COPPI
ALDO RONCONI b Faenza, 1918 pro 1940 — 1952
© Original author
Yellow jersey, stage winner and third overall, 1947 Tour de France Italian national champion 1946 Stage winner 1946 Giro d’Italia
I
rode as a stagiaire for Legnano in the autumn of 1939, with a certain Fausto Coppi. They gave us both contracts and we were picked to ride the 1940 Giro as gregari for Bartali. What happened was that Bartali crashed on stage two, on the descent of the Scoffera. Pavesi, the direttore sportivo, said Coppi and Favalli needn’t wait but that I had to stay behind with Gino. He was close to abandoning but I helped him get round. Coppi and Favalli took five minutes and Favalli won the stage, so Pavesi was right all along. He was full of bright ideas, Pavesi. He used a megaphone to bellow at us and then he made each of us wear a different coloured cap so as to distinguish between us. Mine was the black one and so, because my brother was a monk, a team-mate started calling me ‘The Parson’. Somehow it stuck, and that was me for the rest of my career – The Parson. On stage 11 Coppi did his big ride over Abetone to win the Giro. I was on his wheel when he went but there was no way I could stay with him. Neither could anybody else and I think that was the day everybody realised he was something special. Later that season I had my first big win, the Giro dell’Umbria. Next thing I knew, though, I was on a train headed for Montenegro. When I got there I still rode my bike but the uniform was a bit different. I was the battalion postman… I was born in 1918, near Faenza. I finished primary school aged 11 to start work as a joiner. There was no way we could afford a bike but I was lucky because there was a mechanic living nearby and he gave me one for next to nothing. My parents weren’t happy because they were convinced cycling was dangerous. Thinking about it today that seems odd. There were no virtually no cars on the roads because nobody could afford them. My mum fell ill, and when she was on her deathbed she made me promise to stop riding for a year. I kept my word, but it was hard. I started racing in 1936 and the following year I started winning. I couldn’t sprint but I was strong and I could climb, and that conditioned the way I raced. I was second in the Italian Amateur Championship and in 1938 I won a lot. When I won the Coppa Perugina they paid me 2,000 lire. To put that into context, my dad was a signalman earning 350 lire a month. With the money we had electricity installed at home and we had enough left over for winter
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