutes up the road and looking set to win his second home tour. Just as the Tuscan’s dreams looked to be ebbing away, Bartali’s super-domestique Aldo Bini appeared from nowhere. Somehow, he had managed to close the large gap back to his leader. Following this herculean effort, Bini then helped a rejuvenated Bartali reel in the younger man to just 72 seconds on the line.
An unbelievable effort, potentially literally. Gino’s team Director Sportif was a shady fellow, and it might not be reasonable to believe that Bini suddenly started to climb sizably faster than the greatest Italian cyclist ever to ride a bike. I’ll leave that with you.
Growing desperate, Coppi went on to take more time out of the Tuscan the next day. But it would prove futile, not surmounting to more time than Gino took on that fateful day when Coppi’s bike betrayed him. As the pair finally rolled into Milan on the 7th of July, Gino had the minuscule winning margin of just 47 seconds. But there was always a more important aspect of this race. A requirement which had been duly fulfilled. The country was still divided, this time though it was over a less contentious issue. Not North vs South, nor Left vs Right, but Coppi vs Bartali.
Let us keep everything crossed, this year’s Giro will have us all equally enthralled and we too shall forget the trials and tribulations thrown at us all throughout this year.
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