FREE COPPI: INSIDE THE LEGEND OF THE CAMPIONISSIMO PDF Herbie Sykes | 320 pages | 01 Mar 2013 | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC | 9781408181669 | English | London, United Kingdom Review: Coppi – Inside the Legend of the Campionissimo We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Strengths: Allows the extras to take centre stage Weaknesses: The photos are uncaptioned. Rather than a conventional telling of Coppi's story it's a sideways look at his life and times, Sykes' interviewees telling their own stories along with their memories of Coppi and their memories of other riders of that era, in particular Coppi's great rival Gino Bartali, along with some stories about Fiorenzo Magni and a few others. Complementing these oral histories are photos drawn from the archives of Olycom, Omega and Offside, some illustrating something that has been said, others simply illustrating aspects of Coppi's public life. Coppi - a private man who was public property. Although there is but one English- language biography of Coppi currently in print, most people are familiar with the basic facts of his life, from birth through death and stopping off at the Coppi: Inside the Legend of the Campionissimo highs and lows in between those two points. As such, Sykes doesn't need to retell stories already overly familiar to most of us and is, instead, able to concentrate on adding colour and shade, looking at old stories from a different angle or adding new stories. But while Coppi himself is the focus of the book, the real picture here is about what was going on around him, a picture of the world Coppi inhabited. By placing Coppi's life in the context of the lives of some of his peers fresh paint is added to the picture of the time Coppi lived in. Were he alive today Coppi would be in his nineties, but he's already more than half a century in the grave. Each year more and more of the men who rode with and against him are fading away. Each year the links connecting us to the past and the era of Coppi e Bartali get fewer and fewer. Bartali is dead a dozen years. Magni passed last year as did Aldo Ronconi, one of Sykes' interviewees here. Those who have firsthand knowledge of Coppi's story - or parts of it - get fewer and fewer each year. Why should this matter, at this stage? In death Coppi became a mini publishing industry in Italy, even in life acres of newsprint were given over to telling his story, what need is there for yet more? But just how accurate is that historical record to begin with? Just how much truth do newspapers Coppi: Inside the Legend of the Campionissimo the first draft of history - contain about cycling? Consider a story told here by Giuseppe Minardi:. There was no TV, so it wasn't like you could watch an action replay. I'd reckon half of what was written about my career was made up. Or consider a comment Sergio Maggini makes to Sykes about the World Championships and how the focus on Coppi and Bartali meant a lot of what was happening outside that small circle was, at best, under reported, at worst, ignored. Maggini's brother finished fourth, just outside the medals:. As usual they were too busy focussing on Coppi and Bartali. Everybody spent so much time discussing what they hadn't done that they barely noticed what he had Even before his own death in Coppi had surpassed life and become a legend. In death he became a myth. One of the odd things with the life of someone like Coppi is that, the more that is told about it, the harder it is to peel back the layers of myth and get to the truth beneath. Truth, of course, is a flexible construct. What's true for one person may not be true for another. What people say about Coppi is often coloured by the relationship they had with him, both in life and in death. Stories told about Coppi are as much about the people who tell them as they are about the man himself, coloured by their interactions with his life and Coppi: Inside the Legend of the Campionissimo, coloured by Coppi: Inside the Legend of the Campionissimo own values. Consider, for a moment, a question of character. Consider, for a moment, what you know about Coppi's great rival, Gino Bartali. Il pio is generally presented as a deeply religious man. He's the bloke who delayed the peloton before stage starts so he could go to mass. He's the guy who believed that a victory in Lourdes was a sign of divine intervention. He's a man who was on friendly terms with the Pope. He was, in short, a model of probity, straight and true. That, though, isn't how everyone remembers him. Vito Ortelli has this to say of Bartali:. Ultimately we're all responsible for our own actions not only to God but also to ourselves and to those affected by them. Here was a person who claimed to have profound faith yet spent his life lying and breaking promises. Ortelli was once a coming man of Italian cycling, seen as a possible rival to Coppi and Bartali and his opinions could be considered to be coloured by this fact, by the occasions on which the two combined against him to protect their own prestige and keep him in his place. Yet of Coppi Ortelli has this to say:. He took pride in what he did and he was totally concentrated on it. We had our ups and downs but we respected Coppi: Inside the Legend of the Campionissimo another and he never lied to me. We didn't speak for eighteen months once but that was a stupid misunderstanding. In many ways it was typical of cycling back then, because it was a jungle. Giovanni Corrieri, once one of Bartali's most loyal gregarisays this of his former boss:. He'd sleep in cheap hotels, and he was convinced that people ere trying to rip him off. I'd say: 'Look, if you look after people they will look after you. It doesn't need much, but you have to have people on your side to win the Giro. Look at Bianchi! He'd say: 'I don't buy races and I don't sell them. He was as stubborn as a mule sometimes, and it cost him. Magni was all right, but Fausto was Coppi: Inside the Legend of the Campionissimo friend. He wasn't one of those champions who thought he was some kind of God, not at all. He was a champion but he was also just a good, honest man. When he came to ride here in Romagna we always went hunting together. He was good company, Fausto. Such criticisms of Bartali should not just be seen as repainting the legend of il pio, taking some Coppi: Inside the Legend of the Campionissimo the gilt off - though that they undoubtedly are - but should be seen for what they say about Coppi too. Time and again in these tales Bartali is described as being tight, or a liar. Few, if any, say the same of Coppi. Riccardo Filippi remembers him like this:. Basically on flat stages he'd close the race down and then at twenty, thirty kilometres from the finish he'd let people go. That's why most riders were on good terms with him. He gave them the crumbs and they were content with that. That's the way it was - Fausto dominated the cycling world. If somebody did him a favour, or if he liked someone, he made sure they were looked after. If that person tried to get in a break, for example, Fausto would have Bianchi work for them or he'd organise it that the break stayed away. Contrawise, if you crossed Coppi, he could hurt you. Renzo Zanazzi saw this firsthand after the Giro. During the race he'd led a mini riders' Coppi: Inside the Legend of the Campionissimo, briefly going on strike and then attacking Coppi once the stage got underway again. He came up to me and said: 'What are you doing this for? It's pointless! I'm here Coppi: Inside the Legend of the Campionissimo put food on the table, and I'll ride as I see fit! Who the hell is he to tell me to pack it in! This time nobody could hold my wheel and so I found myself along off the front. Eventually Massocco came across and Coppi: Inside the Legend of the Campionissimo caught us on the outskirts of Ancona but I made Fausto Coppi: Inside the Legend of the Campionissimo all right. He saw to it that I didn't ride any of the track meets after the Giro and so I lost a hell of Coppi: Inside the Legend of the Campionissimo lot of money. There are things which Serse told me in confidence which I'll take to my grave. Let's just say that Fausto was more or less as good as his word. Usually more, but sometimes less I didn't have anything new to say about Coppi or Anquetil, because it's done to death. My feeling was always that the great champions aren't by definition more interesting characters, rather they just won more bike races.