About Me
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".
