Fallen Angel by William Fotheringham

Pugnaloni is less nostalgic: ‘it was disgusting. The roads were in pieces, the hotels were all requisitioned by the Allies and water was rationed in some places.’
    Much of the racing was on the track, because the roads were rarely fit, and with rampant inflation and a primitive economy often the prizes were in kind. After a race, the winner might be seen riding home through the shell-holes with a gas stove under his arm. Or there were barter deals, such as the one Bartali managed, where Legnano paid him in steel tubing, which he sold on to a plumber in Florence. Riders who were hungry would go for lap prizes such as pigsand bottles of wine, and there were curious awards such as paintings and tortoises.
    To compete again, Coppi had to base himself briefly in Rome, where he and Serse stayed in a hotel near Nulli’s shop in Via La Spezia, racing in the colours of the Società Sportiva Lazio. ‘He had no idea about his future,’ recalled Gino Palumbo. ‘He thought that the years he had spent in prison had cut short his career. If Serse had not been there, with his optimistic, forward-looking nature, perhaps Fausto’s career would have ended that year. But it was Serse who said that their lives had not yet begun and Serse who wanted to race the Giro d’Italia if it had been back on the calendar.’
    The need for money and the insecurity of those who had once lost everything would haunt the war generation. Later, they would take on ludicrous schedules of exhibition events purely because they dared not turn down the cash. They had little kit: Serse Coppi raced in the pink jersey his elder brother had won in the 1940 Giro. And, like most of Europe’s people, they were hungry.
    In early July 1945, Milan, like the rest of Italy, was trying to forget the German occupation, the civil war which had raged for almost two years and the spate of revenge killings which had followed the lynching of Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacchi, three months earlier. Any distraction was welcome as Italy attempted to put all this behind it, and bike racing was to be particularly popular. Milan hosted the first official event of the post-war era, the Circuito degli Assi, which drew a crowd estimated at between 50,000 and 100,000.
    Coppi returned to the city for the first time since he had broken the hour record, and won, prompting La Gazzetta dello Sport ’s man on the spot to write of ‘his superb pedalling style; the crowds have found their favourite champion again’. Six days later, Italy’s northern capital celebrated liberation with a massive street party. There were other criteriums, of whichhe won several, and there was road racing, including one of the first international victories of the post-war era, just over the Swiss border at Lugano – a place we shall revisit – on 29 September. His then sponsor, Nulli, hailed the win as ‘carrying the colours of Italian cycling to TRIUMPH renewing the deeds of the most famous champions and the strongest constructors of the past’. The framebuilder’s rhetoric was just a hint of what was to come.

CHAPTER 5
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JOUSTING IN THE RUBBLE
    Each of Italy’s three great cycle races is steeped in its own particular symbolism. The Giro di Lombardia, held in October, is the ‘race of the falling leaves’, the final major event on the calendar, where retirements are celebrated, farewells said for a few months. The Giro d’Italia is the event that draws the various parts of this surprisingly disparate nation together. Milan–San Remo, on the other hand, is the opening Classic of the year, and sometimes the Italians call it La Primavera : spring. It is not merely a matter of the date. The riders’ journey is an evocative one: they travel literally from one season to another. Usually Milan and the plain of the River Po are left behind in chilly fog or pale sunshine, with snow on the distant Alps. San Remo, on the Mediterranean