Re: [CR]Yesterday's Pic of the Day Coppi on the Galibier 1952 TdF

(Example: Framebuilders:Dario Pegoretti)

Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 09:07:54 -0800
From: "Chuck Schmidt" <chuckschmidt@earthlink.net>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: Re: [CR]Yesterday's Pic of the Day Coppi on the Galibier 1952 TdF
References: <001201c45ab2$564bc020$6cf9fea9@j4g1x1>


Aldo Ross wrote:
>
> Yesterday's Pic of the Day
> Coppi on the Galibier, 1952.
>
> Quite a bit of atmosphere on the snowy slopes of the Galibier as Fausto Coppi climbs to victory in the 1952 TdF. Note the spare wheels sans tubulars in the back of Alfredo Binda's Alfa-Romeo 1900M follow car... this was still in the days when you could hand-up either a wheel, or a tire, but not both at the same time. The rider had to install his spare tubular on the new wheel, or take one off his old wheel. What on earth were they using for glue back then that was tacky enough to use during a fast descent!?
>
> >From "Miroir Sprint" (I think) No.317, 7 July 1952.
>
> http://www.birfield.com/nuke/modules/gallery/album17/CoppiGalibier52
>
> Aldo Ross
> Blue Ball, Ohio

One of my favorite pictures of "The Heron" Aldo! I love these Pic of the Day you're doing. Great job!

I came across a hand-tinted color version of this black and white photo as a double page spread in an old Miroir magazine and put it on a t-shirt:

http://www.velo-retro.com/teeshirt3.html

1952 was an amazing year for Coppi.
>From "Tributo a Fausto Coppi" web site: http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Pressbox/2176/a_brief_history.html

"Now comes the Tour (1952). Because of a series of controversies between Coppi and Bartali, the authorities starts thinking about excluding all the Italian competitors from the race. Fortunately Binda (the Italian National Team manager) composes the fights and the Italian team is admitted to the Tour.

Once again, the result of the race depends on the stages in the mountains. Coppi is the leader of all the stages in the Alps: he wins the first one, with the climb of the Alpe d'Huez. He wins again in Switzerland and the stage going from Bourg d'Oisans to Sestrière, leaving the second behind for 7 minutes and Bartali, the third, for more than 10 minutes.

In the same year Fausto Coppi repeats the exploit winning the Giro and the Tour being the first man in the world to achieve such a result."

And this from Velo Archive web site: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/veloarchive/index.htm

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/veloarchive/races/tour/1952.htm The lamb transformed into a lion

Absent in 1950 after a crash in the Giro; depressed and out of form in 1951 after the death of his brother Serse, 1952 was the year that Fausto Coppi was determined to renew his dominance in the Tour de France. And with what style did he do so! So complete was the dominance of the Campionissiomo that the organizers had to double the prizes for second and third place to preserve interest in the race.

Seemingly whenever the road went upwards, Coppi was in a class of his own. Having proved his form in the opening time trial, the rout started on l'Alpe d'Huez, used in the Tour for the first time. Once again it was the Breton rider Jean Robic who was first on the attack, but halfway up the climb Coppi moved smoothly past to win alone by over a minute, claiming the yellow jersey in the process. The next day the attack came much earlier, halfway up the Col du Galibier. Moving past early attacker Jean Le Guilly, Coppi set out on his own with seventy five kilometers still to ride to the finish in Sestrière: by the finish, his lead had stretched to seven minutes over second placed rider Bernardo Ruiz. In two days, Coppi had moved from being four minutes behind his gregario Andrea Carrea to being nearly twenty minutes ahead of his closest challenger, Alex Close.

The domination was total; when Coppi punctured on the way to Monaco, Gino Bartali was on hand to give him a wheel, burying years of enmity in the process. In Avignon, after Mont Ventoux, Robic was the winner, but as if to show who was boss, Coppi evaded the pack for a narrow victory in the Pyrenees, then won again on the Puy de Dôme (also included in the Tour for the first time). He could afford to take a leisurely stroll through the closing time trial; by Paris, his lead was 28 minutes on Stan Ockers and more than thirty on Bernardo Ruiz and the amazing Gino Bartali, now 38 years old and fourth in the Tour de France. "Irresistible just as he had been in Paris - Roubaix", wrote André Leducq, "the lamb was transformed into a lion".

Be sure to read "The Tunnel Six Years in Length" on the Velo Archive site: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/veloarchive/exploits/msr1946.htm about the '46 Milan - San Remo and Coppi's first victory in a classic; he won by over 14 minutes!

Chuck Schmidt South Pasadena, Southern California http://www.velo-retro.com (Timelines, Reprints and T-shirts)

.