The end of Francisco “Paco” Cepeda

   

1935 Tour de France, seventh stage, a mountain stage: Aix-les-Bains to Grenoble, 229 km, featuring the Télègraphe, Galibier and Lautaret passes. 11 July, a Thursday. The start was at half past eight. In the overall standings, first was a Belgian, Romain Maes; second, a Frenchman, Antonin Magne; and third, an Italian, Vasco Bergamaschi from Mantua, nicknamed ‘Singapore’ because of his almond-shaped eyes. On the descent from Lautaret, near Rioupéroux, the Spaniard Francisco Cepeda – known as Paco and, more affectionately, Paquillo – fell and hit his head. Adriano Vignoli, from Sasso Marconi in Bologna, who was right on his heels, was unable to avoid him; he crashed into him, broke his collarbone and withdrew from the race. Cepeda, however – whether out of instinct, a sense of duty, or that irresistible call of the bike – got back in the saddle anyway. Some spectators helped him and gave him a push before Cepeda finally collapsed. The ambulance took him to Grenoble Hospital. Cepeda arrived there in a coma. He would die three days later, on 14 July, a national holiday in France.

Cepeda is not the first person to have died in the history of the Tour: that honour goes to the Frenchman Adolphe Hélière. He was 19 years old when he made his debut in the 1910 Tour as an independent rider; he took advantage of the rest day in Nice to take a dip in the sea, and perhaps due to a cold, or perhaps a jellyfish sting, he fell ill and was dragged ashore, before dying on the beach. That day, too, was 14 July. Cepeda is not even the most famous rider to have died in the history of the Tour: that honour goes to the Englishman Tom Simpson. Simpson was 29 years old; in 1967 he was competing in his fifth Tour. He had already won the Milan–San Remo (1964), the Giro di Lombardia (1965) and Paris–Nice (1967), and had already been world champion (1965), when on Mont Ventoux – dehydration? amphetamines? alcohol? – he collapsed, his last words being “Put me back on my bike”, driven too by instinct, by duty, by that irresistible call of the bike. It was 13 July. Cepeda is not even the most shocking death in the history of the Tour, at least for us Italians: that honour goes to Fabio Casartelli from Como. Casartelli, an Olympic champion in Barcelona in 1992, was competing in his second Tour three years later (he hadn’t yet turned 25) when, whilst descending the Pyrenean pass of Portet-d’Aspet, he slipped and crashed into a kerb; from the television footage, it was immediately clear that for him – lying on the road in a foetal position – there would be no tomorrow. It was 18 July. Cepeda’s death – the first of a rider during a race – was the quietest.

Unlike the vast majority of cyclists – cycling is a poor man’s sport, as Mario Fossati used to say – Cepeda came from a wealthy family (his father was a magistrate). A Basque from Sopuerta (“le negro de Sopuerta”, or Sokortua in Basque, his nickname, due to his dark complexion), Paco had the face of an actor rather than a cyclist; he looked truly handsome in a portrait wearing a jacket, shirt and bow tie, rather than gaunt, weathered and aged like the road warriors. Three career victories (twice the Getxo Circuit and once the Vuelta de Álava), numerous placings (a fourth, two fifths and a sixth place in the first edition of the Vuelta a España, in 1935). In the 1935 Tour (which was contested by national teams, though he hadn’t secured a place on the Spanish team and was competing as an individual), he did his best to hold his own: a 34th-place finish was his best result, and in the general classification he trailed the yellow jersey holder, Maes, by one hour and 40 minutes.

It was a miserable afternoon on the Lautaret. The distance, the climbs, the road, the exertion – even the sweltering heat. In that Tour, for the first time, the organisers had authorised the riders to opt for duralumin rims – an alloy composed of aluminium, copper, magnesium and manganese – which were lighter but less durable than wooden rims. But there was a flaw, a risk, a danger: when the outside temperature rose and the riders braked, the sealant in the tubular tyres would melt, the tyre would burst, the wheel would come off its rim, and the bike would go haywire. And that is exactly what happened: Cepeda was thrown from his bike and left in tatters.

A few lines in the news section of the newspapers about Di Cepeda. “The Tour de France,” write Mustapha Kessous and Clément Lacombe in “Le 100 storie del Tour de France” (Gremese), “kept a low profile regarding this death so as not to attract criticism or be held responsible, having allowed cyclists to race with faulty equipment.” Pierre Chany, a columnist for L’Équipe, in his monumental La fabuleuse histoire du Tour de France (Odil), focuses on the first radio broadcast (the TSF, Transmission sans fil) for the 1935 edition, then discusses the battle between the French national team and the Belgian national team, as well as the duel between Maes and Magne; he even recalls the ‘drapeau rouge’ adopted by race director Henri Desgrange to direct the race; finally, in five lines, he dismisses Cepeda, the performer of a ‘fantastique pirouette’, who died despite ‘the surgeons having attempted, in vain, a trepanation of the skull’. The Englishman Michael Thompson, on the other hand, has dedicated the biography "The Final Descent" (Thompson, also available on Kindle, 2023) to Cepeda, the result of nine years of research.

Unlike Simpson and Casartelli, Cepeda does not have a memorial stone at the spot where he died. It seems that permission has finally been granted. But nothing has been done.