Gino Bartali, nicknamed Gino the Pious and Ginettaccio, was a champion road cyclist.
60 Facts About Gino Bartali
2.
Gino Bartali was the most renowned Italian cyclist before the Second World War, having won the Giro d'Italia twice, in 1936 and 1937, and the Tour de France in 1938.
3.
In September 2013,13 years after his death, Bartali was recognised as a "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem for his efforts to aid Jews during World War II.
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Gino Bartali was born in Ponte a Ema, Florence, Italy, the third son of four children of a smallholder, Torello Bartali.
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Gino Bartali was powerfully built, with a broad nose and a boxer's face.
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Gino Bartali earned pocket money by selling raffia to makers of covers for wine bottles.
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Gino Bartali began work in a bicycle shop when he was 13.
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Gino Bartali started racing at 13, became a promising amateur and turned professional in 1935 when he was 21.
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On 14 November 1940 Gino Bartali married Adriana Bani in Florence.
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The wedding was celebrated by Cardinal Dalla Costa and was blessed by Pope Pius XII, to whom Gino Bartali donated a bicycle.
11.
Gino Bartali won a stage of the 1935 Giro d'Italia and was King of the Mountains, the first of seven times he won the title in the Giro.
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Gino Bartali was persuaded to return and in 1937 won the Giro again.
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Gino Bartali got off to a bad start, losing more than eight minutes by the third stage and more than ten by the Ballon d'Alsace, a mountain in the Vosges.
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Gino Bartali, who was beside Rossi, couldn't get clear and I saw him fall over the bridge and into the little river three metres below.
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Gino Bartali was cut to his arm and knee and had trouble breathing because of a blow to the chest.
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Gino Bartali rode on to the end of the day, often pushed by his helpers.
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Gino Bartali finished 10 minutes behind the rest but kept his lead.
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Gino Bartali got through the Alps, by then having lost his jersey, and retired in Marseille.
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Gino Bartali did return in 1938 and overcame the teamwork of the Belgians, the cold and rain and a puncture on the Col de l'Iseran.
20.
Gino Bartali won the hardest stage, from Digne to Briancon, by more than five minutes.
21.
Gino Bartali could feel really proud, for he had won seven stages.
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Gino Bartali took the opening stage, then two in succession entering the Pyrenees, then a great climax of three successive Alpine stages.
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Gino Bartali won that 1948 Tour not by a handful of seconds but by over 26 minutes from runner-up Briek Schotte.
24.
Gino Bartali returned to the Tour in 1948 to find that many riders he had known had died in the war and that there were as many more who had started racing since he stopped.
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Gino Bartali was so worried that he spent an evening memorising two dozen riders he did not know.
26.
The Tour started in a rainstorm and Gino Bartali found he could identify nobody because the whole field was wearing waterproofs.
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Gino Bartali took his chance and found he was with Briek Schotte.
28.
History and myth united, and a miracle if you like because that evening Gino Bartali got a phone call at his hotel.
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Italy needed Gino Bartali to do what he best knew how to do, to win stages.
30.
Gino Bartali had a row during the 1950 Tour de France with the French rider Jean Robic.
31.
Gino Bartali made up ground over the Tourmalet, took the descent to Sainte-Marie-de-Campan and started up the col d'Aspin.
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Gino Bartali said French fans by the road were so angry, accusing him of sabotaging Robic's chances, that they punched him and that one threatened him with a knife.
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When he spoke to men he could trust, he would say: 'Gino Bartali knows what his little game is.
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Gino Bartali is too clever to ignore the facts that he will be lucky to win this Tour, and he prefers a foreign team win rather than see one of our team succeed, especially me.
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Gino Bartali earned respect for his work in helping Jews who were being persecuted by the Nazis during the time of the Italian Social Republic.
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Gino Bartali appears as a character in the 1978 novel, The Assisi Underground: The Priest who Rescued Jews, and in the 1985 American television film adaptation, both based on the real-life account by Father Rufino Niccacci.
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Gino Bartali used his fame to carry messages and documents to the Italian Resistance.
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Gino Bartali's sons found from his diaries that Bartali had used his fame to help.
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Gino Bartali used to leave Florence in the morning, pretending to train, ride to Assisi where many Jews were hiding in the Franciscan convents, collect their photographs and ride back to Nissim.
40.
At Assisi Gino Bartali was in direct contact with Rufino Niccacci.
41.
Gino Bartali used his position to learn about raids on safehouses.
42.
The SD and the Italian RSS official Mario Carita questioned Gino Bartali, threatening his life.
43.
In spite of any threats, Gino Bartali did not reveal what he had done.
44.
Gino Bartali cycled, pulling a wagon with a secret compartment, telling patrols it was just part of his training.
45.
Gino Bartali told his son Andrea only that "One does these things and then that's that".
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Gino Bartali is a central figure in the 2014 documentary My Italian Secret: The Forgotten Heroes.
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Gino Bartali was a good climber and a pioneer of derailleur gears.
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Gino Bartali rode smoothly on mountains but every now and then freewheeled, always with his right foot lowered with his weight on it.
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Gino Bartali, a conservative, was venerated in the rural, agrarian south, while Coppi, more worldly, secular, innovative in diet and training, was a hero of the industrial north.
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Gino Bartali thought Coppi was "as thin as a mutton bone", but accepted.
51.
When Coppi had a puncture on the Izoard, Gino Bartali waited for him, then Gino Bartali did the same and Coppi waited.
52.
Coppi retained the lead to Paris, while Gino Bartali took second place.
53.
Gino Bartali prayed before meals and resented when teammates swore.
54.
Gino Bartali was proud that Pope John XXIII had asked him to teach him to ride a bicycle.
55.
Gino Bartali made no secret that he supported the Catholic-leaning Christian Democratic Party but his personality ensured that he was forgiven by the rival communists.
56.
Gino Bartali would set up shrines in his hotel bedrooms when he rode the Giro and the Tour de France, and, on some mountains, children from summer camps sang canticles as he pedalled past, a priest conducting their infant worship.
57.
Gino Bartali lived at 173 via Chiantigiana, Florence in a home full of souvenirs.
58.
Gino Bartali stopped racing when he was 40, after being injured in a road accident.
59.
Gino Bartali had a heart bypass operation and then died of a heart attack in May 2000, having received the last rites 10 days earlier.
60.
Gino Bartali left behind his wife, Adriana, two sons and a daughter.