Re-Cycle: When Fausto Coppi’s controversial affair led to heartbreak at the Giro di Lombardia
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Updated 09/09/2021 at 14:10 GMT
Felix Lowe recalls the 1956 edition of Il Lombardia, when Fiorenzo Magni – incensed by the goading of the so-called Woman in White – denied Fausto Coppi a sensational sixth win in the autumn Classic as the leaves were falling on the poster boy of Italian cycling’s career.
Italy. andre darrigade wins the 50th giro di lombardia on fausto coppi and fiorenzo magni. 1956
Image credit: Getty Images
It's fair to say that 1956 had been a disaster for Il Campionissimo.
Illness had derailed Fausto Coppi's start to the season and cost him his place at Bianchi. After hastily forming the new Carpano team, Coppi then crashed out of the Giro d'Italia and was sidelined for two months; and when it came to the World Championships in Copenhagen, the 1953 champion could muster only 15th place.
Just the single victory – at the GP Lugano in Switzerland – represented the ageing Italian's worst return since 1939, the year before his maiden Maglia Rosa win.
But the 37-year-old was finally finding his feet by the time his favourite race came along in the autumn. The Giro di Lombardia was indelibly associated with Coppi: a race he had won in 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949 and 1954. On three occasions, Coppi had done the Milan-San Remo-Lombardia double, and he was the first to add the Giro in the same season to do the Italian tripletta – a feat only ever matched by Eddy Merckx.
If Coppi won Lombardia a record five times, he also suffered one famous, painful defeat. After breaking clear on the Madonna di Ghisallo climb with youngster Diego Ronchini, Coppi looked set to cap his extraordinary career with a sixth Lombardia victory.
But he was chased down with a vengeance by his big rival Fiorenzo Magni who, spurred on by a mythical slight by Coppi's mistress – the alluringly named White Lady – turned the race on its head. In doing so, he set the wheels in motion for a narrow victory for a French outsider to cap one of the darkest days in Coppi's career.
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Fausto Coppi is one of the greatest cyclists in history
Image credit: Getty Images
Setting the scene
Four principal pedalling protagonists populate this tale: on the one side, the Italian veterans Coppi and Magni, in the twilight of their careers. At the other end of the spectrum, with the sun rising upon their backs, Bianchi teammates Ronchini and André Darrigade, both still making names for themselves and a decade younger than their more mature counterparts.
Darrigade was hardly wet behind the ears when the peloton rolled out of Milan at the start of the 50th – and his first – Giro di Lombardia on October 21, 1956. The 27-year-old from the Landes region of south-west France already had three Tour stage wins to his name and had beaten Louison Bobet to the national title a year earlier.
Nicknamed 'The Greyhound of the Landes' because of his ability as a sprinter, Darrigade made his name on the track when he moved to Paris in the late 1940s.
"André Darrigade is heavily built and would have made a good football centre-forward," said the Franco-American sports journalist René de Latour. "He has blond hair, clear eyes, rosy cheeks, and is a bit on the shy side. When we first saw him in Paris soon after the war finished, he was a novice, not a roadman at all. He was lonely, but courageous."
After making ripples in the famous Vélodrome d'Hiver, Darrigade was taken under the wing of the former rider-turned-coach Francis Pélissier before stepping up to the professional ranks in 1951 for a meagre salary that hardly kept the wolf from the door. He would go on to become one of the leading lights of French cycling.
According to his contemporary rider Raphaël Géminiani, "Darrigade was the greatest French sprinter of all time, and he'll stay that way for a long time. The mould has been broken. But he wasn't just a sprinter. He was an animateur who could start decisive breaks; he destroyed the image of sprinters who just sit on wheels."
After five years on the Perle-Hutchinson squad, Darrigade was snapped up in 1955 by Coppi's Bianchi team – on the recommendation of the great man himself – to rival the Italian sprinter Nino Defilippis in the Italian classics. After all, as the famous cycling author Les Woodland once noted, Darrigade had "the kick of a mule".
At Bianchi, Darrigade became teammates with Ronchini, the rising star of Italian cycling, who joined the team after winning the Piccolo Giro di Lombardia for amateurs in 1955. The big boys' Lombardia was the 21-year-old from Imola's first professional race. A week earlier, Ronchini had won the Pirelli Grand Prix for amateurs – breaking away on the climb of Ghisallo before outkicking his fellow escapee to take a routine win at the Vignorelli.
This was a Bianchi team that was no longer the home of the five-time Giro d'Italia champion. After enjoying something of an Indian summer in 1955 – finishing just 13 seconds behind Magni in the Giro and becoming national champion for a fourth time – Coppi was experiencing the toughest year of his career.
His woes stemmed not only from an untimely bout of typhoid fever, but by his much-publicised extra-marital affair with the wife of a fan – a scandalous relationship that rocked the staunchly Catholic core of Italy, testing the patience of the more devout Coppi fans.
As William Fotheringham explains in his book, Fallen Angel: The Passion of Fausto Coppi:
The illness had meant he could not race early in the year, leaving him in breach of contract, and Bianchi were not inclined to make allowances for the man who had caused a national scandal the year before. While he was ill, he had been sacked. He had bounced back by finding a new sponsor, the Carpano aperitif company, and setting up his own team, riding Fausto Coppi bikes.
Coppi got his career at Carpano off to a decent start by winning the GP Lugano, but crashed out of the Giro, a dislocation in his back costing him two months off the bike. Once returned to the saddle, he missed the decisive move in the Worlds, leading to yet more disappointment.
In this way, a lot was riding on the Giro di Lombardia. So often the icing on the cake of another glorious season, Lombardy offered Coppi – also known as 'The Heron', on account of his hooked nose – a last stab at salvation, and he had trained hard to bring home a record-extending sixth triumph.
As Gino Cervi, the Italian author and cycling scribe, says tells Eurosport: "Coppi was now 37, and the years were catching up with him. His career was on the slide and he knew that this could be his last major success – his swansong."
Enter stage (far) right, the fourth wheel of our cast: Fiorenzo Magni, the burly Italian rider with the kind of balding head that we would see more often on Alejandro Valverde today were helmets not compulsory.
So often viewed as the "third man" of the golden age of Italian cycling, Magni's career was overshadowed by the accomplishments of his illustrious rivals, Coppi and Gino Bartali. And yet, the man from Monza was a triple champion in the Giro, the Tour of Flanders and the Italian national championships.
Despite his extensive palmarès, Magni – nicknamed the 'Lion of Flanders' for his three consecutive victories over the Belgian bergs – is perhaps best remembered today as the hardman who bit down on an inner tube tied to his handlebars to provide extra grip and combat the pain of a broken collarbone during the Giro.
This remarkable feat of bravery happened earlier in 1956, his last year before retirement. Crashing badly on the descent from Volterra on Stage 12 to Livorno, defending champion Magni soldiered on to finish the stage before being advised by his doctor to quit the race during the rest day.
But Magni thought he'd see how his left shoulder fared in the 54km time trial, which concluded with the brutal ramp to the Basilica San Luca above Bologna. It was here, on the 16 per cent ramps, where the legendary photos of the 36-year-old chomping on rubber were taken. You can look up Re-Cycle’s third episode of our first season, in which we retell some of the most famous, heroic and race-changing efforts from the diabolical climb.
Magni got through the day and, despite crashing again to exacerbate his injury, completed his final Giro in second place behind Luxembourg's Charly Gaul. Although he won the Giro three times, it was only in finishing second in 1956 that he became a national hero.
"Biting down on the inner tube is a side to Magni that appeals to a lot of people, but it's also probably fairly illustrative of the type of guy he was, the kind of rider he was," says Colin O'Brien, author of Giro d'Italia: The Story of the World's Most Beautiful Bike Race.
"It wasn't pretty. There's a quote from Géminiani about him having the subtlety of an axe in his forceful approach to everything, which rings true."
Magni's well publicised right-wing views – he had joined Mussolini's National Fascist Party in 1943 – made him unpopular in the recovering post-war Italy but there was no doubting his courage and determination.
O'Brien feels that Magni was "unfairly maligned" – that he was an easy target for a still deeply divided nation skewered by fascism and lingering resentment; judged by his exploits in the saddle, he deserves to be as widely known as his great rivals.
"Bartali was this image of rural, pre-war Italy," O'Brien tells Eurosport. "He was a bit gruff, but he could also win a race in a pretty way. Then Coppi was more of a playboy – the beloved poster boy of Italian cycling. Whereas when you think of Magni, he was grubby and dogged. He was seen as someone who would win by force of will rather than innate physical talent, which he must have had."
Magni, might have divided opinion, but his stance on Coppi's controversial affair with the White Lady left little room for debate.
Enter Giulia Occhini, ‘La Dama Bianca’
The main protagonists have all been named bar one, for it would be remiss to skirt over the all-important cameo played by the leading Lady in White.
Giulia Occhini was the wife of one of Coppi's most ardent fans, Dr Enrico Locatelli. When Coppi won the Tre Valli Varesine in 1948, Locatelli asked his wife to get his idol's autograph (because, presumably the Campionissimo would be more amenable to such a request from a striking lady with dark hair).
The plan worked, but backfired, for the two developed a friendship that soon blossomed into a clandestine affair. By 1953, Occhini appeared at many of Coppi's races – most notably on the Stelvio in the penultimate stage of the Giro, which the Italian won to wrest the Maglia Rosa from the charming shoulders of Hugo Koblet. That same year, they holidayed together at Capri.
Spotting Coppi with a glamorous woman in an eye-catching snow-coloured Montgomery duffel coat following the St Moritz stage of the 1954 Giro, Pierre Chany, a journalist with L'Equipe, wrote: "We would like to know more about that lady in white we saw near Coppi." The nickname stuck, and Occhini henceforth became widely known as "La Dama Bianca".
Their relationship was a huge scandal because both Coppi and Occhini were married and had children, but were openly conducting an affair out of wedlock and in the public eye. Divorce was still not permitted at the time; adultery was a crime in the eyes of the law and the puritanical attitudes of the conformist and repressive climate of the period.
Such was the divergence of public opinion that Coppi lost many fans over the affair, while Occhini was even on the receiving end of a public condemnation issued by Pope Pius XII.
Coppi separated from his wife of nine years, Bruna Ciampolini, whom he had married on his return to Italy after the war. Leaving Bruna and his daughter, Marina, Coppi moved in with Occhini, who had left her husband and two sons. When the cuckhold husband, Locatelli, denounced his wife for adultery, the situation escalated. She was punished with a month's imprisonment and a period of house arrest in Ancona, while Coppi's passport was confiscated, preventing him from racing abroad.
Despite these obstacles, Occhini fell pregnant. As soon as his passport was reinstated, Coppi travelled across the Atlantic with his lover, where they were married in Mexico – a marriage that was never recognised in Italy. It was in Argentina where Occhini gave birth to a son, Angelo Fausto Coppi – known as Faustino – in May 1955.
An absurd legal loophole meant that Faustino had to take Locatelli's surname until the late 70s.
They returned to Italy and lived together in an opulent mansion near Novi Ligure where Occhini, accustomed to a wealthy standard of living, was said to enjoy the trappings of royalty. Coppi was forced to race more and more, despite his advancing years, to earn the money his companion then fluttered away.
Not only did this all have an effect on his performances, it lost Coppi the respect of many of his fans and peers – including Magni. As Fotheringham, who spoke to Magni before his death in 2012, explains in Fallen Angel: "Magni was old-school and was always friendly with [Coppi's ex-wife] Bruna. To this day, although he can understand Coppi's decision to leave her, he cannot condone it."
It was Magni's disrespect of – and inability to get on with – Occhini that provided a vital backdrop to the last professional race of his career.
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Fausto Coppi et Giulia Occhini posent ensemble en 1954
Image credit: Getty Images
Coppi on the attack
Heavy rain meant 30 riders did not even bother to show up at the start of the race. There was little action as the riders made their way north towards Lake Como and the foothills of the Alps. As usual, the Race of the Falling Leaves caught fire once the riders hit the key climb of Madonna del Ghisallo, where the sprinter Nino Defilippis put in an early, ambitious dig.
Featuring eight kilometres of hairpins and climbing up from the shores of Lake Como to a little chapel that has become a shrine to cycling, the Ghisallo had acted as the launchpad for Coppi's past victorious attacks – and once again, it was here that the five-time winner made his move.
In an evocative article for Cycle Magazine, the Italian journalist Gianni Bertoli recalls the commentary of Carlo Proserpio, the man entrusted to make the race announcements to the crowds awaiting the return of the riders back in Milan and at the Vigorelli velodrome. After the names of Louison Bobet and Diego Ronchini were read out in the list of riders bridging over to Defilippis, a huge roar erupted when, finally, Proserpio added the name of Coppi.
"Let us recount the arrivals to the top of Ghisallo," Proserpio later said ahead of a long, tense pause. "The first rider – on his own – is Diego Ronchini." Applause rang out for the youngster, whose recent exploits at the Vigorelli made him known to the Milanese crowd.
"Second, six seconds behind, is…" then, after a long pause: "Fausto Coppi!" This was followed by what Bertoli describes as an "indescribable roar" and "hellish bedlam".
Bobet led the chasers over a few seconds back, while the likes of Magni and defending champion Cleto Maule crested the summit one minute and 10 seconds adrift.
After a short break, Proserpio announced: "In the descent towards Asso, Coppi has caught Ronchini and the two are increasing their lead over the immediate pursuers." Delirium flowed freely among the "Coppiani" and "Ronchiniani" fans.
But all was not fine and dandy between the two leaders, for Ronchini was making the elder statesman do all the work – clearly on the orders of his Bianchi team. The logic was quite simple: Ronchini would stand a better chance against an exhausted Coppi at the finish – and should the chasers bridge over, then fast finisher André Darrigade would give Bianchi the edge.
It would have taken a brave man to bet against Coppi in the Vigorelli. But as the gap increased to three minutes, it looked like Bianchi were banking on Ronchini causing an upset.
Magni: a man possessed
Dropped with 60km to go, Fiorenzo Magni might well have coasted back to Milan to toast his impending retirement were it not for a flashpoint involving the car carrying Giulia Occhini in the race convoy.
The gap was increasing, and Magni had no massive ambition to win Lombardia, that bittersweet precursor to winter, despite finishing runner-up to Coppi in 1954 and coming second earlier in his final season in Milan-San Remo.
Magni and Coppi enjoyed a decent enough relationship off the bike. And while they were rivals on the bike, the pair had collaborated well in the 1955 Giro d'Italia, with Magni allowing Coppi to win in San Pellegrino as the former snatched the Pink Jersey form Gastone Nencini on the penultimate day.
While the two riders got on well, it was no secret that Magni and Occhini detested each other. As the car passed shortly after the summit of the Ghisallo, Magni sensed that Occhini was sneering at him. More than that, he apparently witnessed her making the classic "umbrella gesture" – or crooked arm salute – out of the passenger window. It was even reported, albeit much later on, that this was accompanied by a spiteful shout of "Fausto is the greatest!" in Magni's general direction.
Many years later, Fotheringham asked Magni what Occhini had said. "A few words out of turn," came the diplomatic reply. When pressed to be more specific, he elaborated: "'Eh, Fiorenzo, my Fausto has got you!'"
If he made no mention of the crude gesture, Coppi's former loyal domestique Andrea 'Sandrino' Carrea proved more forthcoming to Fotheringham when quizzed on the incident. Sandrino Carrea recalls the episode:
'When she came near Magni she went like this' – and at this point he wallops his bicep with his hand as he mimics her obscene gesture; one raised fist, the other hand clenching the muscle – 'and Magni chased fit to kill himself'.
The Lion of Flanders is reported to have said that he would have chased Coppi down after that even if he had had to bust a gut all the way to Novi Ligure. Later, he would say that the blow to his pride was a bigger spur than amphetamine: "I sunk my teeth into the handlebars to the point where I lost any awareness of being alive."
Coming from the man who sunk his teeth into inner tubes for survival, the impact of this statement is all the more powerful.
And so off Magni went in a rage. Driven by fury, he coordinated the chase. A group of 16 riders came together and the gap came down. Relaying the information to the fans at the finish, Proserpio announced, amid cries of dismay: "The advantage of the Coppi-Ronchini duo decreases. The pursuers have organised themselves."
Then, nearing the outskirts of Milan, with around 12km remaining, he added: "On the Ghisolfa bridge, Coppi and Ronchini…" – this was followed by another very long pause – "…are joined by the chasers. Eighteen men now in the lead."
A cry of "No!" reverberated through the stands in the Vigorelli.
Darrigade at the death
Ronchini's chances of glory in his maiden Lombardia appearance might have been dealt a blow, but Bianchi still held a trump card in their French sprinter Darrigade.
Along with Magni, the Greyhound of the Landes was one of the 16 chasers who made the connection on the outskirts of Milan. Tensions were running high – most notably between Coppi and Magni, who bickered away among themselves on the approach to the velodrome where Coppi had set the hour record in 1942 as bombs fell over Milan.
Although exhausted from his frenetic chase, an invigorated Magni had faint hopes of ending his career on a high. He'd won both the Giro del Lazio and the Gran Piemonte races in the build-up to Lombardia; this could complete a hat-trick of wins that looked highly unlikely when going over the summit of the Ghisallo.
But Coppi was still in control of his destiny. The Vigorelli velodrome was like a second home to the ageing champion, who was hell-bent on carving out a sixth Lombardia notch on the post of the bed he shared with the Woman in White.
Launching early and decisively, Coppi sped down from the final banking onto the home straight to overtake Magni, who was decked out in a pale green jersey embroidered with the name of the Nivea cosmetics company. The last flight of The Heron looked to be complete – but Coppi had his wings clipped at the death by "Dédé" Darrigade.
The Frenchman's chances looked slim when he entered the velodrome, boxed in back in eighth place. But he was renowned for his long, surging sprints, so he set out from distance and from far out, reeled in the likes of Bobet and the Belgians, Rik van Looy (who was later disqualified) and Alfred de Bruyne. Just as it appeared to be a showdown between the two fading Italian stars, Darrigade completed his titanic effort by soaring past Magni and then pipping Coppi to the line by a nose. If only, at that moment, the Heron were a pelican.
Distraught, Coppi peeled off to the inner ropes and came to a standstill. The incredulous crowd was still exhaling a loud, vocal chorus of disapproval as Darrigade, in the celeste blue of Bianchi that had accompanied so many of Coppi's triumphs, rode up the banking, waving his arms in celebration.
Behind, it was reported that Magni had crossed the line for third place with a small, smug smile of satisfaction etched across his weather-beaten face. The so-called Third Man had succeeded in what he had set out to do when, two hours earlier, he was emasculated by his rival's mistress.
Coppi's heartbreak
Denied a sixth victory by the width of a tyre, Coppi's first instinct was to congratulate his victor. But with the tifosi cheering his name in a poignant, drawn-out standing ovation, the 37-year-old was soon reduced to a weeping wreck as immortalised by the photographers in the velodrome.
Not far away from the distraught Coppi stood Pinalla De Grandi, his former Bianchi mechanic, who was now wheeling away Darrigade's bike. In his article, Bertoli explains how a look of embarrassment could be seen on De Grandi's face – not knowing if he should celebrate his team's victory or be sad about the defeat of his old friend, alongside whom he worked for a decade.
Coppi, meanwhile, had to endure the unsavoury, gut-wrenching feeling that, after so many years of mutual benefit with Bianchi, his old team had worked him over and stitched him up. For Darrigade was the rider he had hired himself to race for Bianchi before his sacking, while it was De Grande who had ordered Ronchini, another former teammate, to stop collaborating with Coppi in the break.
In his book, The Monuments, Peter Cossins takes up what happened in the aftermath of the race.
"When the impact of what had happened hit him, Coppi was inconsolable, and had to be lifted off his bike even as the crowd continued to chant his name. As he sobbed, Magni approached to offer a word, although hardly one of consolation. 'If your woman hadn't been so offensive, I'd never have had the incentive to come after you. And then the Frenchman wouldn't have beaten you, would he?' he muttered."
An hour later, at his hotel, Coppi finally spoke. "I give you my word of honour that today I thought I could compete in a sprint with many famous sprinters. If I hadn't felt that way, I would not have entered the track in that position," he said.
Cossins writes how Coppi, to his credit, admitted, with a little bit of wry humour, that he had committed a fatal mistake in the euphoria of approaching a sixth victory.
"I didn't see Darrigade coming on my right. If I had, I would have stuck my elbows out to make it harder for him to pass, which is what is expected when you're sprinting on the track."
After a brief pause, he added with a sad smile: "You have to understand what victory would have meant to me today, at my age."
The media could not help but feel saddened by what they had witnessed. The next day, La Gazzetta dello Sport ran the headline: "The Destiny of Coppi is Called Darrigade". Even the French press felt for the Italian. "Let us be frank with ourselves. We all felt a great sadness when the chasing pack bridged up to Coppi. Every one of us was saying at that time we hoped victory would be his," Pierre Chany wrote in L'Equipe.
There's no denying that Coppi's career – partly because of Occhini's influence, largely because of his advancing years – was on a downward trajectory since 1955. Victory in the Vigorelli would have given the 37-year-old a final grand triumph – but perhaps it was always a bridge too far. It is hard to imagine, however, a crueller outcome for the fallen champion.
"It's unfortunate he didn't get the swansong he – and many fans, looking back – would have liked," says O'Brien. "But ultimately that's bike racing. How often does it go like it should? Look at Tom Boonen and Roubaix."
The example is a good one: Boonen, in his final season, was denied a record-breaking fifth Paris-Roubaix title by a whisker by the unsung Australian Mat Hayman. But just as Hayman clearly deserved every plaudit in upsetting the script, so too should Darrigade be commemorated.
"The romantic in me loves the idea of Coppi winning," says O'Brien. "But if I was being level-headed about it, I'd say that he was beaten by someone 10 years younger than him and on the rise, rather than on the decline; a guy in his mid-20s coming up against one of the all-time greats.
"Fair play to Darrigade. Anybody who can beat Coppi and Magni to a Monument should be proud of themselves because it's no mean feat – even if Coppi was past it and Magni was totally burned out from the chase of the breakaway."
What happened next?
André Darrigade did the double over Coppi a fortnight later with victory in the Trofeo Baracchi, with the Frenchman winning the two-man time trial with his Swiss partner Rolf Graf as the Italian settled for second alongside Riccardo Filippi.
Dédé proved no flash in the pan. Darrigade would win 22 stages on the Tour de France during his career – including a record five opening day triumphs that helped contribute to a total of 19 days in yellow, as well as two Green Jerseys in Paris.
But he never cracked another Monument, his best results outside Lombardia being fourth in Paris-Roubaix and third in Milan-San Remo. The peak of his career came in 1959, when he won the Rainbow Jersey at Zandvoort, coming out on top of an eight-man dash to the line.
A year earlier, Darrigade was involved in a chilling incident when colliding with the general secretary of the Parc des Princes, Constant Wouters, during the final stage of the Tour. The 70-year-old Wouters had inadvertently stepped out onto the track during the final sprint; the impact was frightful and both men were flung into the air. While Darrigade could complete the race and take a lap of honour despite cracking his skull and breaking ribs, Wouters spent 12 days in hospital before succumbing to his injuries.
After Darrigade retired in 1966, he ran a newspaper shop in Biarritz. A rugby stadium in the nearby town of Dax is named after him. Still alive in 2020, the Frenchman is often seen at the Tour de France.
Diego Ronchini did not have to wait long to prove he had what it took to win the Race of the Falling Leaves: in the 51st edition in 1957, the 22-year-old prevailed in a three-man sprint to win his only Monument. Two years later, he finished third in the Giro d'Italia behind Charly Gaul and the great Jacques Anquetil.
In 1958, the road was resurfaced on the climb over the Ghisallo, an act that completely changed the dynamic of the race. That year, as Cossins points out, the record ascent was over two minutes quicker than the previous benchmark.
Responding to claims that Lombardia had been made easier, the now infamous Muro di Sormano – with its average gradient of 15 per cent – was introduced in 1960. Little more than a mule track, the double-digit climb is two kilometres of brutality – prompting a race preview in La Stampa to include the prediction: "Tomorrow we will all be watching the national pushing festival."
Far from spicing things up, the new climb effectively neutralised the race until it was out the way. Not only could riders walk up it as quick as they could climb, the Sormano's position meant anyone distanced had ample time to fight back into contention on the long return leg to Milan.
It was Anquetil who remarked that a shift to Como for the finish could balance things out. The organisers heeded the Frenchman's advice, with Como hosting the finish until 1984 – although the Sormano was dropped after only three appearances, not to return until 2012.
Speaking to Eurosport, Cossins claims that Il Lombardia does not deserve the place reserved to it by most cycling fans:
Lombardy is often seen as the fifth of the Monuments, its status so low at times that it wouldn't have been a surprise to see it disappear. But it's easily the most beautiful of the Classics and Bernard Hinault, among others, rated it the hardest.
After his disappointment, Fausto Coppi never rode the race he had won five times again. His career would trundle on for another three years, but the only Monument the Italian veteran rode was Paris-Roubaix in 1959, finishing a lowly 44th place some seven minutes in arrears. The last leaf of a resplendent career had fallen from the tree that day in the Vigorelli.
Coppi notched just one more win during these troubled years – victory in the Trofeo Baracchi time trial in 1957 with Ercole Baldini, the Italian who had beaten Anquetil's hour record while still an amateur at the Vigorelli, and who would set the record ascent time for the Sormano in 1962 before it was axed from Lombardia (not that this did him any good: he crossed the line in Como two and a half minutes down in seventh place, as the Dutchman Jo de Roo won what is often described as the hardest-ever edition of the race).
In his final Giro d'Italia, Coppi finished 32nd; it was the first time in 12 completed editions that he had finished outside the top four. In the last year of his career, Coppi, a few months shy of his 40th birthday, rode his first and only Vuelta, pulling out three days from the finish after only once finishing a stage in the top 10. As O'Brien affirms:
With Coppi, it wasn't a gradual descent – the last few years were a steep decline.
Whether Il Campionissimo would have ridden professionally into his fifth decade will never be known. In December 1959, the president of Burkina Faso invited Coppi – along with a host of other European cycling stars such as Anquetil and Louison Bobet – to Africa to ride with some of the locals and go hunting.
Both Raphaël Géminiani and Coppi caught malaria and fell ill when they got home. Géminiani recovered, but Coppi died on January 2, 1960. Another famous image worth looking up is the poignant photograph of a grief-stricken Giulia Occhini standing over Coppi’s open casket, clasping his head in her hands. Whatever was between them was obviously real.
Occhini died 33 years later, following a car crash outside the mansion she shared with Coppi near Novi Ligure.
Fiorenzo Magni outlived both Coppi and Bartali – the two men in whose shadows he rode. Despite never winning the Giro di Lombardia, he was involved in the running of the stunning cycling museum perched on the top of the Ghisallo climb overlooking the shimmering waters of Lake Como.
Magni also ran a car dealership in Monza and remained active until his death, aged 91, in October 2012. Half a century after his furious fightback in the 50th edition of Lombardia, Magni told William Fotheringham: "I don't know if what I did was decisive."
It's worth considering that Occhini's reputed gesture and Magni's response did not emerge as part of the narrative until many years after the event. In fact, the incident was not reported until Gianni Brera published his book, Coppi and the Devil, in 1981 – which laid bare the "shocking, angry and bitter quarrels" the two lovers shared over the years of their turbulent relationship.
Even then, Brera's book was a fictionalised version of Coppi's career, interspersed with the author's account of how he met Coppi later in his life. While Magni never denied the story, it is clearly one of those mythical tales so typical of the sport that seems to be shrouded in secrecy – a tale that has been no doubt embellished over the years.
For instance, O'Brien questions the likelihood of anyone, in the middle of a race, over the bumpy dirt roads of the 1950s, being able to judge the expression on a woman's face as she drove by.
The first time I read that story years ago, I rolled my eyes a little," he says. "Because you think: ‘How many people has this story filtered through before the journalist put pen to paper?’
"And I wonder if there was a bit of Magni building his own myth afterwards… Giving it a bit of a back story that appealed. I just find it hard to imagine the situation – but it makes for a good story."
"The older a cyclist gets," O'Brien continues, "the higher the mountain, the longer the breakaway, the worse the weather, there's always a mechanical… it's part of the fabric of the sport. Me, personally – do I believe half these stories? Absolutely not. Do I love them? Absolutely. It's the thing that drew me to the sport in the first place. It’s the thing that still sparks the imagination even though I know it may not be true."
The live, uninterrupted, end-to-end coverage that today's viewer enjoys – along with the accompanied accoutrements on social media, good and bad – means the kind of mystery presented by the White Lady's offensive gesture on the Ghisallo that day rarely raises its head.
"There's very little leeway for a writer or journalist to create a bit of drama," O'Brien opines. "I don't mean make stuff up, but, you know – add a little flourish to something. Ultimately, does it matter what Occhini said to Magni? Probably not.
“But it makes for a good story. It's something we miss in modern day racing. Something that's nice to look back on in a different era."
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