Authors: William Fotheringham
‘I have betrayed no one’ – Fausto Coppi, November 1954
At the chapel of the Madonna del Ghisallo, high above Lake Como, there is total silence. The morning’s visitors to the spiritual centre of Italian cycling have yet to arrive. The Ghisallo is a Catholic chapel like no other, partly an exhibition of cycling artefacts, partly a shrine to the fallen of the open road. The position allotted to the green, red and white Italian national champions’ jerseys speaks volumes about the strength of the holy alliance between the Catholic religion and cycling. They hang on the altar, watched over by an image of the Virgin Mary.
The status of this chapel within the two-wheeled world can be read from the
ex-voto
offerings. Hanging above the west door are twenty-two framed jerseys, rainbow-striped for the world championships, yellow for the Tour de France, pink for the Giro d’Italia. They have been donated by the greats of cycling: Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indurain, Giuseppe Saronni, Alfredo Binda, Gianni Bugno, Ercole Baldini, Marco Pantani, Mario Cipollini. High up on the wall are the bikes: the full gamut, from Gino Bartali’s 1938 Tour-winning machine to a futuristic item used by Francesco Moser for an hour record.
On the grille that fences off the altar, the cyclists’ prayer is hung:
O mother of the lord Jesus,
keep us pure and fervent in our souls,
brave and strong in our bodies,
keep us from danger in training as well as racing.
We ask you to make the bike an instrument of brother hood and friendship which will serve to lift us closer to God.
Outside is the summit of one of the great climbs tackled since 1919 by the Giro di Lombardia: the hairpinned eight-kilometre ascent from Bellagio, on the shores of Lake Como. The bell is still rung here each October when ‘the race of the falling leaves’ passes through. A local priest, Don Ermelindo Vigano, was the driving force behind the cyclists’ chapel, inspired by the annual sight of the greats racing past his parish church. The Madonna del Ghisallo was designated the cyclists’ patroness in 1949, just as cycling’s popularity reached its zenith. This was the year of Coppi’s historic double of victories in the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France, when his rivalry with Gino Bartali was at its height. Don Ermelindo and his church were following happily in the slipstream of two European heroes of colossal stature.
Thanks largely to Gino Bartali’s muscular Catholicism, the Church had invested its moral authority in the sport, prompted by one of Bartali’s biggest fans, Pope Pius XII. The Pontiff blessed the Giro or received the field in the Vatican no less than three times between 1945 and 1952. He received Coppi twice and went to watch the cyclist in the Napoli–Foggia stage of the 1952 Tour of the Mediterranean. He had lit a votive lamp in the cyclists’ chapel at Ghisallo, and had made the link between religious striving and the effort of cycling clear in September 1947 when, in a St Peter’s Square speech, he cited Bartali as a role model: ‘It is the time for intense effort,’ he said. ‘Look at Bartali … race as well in this ideal championship
to conquer a far nobler goal.’ He drew parallels between the ‘terrestrial contest and the eternal contest’, both ‘sublime races of the spirit’ in which the participants should not give way to fatigue or weakness.
The importance of this particular sport to this particular religion can be seen in the papal photographs on the walls: Pius XII lighting the votive lamp that stands in the chapel, Paul VI visiting in 1973, John Paul II in 1979 and 1998. Professional cycling, dedicated to Mammon, and the Catholic God meet here in a happy marriage that has lasted sixty years.
The great statue outside depicts a cyclist raising his arm in triumph, while another writhes on the ground in despair. The synergy between the earthly and the spiritual is made plain in the message on the plinth: ‘God created the bicycle as an instrument of effort and exaltation on the arduous road of life.’ The sport had obvious attractions as a propaganda tool for the Catholic Church. It boasted a star, Gino Bartali, who was militant in his faith, an obvious role model. As a parable for the great earthly struggle, cycling was ideal as well. The image of struggle and sacrifice could be used to make a wider religious point. There was also the symbolism of the ascent of a mountain pass. The explicit association with what was then Europe’s most popular sport was valuable, but for it to function the stars of the sport had to act as role models, ‘pure and fervent in their souls’ as well as brave and strong in their bodies.
* * *
In mid-July 1954 Coppi received a letter headed
Centro Sportivo Italiano
and signed by one Bartolo Paschetta, who acted as a link between the Vatican and the sporting world. Paschetta was one of the movers behind the nomination of the Madonna del Ghisallo as the patron saint of cyclists, and
would have known Coppi well, as Coppi had donated jerseys and bikes to the chapel. Paschetta’s letter is written on behalf of Pope Pius XII and implores Coppi to return to his wife.
In one sense, it is a masterpiece of Jesuitical evasion. The letter does not mention the terms ‘separation’, ‘adultery’ or ‘affair’. Paschetta merely refers to ‘the news published in the papers’. The Holy Father, he writes, ‘is pained’, and ‘refuses to believe that it is true’. Paschetta hopes that ‘soon I will be able to confirm to the Holy Father that the news in the papers is unfounded’: in other words, Coppi had better return to Bruna, quickly. He advises Coppi to ‘reflect deeply on the consequences of a hurried decision’ and adds, menacingly, ‘I would remind you that you cannot violate certain laws and duties with impunity.’ His wish, and by implication the Pope’s, is that ‘with a clear conscience you will rebuild in peace and love two families threatened with destruction’. What matters is ‘above all you must avoid public scandals which do no good to you, no good to her’ – naturally Giulia is not mentioned by name, but one assumes the reference is to Coppi’s mistress – ‘and compromise your glorious past’. It is Coppi’s duty to ‘disappear from public life’. The letter was published in a Catholic paper before being delivered to Coppi, who hurled it away after reading the first lines.
The heart of the problem was that Coppi’s affair was public. Unlike, for example, Enzo Ferrari, who maintained two house-holds, one run by his wife, the other by his mistress, there was no compromise for Coppi. One suspects that Giulia Locatelli would not have permitted it.
As Paschetta’s crude attempt to bring Coppi back into line showed, the enormous publicity given to the affair in the papers and news magazines meant that the chaos in Coppi’s private life had a wider importance. The Church was under pressure as the country recovered from the massive social upheaval of the war and the rigidity of the fascist oppression that had preceded it. Society was gradually becoming more
secular, moving out from under the aegis of the priests. There were strains and divisions within the Church, as its leaders tried to work out how to deal with the changing times. What amounted to the Italian ‘establishment’ – the Christian Democrats, the Roman Catholic Church – felt its authority was being challenged. Taking a stand over the Coppi case was one way to assert that authority.
Coppi’s view was straightforward. He knew he was causing pain to Bruna, but, as he told Negri and Gismondi, he was in love. ‘He didn’t have the impression he was doing anything dishonest,’ says Raphael Geminiani. However, Giulia’s husband Enrico provided the opportunity for the authorities to intervene. On 28 August Giulia failed to turn up at a meeting fixed to discuss the couple’s separation; she sent a note saying she was working as Coppi’s private secretary and was too busy. Although it was presumably a pretext, the formalities had been carried out. Giulia had a contract of employment dated 1 August 1954, renewable on a two-yearly basis, according to which she was paid a monthly salary of 30,000 lire. The contract, published in Jean-Paul Ollivier’s
La Gloire et les Larmes
, had her address as the villa, Coppi’s as Castellania. Dr Locatelli was outraged – presumably because he could see that this was merely a cover story – and decided to make a formal claim against her for adultery.
He did so later that night at the police station in Novi, at about 1 a.m. To verify the act of adultery, the couple had to be caught
in flagrante
, and so two policemen accompanied the doctor and two friends through pouring rain to the villa, arriving at about 3 a.m. Popular Italian cliché has it that the
carabinieri
are less than entirely bright, and their pretext that they had come to investigate a minor theft was perfectly in keeping with their reputation. Given the hour and the weather, it was hardly surprising that the maid, Tilde Sartini, was not taken in, and she made them wait an hour before opening the door.
The couple knew a police visit was probably impending and had taken what steps they could to pre-empt discovery and justify Giulia’s presence in the villa. There are persistent claims, never actually verified but reminiscent of a Feydeau farce, that a secret passage had been built to connect Fausto’s bedroom with the guest room where Giulia slept, so that if the police turned up she could return quickly to her own bed.
Having established that Coppi and Giulia were indeed in the same house if not definitely the same bed – following a certain amount of discussion about which pillows were where and why – the policemen made the mistake of allowing Giulia and her husband to talk together in the garden. The ‘talk’ turned into a shouting match, in the course of which the doctor thrust at her a doll that Coppi had given to Lolli, saying that his daughter could accept no presents from ‘a man like him’. The night’s business ended with Giulia hurling herself at her husband. Amid the insults, the shouts and the accusations, the doctor threatened his errant wife with ‘prison or a mental hospital’.
His threat was realised at 8 p.m. on 9 September, 1954, when Giulia was arrested. As adultery was not a particularly serious crime, there was no obvious reason for her to be taken into custody; however, a phrase buried deep in Italian law books stated that if an investigating judge feared a suspect might try to evade justice he or she could be detained. The argument, convoluted as it was, seemed to be that Giulia might flee the country. Legally, she had no fixed abode: she had left her home, but she could not formally be living with Coppi because they had no recognised relationship. Giulia believed she was merely being taken to the police station in Alessandria – the regional capital, thirteen kilometres from Novi – to discuss her passport. She only found out later that she was being taken to prison. Coppi discovered what was going on a few minutes afterwards; he followed the police van in his car to try to get a bag of clothes to her.
The White Lady spent four days in prison. It is often said
she was held alongside prostitutes, although the only contemporary account that I have found states that the two women who shared her cell had been locked up for theft. The account (
Oggi
, 23 September 1954) adds that she was well treated, although, not surprisingly, she spent the four days in a state of shock, emerging with no clear idea of where she was and what was going on. She was released amid crowds of press photographers and newsreel cameramen, who pursued the car taking her home at high speed.
The motive for detaining Giulia was clearly coercive: before she could be set free, Coppi had to go before the magistrate who was investigating the case,
dottore
Augusto Mazzoni. It was also an attempt to divide the couple, to put pressure on them individually. The magistrate made no bones about the reason for having her inside. She was told bluntly: agree to return to your husband and you will be released.
The detention was also used to set the conditions under which the pair would live until their trial. Both their passports were confiscated. Giulia was deprived of the right to see her children and placed under bail restrictions: she had to stay in one place, to be agreed with the magistrate, and must ask permission before travelling. This was partly to keep her away from Bruna – the fact that she and Coppi had chosen to live a few miles from his other family was viewed as highly tactless. Primarily, however, the move was intended to keep her away from Coppi.
This was nonsense. The White Lady chose to do her ‘house arrest’ in Ancona because she had holidayed there on several occasions and had relations there. She would have to present herself at the
questura
, the town hall, at ten o’clock every Sunday morning for two years, or until her trial. Fausto went too, naturally. They stayed for two weeks at Ubaldo Pugnaloni’s house. ‘Two weeks of hell,’ recalls Pugnaloni: early every morning the police would come and knock on the door to make sure that Giulia and Fausto were not sleeping together. Later that autumn,
Bianchi had a training camp near the city, and Coppi and the White Lady lived together on the top floor of the hotel.
The public process of demolishing Giulia Locatelli’s character had already begun. While Bruna Coppi maintained a dignified silence, as, largely, did Fausto, the White Lady’s husband had wanted to get his side of the story across and gave one large interview to
Oggi
, which appeared on the day Giulia was arrested. Locatelli accused his wife of behaving like ‘a heroine in a love story’, and attacked Coppi and her for behaviour which was, he said, ‘an affront to the traditional beliefs and moral norms of our people’. He bitterly criticised Coppi for betraying their friendship, claiming the cyclist had taken advantage of his hospitality to seduce his wife, and he was adamant that Giulia had engineered a situation in which Coppi had no choice but to take her in rather than keep the relationship secret. The doctor said he could not stand her deception. ‘She has defrauded me: she is capable of maintaining today that while she was living under my roof her relations with Coppi were purely platonic. However, the truth is different and is very bitter and there are a thousand pieces of evidence to prove it.’
The doctor maintained that his wife had led Coppi on so that she could move upwards socially. ‘She despised our petit-bourgeois lifestyle, disliked my world, felt suffocated between the walls of the house and was looking for any pretext to put herself on display and draw public attention to herself. Coppi was the chance she had been looking for. At the heart of this is the “role” my wife wants to play at all costs.’ He argued that, had Coppi successfully defended his world title, Giulia would have stopped being his ‘secretary’ in order to milk the public acclaim.