Fausto Coppi

Fausto Coppi

Personal information
Full name	Angelo-Fausto Coppi
Nickname	'Il Campionissimo' 'Champion of Champions'
Date of birth	15 September 1919(1919-09-15)
Date of death	January 2, 1960 (aged 40)
Country	Italy
Team information
Discipline	Classics
Role	Rider
Major wins
A travers de Lausanne 1947 Bol d'Or des Monedières 1953 Castelletto d'Orba 1938 Challenge Desgrange-Colombo 1949 Circuito degli Assi - Milano 1945 Circuito Borgosesia 1953 Circuito Cagliari 1954, 1955 Circuito Calvisano 1958 Circuito del Trocadero 1946 Coppa Bernocchi 1954 Coppa Candelotti 1945 Coppa Canepa 1939 Coppa Cittá di Pavia 1939 Coppa Salvioni 1945 Criterium d'Auch 1952 Criterium of Namur 1956 Criterium de Sables d'Olonne 1951 Criterium de Tarascone 1952 Criterium de Vallorbe 1952 Criterium de Versailles 1958 Edmond Gentil Trophy 1947 Flèche Wallonne 1950 Genoa Circuit 1950 Giro dell'Appennino 1955 Giro di Campania 1954, 1955 Giro del Cosentino 1939 Giro dell'Emilia 1941, 1947 Giro d'Italia 1940, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953 Giro di Lombardia 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1954 Giro del Penice 1939 Giro della provincia di Milano 1941 Giro della Provincia di Reggio Calabria 1950 Giro di Romagna 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, Giro di Toscana 1941 Giro del Veneto 1941 1947, 1949, GP Braaschaat 1951 GP Campari 1956 GP Van Cauthem 1955 GP Firminy 1953 GP Lugano 1951, 1952, 1956 GP Mediterranean 1952 GP des Nations 1946, 1947, GP du Progres (Lyon) 1959 GP Titano - San Marino 1955 GP Varese 1939 Hour World Record (Milan) 1942 Italian pursuit championship 1940, 1941, 1947 Italian road championship 1942, 1947, 1955 Lauvière Circuit 1949 Lugano Criterium 1945 Lugano Circuit 1946 Milan-Sanremo 1946, 1948, 1949, Ospedaletti Circuit 1945 Paris-Roubaix 1950 Six Days of Buenos Aires 1958 Susa Circuit 1939 Tortona Circuit 1953 Tour de France 1949, 1952 Tre Valli Varesine 1941, 1948, 1955 Trofeo Baracchi 1953, 1954, 1955, 1957 World pursuit championship 1947, 1949 World road championship 1953
Medal record Competitor for  Italy Road bicycle racing World Championships Gold 1947 Paris Pursuit Gold 1949 Copenhagen Pursuit Gold 1953 Lugano Road Race Bronze 1949 Copenhagen Road Race
Infobox last updated on:

Angelo-Fausto Coppi, (born Castellania, Italy, 15 September 1919, died Tortona, Italy, 2 January 1960), was the dominant international cyclist of the years each side of the second world war. His successes, which included the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the world championship and hour record, earned him the title, Il Campionissimo, or champion of champions.

Contents 1 Background 1.1 Biagio Cavanna 2 Career 3 Hour record 4 Rivalry with Bartali 5 Prisoner of war 6 Drugs 7 Broken bones 8 The Woman in White 9 Decline 10 Death 10.1 Death investigation 11 Legacy 12 Major results 13 See also 14 Notes 15 References 16 External links

Background

Coppi was one of five children born to Domenico Coppi and his wife, Angiolina Boveri.^[1] They married on 29 July 1914. Fausto was the fourth child, born at 5pm on 15 September 1919. His mother wanted to call him Angelo, his father preferred Fausto. He was named Angelo-Fausto but was known most of his life as Fausto. ^[2]

Coppi had poor health as a child and showed little interest in school. In 1927 he was condemned to write "I ought to be at school, not riding my bicycle" after skipping lessons to spend the day riding a family bike he had found in a cellar, rusty and without brake blocks. ^[3] He left school at 13 to work for Domenico Merlani, a butcher in Novi Ligure more widely known as Signor Ettore.

Cycling to and from the shop and meeting cyclists who came there interested him in racing. The money to buy a bike came from his uncle, also called Fausto Coppi, and his father. Coppi said:

"... [My uncle] was a merchant navy officer on a petrol tanker, and a real cycling fan. He was touched when he heard of my passion for the bike and decided that I deserved a real tool for the job on which I had set my heart, instead of the rusty old crock I was pushing around. I just cried with joy when my kind uncle gave me the 600 lire that were to make my dream come true. I knew from advertisements I had seen in the local papers that for 600 lire I could get a frame built to my measurements in Genoa. Out of my slender savings I took enough for the train fare to Genoa and back, gave my measurements, and handed over the 600 lire. I would have to buy the fittings and tyres from my errand-boy salary. Oh how my legs used to ache at night through climbing all those stairs during the day! But I'm glad I did, because it surely made my legs so strong."^[4]

"Come back within a week your frame will be ready" said the owner of the cycle shop."^[4]

"But it wasn't ready, and not the next week, and not the next. For eight weeks I threw precious money away taking the train to Genoa and still no made-to-measure bike for me. The fellow just couldn't be bothered making a frame for a skinny country kid who didn't look as if he could pedal a fairy-cycle, let alone a racing bike. I used to cry bitterly as I went back home without the frame. On the ninth journey I took a frame home. But it wasn't a 'made to measure'. The chap just took one down off the rack. I was furious inside, but too shy to do anything about it."^[4]

He rode his first race at 15, among other boys not attached to cycling clubs, and won 20 lira and a salami sandwich for first prize.

Coppi took a racing licence at the start of 1938 and won his first race, at Castelleto d'Orba, near the butcher's shop. He won alone, winning an alarm clock.

Biagio Cavanna

A regular caller at the butcher's shop in Novi Ligure was a former boxer who had become a masseur, a job he could do after losing his sight, in 1938. Giuseppe Cavanna was known to friends as Biagio. Coppi met him that year, recommended by another of Cavanna's riders. Cavanna suggested in 1939 that Coppi should become an independent, a class of semi-professionals who could ride against both amateurs and professionals. He sent him to the Tour of Tuscany that April with the advice: "Follow Gino Bartali!" He was forced to stop with a broken wheel. But at Varzi on 7 May 1939 he won one of the races counting to the season-long national independent championship. He finished seven minutes clear of the field and won his next race by six minutes.

Career

Raphaël Géminiani said of Coppi's domination:

When Fausto won and you wanted to check the time gap to the man in second place, you didn't need a Swiss stopwatch. The bell of the church clock tower would do the job just as well. Paris-Roubaix? Milan-Sanremo? Lombardy? We're talking 10 minutes to a quarter of an hour. That's how Fausto Coppi was.^[5]

His first large success was in 1940, winning the Giro d'Italia at the age of 20. In 1942 he set a world hour record (45.798 km at the Velodromo Vigorelli in Milan) which stood for 14 years until it was broken by Jacques Anquetil in 1956. His career was then interrupted by the Second World War. In 1946 he resumed racing and achieved remarkable successes which would be exceeded only by Eddy Merckx.

The veteran writer Pierre Chany said that from 1946 to 1954 Coppi was never once recaught once he had broken away from the rest. ^[6]

Twice, 1949 and 1952, Coppi won the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in the same year, the first to do so. He won the Giro five times, a record shared with Alfredo Binda and Eddy Merckx. During 1949's Giro he left Gino Bartali by 11 minutes between Cuneo and Pinerolo. He won the Giro di Lombardia a record five times (1946, 1947, 1948, 1949 and 1954). He won Milan-Sanremo three times (1946, 1948 and 1949. In the 1946 race he Coppi attacked with nine others, five kilometres into a race of 292km. He dropped the rest on the Turchino climb and won by 14 minutes.^[7][8]

He also won Paris-Roubaix and La Flèche Wallonne (1950). He was also 1953 world road champion.

Coppi won the 1949 Tour de France by almost half an hour over everyone except Bartali. From the start of the mountains in the Pyrenees to their end in the Alps, Coppi took back the 55 minutes by which Jacques Marinelli led him.^[9]

In 1952 Coppi won on the Alpe d'Huez, which had been included for the first time that year. He attacked six kilometres from the summit to rid himself of the French rider, Jean Robic. Coppi said: "I knew he was no longer there when I couldn't hear his breathing any more or the sound of his tyres on the road behind me."^[10][11] He rode like "a Martian on a bicycle", said Raphaël Géminiani^{[n 1]}. "I saw a phenomenal rider that day." ^[12] Coppi won the Tour by 28m 27s and the organiser, Jacques Goddet, had to double the prizes for lower placings to keep other riders interested. .^[13] It was his last Tour, having ridden three and won two.

Bill McGann wrote:

Comparing riders from different eras is a risky business subject to the prejudices of the judge. But if Coppi isn't the greatest rider of all time, then he is second only to Eddy Merckx. One can't judge his accomplishments by his list of wins because world war two interrupted his career just as world war one interrupted that of Philippe Thys. Coppi won it all: the world hour record, the world championships, the grands tours, classics as well as time trials. The great French cycling journalist, Pierre Chany says that between 1946 and 1954, once Coppi had broken away from the peloton, the peloton never saw him again. Can this be said of any other racer? Informed observers who saw both ride agree that Coppi was the more elegant rider who won by dint of his physical gifts as opposed to Merckx who drove himself and hammered his competition relentlessly by being the very embodiment of pure will.^[14]

Hour record

Coppi broke the world hour record on the track in Milan on 7 November 1942. He rode a gear of 52 x 15 pedalling an average 103.3rpm.^[15] The bike is on display in the chapel of Madonna del Ghisallo near Como, Italy.^[16] His times were:^[17]

1km: 01:17 2km: 02:36 3km: 03:53 4km: 05:12 5km: 06:30

10km: 13:02 15km: 19:35 20km: 26:08 30 minutes: 22.946km 25km: 32:41

30km: 39:14 35km: 45:47 40km: 52:19 45km: 58:5 Hour: 45.871 km, later corrected to 45.798km

Coppi beat Maurice Archambaud's 45.817km, set five years earlier on the same track^[18]. The record stood until it was beaten by Jacques Anquetil in 1956.^[8]

Rivalry with Bartali

Coppi's racing days are generally referred to as the beginning of the Golden Years of the Cycle Racing. A factor is the competition Coppi had with Gino Bartali. Italian fans (tifosi) divided into coppiani and bartaliani.

Bartali's rivalry with Coppi divided Italy.^[19] Bartali, conservative, religious, was venerated in the rural, agrarian south, while Coppi, more worldly, secular, innovative in diet and training, was hero of the industrial north. The writer Curzio Malaparte said:

Bartali belongs to those who believe in tradition... he is a metaphysical man protected by the saints. Coppi has nobody in heaven to take care of him. His manager, his masseur, have no wings. He is alone, alone on a bicycle... Bartali prays while he is pedalling: the rational Cartesian and sceptical Coppi is filled with doubts, believes only in his body, his motor.

Their lives came together on 7 January 1940 when Eberrardo Pavesi, head of the Legano team, took on Coppi to ride for Bartali. Their rivalry started when Coppi, the helding hand, won the Giro and Bartali, the star, marshalled the team to chase By the 1949 world championship at Valkenburg, Holland, both climbed off rather than help the other. The thaw partly broke when the pair shared a bottle on the Col d'Izoard in the 1952 Tour^{[n 2]} but the two fell out over who had offered it. "I did," Bartali insisted. "He never gave me anything."^[20]. Their rivalry was the subject of intense coverage and resulted in epic races.

Prisoner of war

Coppi joined the army as soldier 7375 of the 38th Infantry when Italy entered the second world war. Officers favoured him at first to keep him riding his bike but in March 1943 they sent him to North Africa. There he was taken prisoner by the British between Mateur and Medjez-el-Bab on 13 April. He was kept in a prisoner of war camp, where he shared plates with the father of Claudio Chiappucci, who rode the Tour in the 1990s. He was given odd jobs to do. The British cyclist Len Levesley said he was astonished to find Coppi giving him a haircut.^[21] Levesley, who was on a stretcher with polio, said:

I should think it took me all of a full second to realise who it was. He looked fine, he looked slim, and having been in the desert, he looked tanned. I'd only seen him in cycling magazines but I knew instantly who he was. So he cut away at my hair and I tried to have a conversation with him, but he didn't speak English and I don't speak Italian. But we managed one or two words and I got over to him that I did some club racing. And I gave him a bar of chocolate that I had with me and he was grateful for that and that was the end of it.^{[n 3]}

The British moved Coppi to an RAF base at Caserta in Italy in 1945. There he worked for an officer who had never heard of him. Coppi was allowed liberal terms, the war being as good as over. On release he cycled and hitched lifts home. On Sunday 8 July 1945 he won the Circuit of the Aces in Milan after four years without racing. The following season he won Milan-San Remo.

Drugs

Coppi was often said to have introduced "modern" methods to cycling, particularly his diet. Gino Bartali established that some of those methods included taking drugs, which were not then against the rules.

Bartali and Coppi appeared on television revues and sang together, Bartali singing about "The drugs you used to take" as he looked at Coppi. Coppi spoke of the subject in a television interview:

Question: Do cyclists take la bomba (amphetamine)?

Answer: Yes, and those who claim otherwise, it's not worth talking to them about cycling.

Question: And you, did you take la bomba?

Answer: Yes. Whenever it was necessary.

Question: And when was it necessary?

Answer: Almost all the time!^[22][23]

Coppi "set the pace" in drug-taking, said his contemporary, the Dutchman, Wim van Est.^[24] Rik van Steenbergen said Coppi was "the first I knew who took drugs."^[25] That didn't stop Coppi's protesting against others using it. He told René de Latour:

“

What is the good of having world champions if those boys are worn out before turning professional? Maybe the officials are proud to come back with a rainbow jersey[n 4], but if this done at the expense of the boys' futures, then I say it's wrong. Do you think it normal that our best amateurs become nothing but gregari.[n 5][26]

”

Coppi named four riders among the best in the world as amateurs but who failed as professionals despite predictions made for them. "If they sue me for defamation," he said, "all the better. The facts will be brought to light and this may mean a change in our methods."

Broken bones

Coppi broke bones throughout his career.

• 1942: collarbone at the Vigorelli track in Milan
• 1950: pelvis in the Giro d'Italia
• 1951: collarbone in Milan-Turin
• 1952: shoulder blade on the track in Perpignan
• 1954: head and kness while training
• 1956: displaced vertebra in Giro d'Italia
• 1957: thigh in Sardinia
• 1959: head injuries while training

The Woman in White

The Woman in White was Giulia Occhini, described by the French broadcaster Jean-Paul Ollivier as "strikingly beautiful with thick chestnut hair divided into enormous plaits." She was married to an army captain, Enrico Locatelli. Coppi was married to Bruna Ciampolini.

Locatelli was a cycling fan. His wife wasn't but she joined him on 8 August 1948 to see the Tre Valle Voresini race. Their car was caught beside Coppi's in a traffic jam. That evening Occhini went to Coppi's hotel and asked for a photograph. He wrote "With friendship to...", asked her name and then added it. From then on the two spent more and more time together.

Italy was a strait-laced country in which adultery was poorly thought of. In 1954, Luigi Boccaccini of La Stampa saw her waiting for Coppi at the end of a race in St-Moritz. She and Coppi hugged and La Stampa printed a picture in which she was described as la dama in bianco di Fausto Coppi - the "woman in white".

It took only a while to find out who she was. She and Coppi moved in together but so great was the scandal that the landlord of their apartment in Tortona demanded they move out. Reporters pursued them to a hotel in Casteletto d'Orba and again they moved, buying the Villa Carla, a house near Novi Ligure. There police raided them at night to see if they were sharing a bed. Pope Pius XII asked Coppi to return to his wife. He refused to bless the Giro d'Italia when Coppi rode it. The Pope then went through the Italian cycling federation. Its president, Bartolo Paschetta, wrote on 8 July 1954:

"Dear Fausto, yesterday evening St Peter made it known to me that the news [of adultery] had caused him great pain."

Bruna Ciampolini refused a divorce. To end a marriage was shameful and still illegal in some parts of the country. Coppi was shunned and spectators spat at him. He and Giulia Occhini had a son, Faustino.^[27]

Decline

Coppi's career declined after the scandal. He had already been hit in 1951 by the death of his younger brother, Serse Coppi who crashed in a sprint in the Giro del Piemonte and died of a cerebral haemorrhage.^{[n 6]} Coppi could never match his old successes. Pierre Chany said he was first to be dropped each day in the Tour of Spain in 1959. Criterium organisers frequently cut their races to 45km to be certain that Coppi could finish, he said. "Physically, he wouldn't have been able to ride even 10km further. He charged himself [took drugs] before every race." Coppi, said Chany, was "a magnificent and grotesque washout of a man, ironical towards himself; nothing except the warmth of simple friendship could penetrate his melancholia. But I'm talking of the end of his career. The last year! In 1959! I'm not talking about the great era. In 1959, he wasn't a racing cyclist any more. He was just clinging on [il tentait de sauver les meubles]" ^[28]

Jacques Goddet wrote in an appreciation of Coppi's career in L'Équipe: We would like to have cried out to him ' Stop!' And as nobody dared to, destiny took care of it."

Death

In December 1959, Burkina Faso was celebrating its first year of independence. Until then it had been the French colony of Haute Volta. The president, Maurice Yaméogo, invited Coppi, Raphaël Géminiani, Jacques Anquetil, Louison Bobet, Roger Hassenforder and Henry Anglade to ride against local riders and then go hunting. Géminiani remembered:

“

I slept in the same room as Coppi in a house infested by mosquitos. I'd got used to them but Coppi hadn't. Well, when I say we 'slept', that's an overstatement. It was like the safari had been brought forward several hours, except that for the moment we were hunting mosquitos. Coppi was swiping at them with a towel. Right then, of course, I had no clue of what the tragic consequences of that night would be. Ten times, twenty times, I told Fausto 'Do what I'm doing and get your head under the sheets; they can't bite you there.'[29]

”

Both caught malaria and fell ill when they got home. Géminiani said:

“

My temperature got to 41.6... I was delirious and I couldn't stop talking. I imagined or maybe saw people all round but I didn't recognise anyone. The doctor treated me for hepatitis, then for yellow fever, finally for typhoid."[29]

”

Geminiani was diagnosed as having plasmodium falciparum, the fatal form of malaria. Géminiani recovered but Coppi died, his doctors convinced he had a bronchial complaint. La Gazzetta dello Sport, the Italian daily sports paper, published a Coppi supplement. The editor wrote that he prayed that God would soon send another Coppi.^[30]

Death investigation

In January 2002 a man identified only as Giovanni, who lived in Burkina Faso until 1964, said Coppi died not of malaria but was poisoned in revenge for the death of an Ivory Coast rider during a race in Europe. The newspaper Corriere dello Sport said Giovanni had his information from Angelo Bonazzi. Giovanni said: "It is Angelo who told me that Coppi had been killed. I was a supporter of Coppi, and you can imagine my state when he told me that Coppi had been poisoned in Fada Gourma, at the time of a reception organised by the head of the village. Angelo also told me that [Raphael] Géminiani was also present… Fausto's plate fell, they replaced it, and then…"^[31]

The story has also been attributed to a 75-year-old Benedictine monk called Brother Adrien. He told Mino Caudullo of the Italian Olympic committee: "Coppi was killed with a potion mixed with grass. Here in Burkina Faso this awful phenomenon happens. People are still being killed like that." Coppi's doctor, Ettore Allegri, dismissed the story as "absolute drivel."^[32][33]

A court in Tortona opened an investigation and asked toxicologists about exhuming Coppi's body to look for poison. A year later, without exhumation, the case was dismissed.^[34]

Legacy

The Giro remembers Coppi as it goes through the mountain stages. A mountain bonus, called the Cima Coppi, is awarded to the first rider who reaches the Giro's highest summit. In 1999, Coppi placed second in balloting for greatest Italian athlete of the 20th century.

Major results

See also

• List of doping cases in cycling

Notes

References

External links

• Find-A-Grave profile for Fausto Coppi

Sporting positions
Preceded by Heinz Müller	World Road Racing Champion 1953	Succeeded by Louison Bobet
Preceded by Gino Bartali	Winner of the Tour de France 1949	Succeeded by Ferdinand Kubler
Preceded by Hugo Koblet	Winner of the Tour de France 1952	Succeeded by Louison Bobet
Preceded by Giovanni Valetti	Winner of the Giro d'Italia 1940	Succeeded by Gino Bartali
Preceded by Gino Bartali	Winner of the Giro d'Italia 1947	Succeeded by Fiorenzo Magni
Preceded by Fiorenzo Magni	Winner of the Giro d'Italia 1949	Succeeded by Hugo Koblet
Preceded by Fiorenzo Magni	Winner of the Giro d'Italia 1952-53	Succeeded by Carlo Clerici
Preceded by André Mahé Serse Coppi	Winner of Paris-Roubaix 1950	Succeeded by Antonio Bevilacqua
Records
Preceded by Maurice Archambaud	UCI hour record (45.798 km) 7 November 1942-29 June 1956	Succeeded by Jacques Anquetil

Tour de France Yellow jersey winners 1903 Maurice Garin · 1904 Henri Cornet · 1905 Louis Trousselier · 1906 René Pottier · 1907-1908 Lucien Petit-Breton · 1909 François Faber · 1910 Octave Lapize · 1911 Gustave Garrigou · 1912 Odile Defraye · 1913-1914 Philippe Thys · 1915-1918 World War I · 1919 Firmin Lambot · 1920 Philippe Thys · 1921 Léon Scieur · 1922 Firmin Lambot · 1923 Henri Pélissier · 1924-1925 Ottavio Bottecchia · 1926 Lucien Buysse · 1927-1928 Nicolas Frantz · 1929 Maurice De Waele · 1930 André Leducq · 1931 Antonin Magne · 1932 André Leducq · 1933 Georges Speicher · 1934 Antonin Magne · 1935 Romain Maes · 1936 Sylvère Maes · 1937 Roger Lapébie · 1938 Gino Bartali · 1939 Sylvère Maes · 1940-1946 World War II · 1947 Jean Robic · 1948 Gino Bartali · 1949 Fausto Coppi · 1950 Ferdinand Kübler · 1951 Hugo Koblet · 1952 Fausto Coppi · 1953-1955 Louison Bobet · 1956 Roger Walkowiak · 1957 Jacques Anquetil · 1958 Charly Gaul · 1959 Federico Bahamontes · 1960 Gastone Nencini · 1961-1964 Jacques Anquetil · 1965 Felice Gimondi · 1966 Lucien Aimar · 1967 Roger Pingeon · 1968 Jan Janssen · 1969-1972 Eddy Merckx · 1973 Luis Ocaña · 1974 Eddy Merckx · 1975 Bernard Thévenet · 1976 Lucien Van Impe · 1977 Bernard Thévenet · 1978-1979 Bernard Hinault · 1980 Joop Zoetemelk · 1981-1982 Bernard Hinault · 1983-1984 Laurent Fignon · 1985 Bernard Hinault · 1986 Greg LeMond · 1987 Stephen Roche · 1988 Pedro Delgado · 1989-1990 Greg LeMond · 1991-1995 Miguel Indurain · 1996 Bjarne Riis · 1997 Jan Ullrich · 1998 Marco Pantani · 1999-2005 Lance Armstrong · 2006 Óscar Pereiro · 2007 Alberto Contador · 2008 Carlos Sastre

Tour de France Meilleur Grimpeur (Polka dot jersey) winners 1933 Trueba · 1934 Vietto · 1935 Vervaecke · 1936 Berrendero · 1937 Vervaecke · 1938 Bartali · 1939 Maes · 1947 Brambilla · 1948 Bartali · 1949 Coppi · 1950 Bobet · 1951 Géminiani · 1952 Coppi · 1953 Loroño · 1954 Bahamontes · 1955–1956 Gaul · 1957 Nencini · 1958–1959 Bahamontes · 1960–1961 Massignan · 1962–1964 Bahamontes · 1965–1967 Jiménez · 1968 González · 1969–1970 Merckx · 1971–1972 Van Impe · 1973 Torres · 1974 Perurena · 1975 Van Impe · 1976 Bellini · 1977 Van Impe · 1978 Martínez · 1979 Battaglin · 1980 Martin · 1981 Van Impe · 1982 Vallet · 1983 Van Impe · 1984 Millar · 1985 Herrera · 1986 Hinault · 1987 Herrera · 1988 Rooks · 1989 Theunisse · 1990 Claveyrolat · 1991–1992 Chiappucci · 1993 Rominger · 1994–1997 Virenque · 1998 Rinero · 1999 Virenque · 2000 Botero · 2001–2002 Jalabert · 2003–2004 Virenque · 2005–2006 Rasmussen · 2007 Soler · 2008 Kohl

Persondata
NAME	Coppi, Fausto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Cycling legend
DATE OF BIRTH	1919-09-15
PLACE OF BIRTH	Castellania
DATE OF DEATH	1960-01-02
PLACE OF DEATH	Tortona