When they snatched the Tour from Aldo Ronconi

  

He triumphed in the third stage, in sweltering heat, more than five and a half minutes ahead of his nearest rivals. He claimed the yellow jersey in the seventh stage, in the Alps, then lost it in the ninth, again in the Alps. He climbed back to second place overall in the nineteenth stage, the longest time trial in the history of the Tour, covering 139 kilometres. And on the final day, he was still second in the general classification, 53” behind his team-mate Pierre Brambilla. Then Aldo Ronconi gave up. But only because of a scandal.

The 1947 Tour de France, the first since the Second World War: this time, the Giro d’Italia had gone ahead a year earlier, with courage and determination. Twenty-one stages, 4,640 kilometres, 100 riders from 10 national and regional teams: for Italy, without Bartali, Coppi, Magni, Ortelli…, partly out of caution (they had been enemies of the French during the war) and partly for cinematic reasons (they were involved in the film “Totò al Giro d’Italia”), team manager Guido Giardini (also a journalist for “La Gazzetta dello Sport”) had pinned his hopes on Aldo Ronconi, the reigning Italian champion, and asked him to help put the team together. Ronconi started with Giordano Cottur and ended up with two Italian riders living in France: Brambilla (born in Switzerland) and Pierre (born Giuseppe) Tacca. And on the final day, it was Brambilla who led the general classification, 53” ahead of Ronconi. The stage was Caen–Paris, 257 kilometres of flat terrain with a few gentle undulations. Ready, set, go: seven riders broke away, including the Belgian Brik Schotte and the Frenchman Lucien Teisseire. Halfway through the race, after the feed zone in Rouen, on the Bonsecours climb, came the attack by Jean Robic, a Frenchman and third in the general classification, supported by Édouard Fachleitner, also French and fourth in the general classification, and what was officially described as the collapse of Brambilla and Ronconi. Instead, it was an ambush. The dirt track, the cloud of dust, a traffic jam, a column of cars and motorbikes – ‘bottlenecked’, as it is described in “The Story of the Tour de France” by Bill and Carol McGann (McGann Publishing) – made it impossible to chase, and even prompted the race director to signal the Italian team car to stop ‘due to a breakaway in progress’. Up ahead, the alliance between the French and the Belgians. Schotte would go on to win the stage, whilst Robic and Fachleitner would have struck a deal (100,000 francs, from first to second – a colossal sum) not to battle it out, thereby relegating the two Italians to third and fourth place overall. And Ronconi would never have come to terms with it.

A native of Casa Ponte di Santa Lucia delle Spianate, a hamlet of Brisighella. Born at home. In 1918. He used his bicycle to get to work as a carpenter. When his mother fell ill, Ronconi solemnly promised that he would not touch his bike for at least a year, so he hammered two nails into the wall and hung the bike up. Exactly one year later, he took the bike down. And from then on, the bicycle was no longer for getting to work, but for work itself – that is, racing. In 1940, he was part of that Legnano team in which the young domestique Fausto Coppi would go on to win the Giro d’Italia, aided by the already elderly (had he ever been young?) team captain Gino Bartali. Aldo Ronconi, known as ‘e’ Paruch’ (the priest), ever since Luciano Succi – his team-mate at Legnano – had given him that nickname, after the sports director Eberardo Pavesi had given him a black cap so he could be recognised more easily in the peloton. And Aldo did have something of the clergy in his blood: Silvio, his brother, was a priest.

He could never have won the Tour, “e’ Paruch”. “Because he was Italian, and Italians were regarded as enemies, even after the war had ended,” explains Antonio Ronconi, quoting his father’s words. “Because he had been the Italian champion of the Young Fascists. Because he had taken part in and won the three-stage Milan–Munich race in 1939; therefore, because he was the Axis champion. Because in Germany he’d been honoured by Adolf Hitler. Because in Rome he was summoned by Benito Mussolini, who told him: ‘Brèv rumagnòl, l’è acsè cus fa’, “Well done, lad from Romagna, that’s how it’s done”. By now hopelessly behind Robic and Fachleitner, Brambilla approached my father and said: ‘Third place is yours’. ‘You go,’ he replied, ‘because they didn’t want me.’ And on the podium, by a matter of seconds, it was Brambilla who finished.” Aldo was “loyal”; Bartali even wrote this in his dedication to him on a poster-portrait depicting the exchange of water bottles with Coppi. The presence of Silvio Ronconi – his brother, a priest and member of the National Liberation Committee, who was following the race – had been to no avail; he had gone to great lengths to reassure and guarantee, especially to parish priests and partisans, that there were no Nazi-Fascists amongst the Italian riders. Starting with Aldo, who after the armistice had been taken prisoner by the Germans, deported by train – spending ten days in inhumane conditions – and interned in the Linz concentration camp. Giuseppe Ambrosini, a lawyer and journalist, and future editor of the Gazzetta dello Sport, who was also following the Tour de France, attempted in vain to lodge an appeal.

The final blow came in 1991. Antonio Ronconi continues: “My father was invited as a guest of honour to Lyon for the start of the Tour de France. I accompanied him with my mother. At the gala dinner, at the stroke of midnight, everyone stood up. Pierre Molinéris, a partisan commander and later a stage winner in the Tour, said to me: ‘The real winner of that 1947 Tour should have been your father’.”

In his book "La fabuleuse histoire du Tour de France" (Odil), Pierre Chany suggests that “Tacca and Brambilla had received a cold reception from their compatriots”. There was also talk of them playing both sides to speed up the naturalisation process: Brambilla is said to have become a French citizen in 1948, and Tacca in 1949. Au revoir.