CAMPIONISSIMO
I taly had hedged her bets at the outbreak of the conflict. In 1882 she had joined the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria, her traditional enemy, but 20 years later she drew up a nonaggression treaty with France. The rationale for signing was sound enough: it gave her the best chance of reclaiming from Austria the disputed territories of the north east ( Trieste, Istria, Dalmatia and Zara) in the event of conflict. However, when the war came Italy angered both sides by simultaneously claiming neutrality and secretly negotiating the best deal in the event of victory. Her politicians continued to vacillate until finally, in April 1915, signing the Treaty of London. The pact stated that all ethnically Italian peoples would be unified and the peninsula would reclaim all of the so called unredeemed Italy. Trieste, Trentino and the South Tyrol, along with Istria and the Italo- Croat hinterlands of the far north east, would be delivered back to Rome.
Militarily and financially the weakest member of the new entente, Italy declared war on Austria- Hungary on May 23, 1915. At Isonzo, the first major theatre of the war, a nihilistic 67-year- old commander in chief named Luigi Cadorna led 60,000 of his countrymen to their deaths. Fifteen catastrophic months later Italians found themselves at war with Germany as Cadorna, a Napoleonic general hopelessly out of his time in the modern battlefield, continued his appalling stewardship of the campaign. Following the disastrous Battle of Caporetto in 1917 ( evoked by Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms) Cadorna was replaced but by then Italy had lost 650,000 sons, ruinous for a population already haemorrhaged by decades of outward migration. Caporetto is now firmly rooted in the Italian argot. A synonym for disaster, it’s become Italy’s Waterloo.
Caporetto, and the war as a whole, marked another important watershed in Italy’s brief, all too dissolute history. None but a small minority of Italians had ever left their provincia, and so they had no concept of, or belief in, nationhood. For all its vicissitudes, life in the trenches brought hundreds of thousands of young Italian males into contact with countrymen they would never otherwise have met, from all corners of the peninsula. Most were astonished to find that, though they spoke different dialects, they were all, fundamentally, the same. They were all in it together, fighting for one country, for their country. Italians the length and breadth, condemned by Rome to fight a war about they knew not what, started in a small way a process of knitting together; one for all and all against the politicians.
The war delivered a shared sense of purpose and fidelity to the flag, but something more besides. At the outbreak huge numbers of Italians – in the south, a vast majority – had been unable, or unwilling, to read or write. With no alternative means of communication, a huge literacy programme was introduced to a people hitherto denied access to the written word. This, a very real cultural revolution, enabled those at home and at the front not only to stay in touch with their loved ones but also, via the newspapers, with the war effort as a whole. With less sport to report, the La Gazzetta dello Sport, once more a bi-weekly, played its part as best it could. From February 1917, 30,000 additional copies were printed and sent, free of charge, to the front.
At the Treaty of Versailles Italy failed to secure Dalmatia. Having offered it at the outbreak as an inducement to join the war, Britain and France now determined that their weaker cousin be made to pay for her obfuscation. Italians began to speak, somewhat misguidedly, of a ‘mutilated victory’. They’d failed to secure all of the territories promised but while Germany retained 80 per cent of her economic capacity, Austria- Hungary, the traditional enemy of the Italian state, was no more. In its place a number of smaller nations, none of which represented a military threat, emerged. Italy had paid a massive price emotionally and collaterally but had gained a good deal more than either Britain or France. It would be 60 years before the financial debt was paid in full but arguably the war’s most damaging legacy would emerge rather sooner. Italians, perennially convinced that they were being cheated by their leaders, looked towards a new realpolitik, demanded change in a country turned upside down by four years of carnage. Now a new group, led by an ex- soldier turned radical newspaper editor named Mussolini, began to stoke the fires with a persuasive new political doctrine. In March 1919, the Italian Fascist Party was born.
Cycle racing had continued sporadically throughout the conflict. Though the Giro itself had been suspended, the Tours of Lombardy and Piedmont, among the oldest and most prestigious of all bike races, ran on uninterrupted. Many of the smaller one- day events survived, while others came and went as Italians continued their love affair with the sport. Under the astute stewardship of Emilio Colombo, the Gazzetta had endured during the war years; sport an emotional bolthole for a nation battered and bloodied by the conflict. Now it returned definitively to
Cycle racing had continued sporadically throughout the conflict. Though the Giro itself had been suspended
daily publication and would reprise its great race in 1919, albeit with a completely new, much smaller cast list.
Returning to the race was the Piedmontese Costante Girardengo, born in 1893 in Novi Ligure. Aged 17, Girardengo, the fifth of seven farmer’s sons, had spotted his great hero Giovanni Cuniolo, a three- time national champion from nearby Tortona, out training. Taking courage, he’d asked Cuniolo if he might be permitted to join him and then, emboldened by his apparent sluggishness, managed to stay with him on the climbs. Girardengo decided he’d become a cyclist and, three years later while on military service at Verona, had another bright idea. He went AWOL , caught a train to Alessandria and borrowed a bicycle. He then proceeded to thump the great and the good of Italian racing in the National Championship. Then he snuck back into the barracks with his
maglia tricolore secreted about his person. Private Girardengo, the champion cyclist of all of Italy, now found himself with plenty of time to contemplate what he’d achieved. Found himself contemplating 30 days in solitary confinement…
When a cycling mad captain gave him leave for the 1913 Giro, Girardengo rewarded his clemency by winning a stage and finishing a very creditable sixth overall. The following year he left a further sign by sprinting to victory on stage three. A 430km epic to Rome, it remains the longest in Giro history. By the time the first post-war Corsa
Rosa came around, Girardengo was well on with establishing himself as the country’s greatest ever cyclist. He’d won two National Championships, had twice conquered Milan-Turin, and had prevailed at the 1918 Milan- San Remo. He’d won there in 1915 as well, before they disqualified him for going off course. Girardengo’s brilliance, all the more remarkable given that he’d almost died of Spanish flu during the war, would reveal itself most tellingly at the 1919 Giro. Of the 86 starters, 42 were ex-military, their bikes donated by the Italian government. Girardengo dominated the first two stages, run symbolically to the ‘new’ territories of Trento and Trieste, and would ultimately take seven of the 10, some by sprinting, some by climbing, some by simply riding away from the others. Most incredible of all though was his overall winning margin, 52 minutes. It would have been a great deal more, many argued, had he not ridden within himself; Costante Girardengo had won the Giro d’Italia at a canter. When Gazzetta editor
Girardengo’s brilliance, all the more remarkable given that he’d almost
died of Spanish flu during the war, would reveal itself most tellingly
at the 1919 Giro
Emilio Colombo asked what best to write about him, ‘Gira’, somewhat embarrassed and not much of a one for big words, proffered that he hadn’t the faintest idea. Colombo, a great one for words but fast running out of superlatives for Girardengo’s amazing performances, invented a new one. The sobriquet Campionissimo, the Champion of Champions, was born.
Runner up in 1919 was the extraordinary, monobrowed Gaetano ‘ Tano’ Belloni, a cycling eternal second long before the French appropriated the phrase for Raymond Poulidor, the nearly man of the Tour in the 1960s. The son of a carriage-horse trainer from Cremona, young Belloni had found himself uprooted to Milan when the invention of the safety bicycle and the weird, newfangled motorcar saw demand for carriage horses drop off alarmingly at the turn of the century. He began a promising career in, of all things, Greco- Roman wrestling, one of Europe’s more brutal ‘sports’. The rules, such as they were, involved scoring points by throwing your opponent from the waist up, though punching, head butting and the use of caustic gas ( it says here) were accepted softening up exercises. Following its exclusion from the 1904 Olympics, the sport introduced drastic new laws outlawing, among other practises, eye gouging and body slamming. Bout times were reduced to make the thing more accessible, though the Olympic semi-final of 1912, a Nordic local derby between a Swede and a Finn, was declared a draw when after nine gut wrenching hours the judges couldn’t separate the protagonists.
Tano was a particularly good wrestler, one of the best on the scene. However, his day job, as an apprentice machine worker in a textile factory, would prove his undoing. Given to daydreaming, he committed the cardinal sin of the textile worker, which is to say he inserted his right hand into the loom, severing his thumb. Though the incident proved no great impediment to his other great passion, winning fortunes on the billiards table, his wrestling career – and simultaneously his chances of joining the war effort – were somewhat… compromised. Stuck for something to do, he took up cycling and found that he was very, very good at it, a lightning fast sprinter. He won the 1914 Amateur National Championship before, while still riding as an amateur, beating the professionals at the Tour of Lombardy, astonishing the sporting intelligentsia.
Colombo, a great one for words but fast running out of superlatives for Girardengo’s amazing performances, invented a new one. The sobriquet
Campionissimo, the Champion of Champions,
was born
Compelled to stay at home throughout the war, he won extensively, twice capturing both San Remo and Lombardy. On Girardengo’s return from the front, however, he settled for a career in his great friend’s long shadow. Though he actually won quite often, his career was notable not so much for the races he won as for those he didn’t. By the time he’d finished cycling he reckoned he’d finished second no less than 100 times. On 26 separate occasions he trailed the Campionissimo home but their double act – Gira’s dazzling speed allied to his good humour – went down a storm with the Italian public.
Belloni, a hilarious, self- deprecating raconteur, was immensely popular and, simply for being himself, immensely well paid. His crowning glory came in the horrific 1920 Giro, run off over eight stages with an average distance of 330 kilometres; little wonder that only 10 made it back to Milan. When Girardengo suffered a mechanical on the opening stage, then retired in a huff having been sanctioned for an illegal wheel change, Tano took flight. In the absence of Italy’s most decorated sportsman he won three stages ( Bianchi won them all) and dominated the overall classification, a Giro winner at last. He would famously win Lombardy again in 1928, aged 36, but he always claimed his greatest achievement was teaching himself English. He headed off to America, where he earned fortunes dominating the burgeoning Six- Day racing scene. When he fell and fractured his arm at the Madison Square Garden Six, the great Italian tenor, Beniamino Gigli, first sent a private limousine to deliver him to hospital, then interrupted a performance to visit his stricken friend. Most astounding of all, he earned a standing ovation for abandoning his post, so popular was Belloni among New Yorkers. By the time Tano retired from the track aged 42, he’d crossed the Atlantic no less than 40 times, competed there successfully, and taught himself French and German. All the world, it seemed, loved the eternal second.