Ambassador - National Italian American Foundation

Helen Tansey
The Fall
Italian American
Reading List
At the West Coast Gala in San Francisco in June, NIAF
awarded the Mazzei Award in Thought Leadership to co-authors
Aili and Andres McConnon for their outstanding contributions
to research, scholarship and innovative thinking in writing the
untold story of heroic Italian bicycle-racing legend Gino Bartali.
This issue, the Books section is focusing on the
McConnon’s remarkable narrative which poignantly reflects
dichotomies in the Italian soul and character through the
lens of sports and one special athlete. Buona Lettura!
By Alice Bernardi
An adage defines Italians as a nation of poets,
saints and sailors, for their—our—ability to be at
once creative, soulful and visionary. Aili and Andres
McConnon may have found the perfect example of
such character in the Italian cycling great Gino
Bartali. Their latest book, “Road to Valor,” chronicles
Bartali’s early childhood in a small village on
the hills surrounding Florence, and his rise to fame
during one of the most tumultuous periods in
modern Italy in the ‘30s and ‘40s.
Scrawny as a child and struggling with school,
Bartali soon found his “purpose,” as he later came
to define it, in riding a bicycle. While Bartali’s
parents, Torello and Giulia, were lukewarm to
Gino and his brother Giulio’s cycling passion,
Gino became a promising amateur. He turned
professional in 1935, when he was 21, going on to
win the most prestigious cycling competition in
Italy—the Giro d’Italia—both the following year
and again in 1937. A victory at the Tour De France
followed in 1938.
Deeply religious, Bartali early on earned one of
his many monikers—”The Pious.” But he soon
became known as “Ginettaccio” for his direct and,
at times, cantankerous interactions with the press
and the public. (Tuscans, in general, are occasionally
referred to as “Toscanacci” for their directness
and healthy sense of humor.)
The increasing political volatility and violence
in Italy during the late ‘30s, though brightened for
Bartali by his wedding to Adriana in 1940 and by
the birth of his son Andrea, culminated in Italy’s
declaration of war against Great Britain and
France. If the war put a damper on Bartali’s
cycling career, it put to good use his consummate
climbing and cycling
skills. In the fall of
1943, Bartali accepted
a request from
Aili and Andres McConnon
Gino Bartali in 1936
Road to Valor:
A True Story of WWII Italy,
the Nazis, and the Cyclist
Who Inspired a Nation
By Aili and Andres McConnon
Crown; 336 pages; $25
Florence’s Cardinal Elia Dalla Costa to cycle
through Tuscany, Umbria and even farther,
to carry materials necessary to counterfeit identity
cards for Jews so they could hide and survive
the war. Bartali also personally helped a Jewish
family friend and his wife and children with
food and housing during the German occupation
of Florence.
Meanwhile, Bartali aimed at resuming his
cycling career as soon as the War ended. The
competition and rivalry that quickly ensued with
another Italian cycling star, Fausto Coppi, split Italian
sports fans along the Bartaliani-Coppiani divide.
Their cycling rivalry exemplified the most pervasive
political fault line in post-World War II Italy. Coppi
shared his political views with the political left; and
Bartali supported the Christian Democratic Party.
The friction between the two political factions
almost exploded in 1948, when on the heel of the
political elections won by the Christian Democratic
Leader Alcide De Gasperi, an assassination attempt
hospitalized Italian Communist Party leader
Palmiro Togliatti with near-lethal gunshot wounds.
Bartali’s come-from-behind victory in the Tour
De France a few days later contributed to easing the
tensions. Some believe it almost single-handedly
averted a civil war that then loomed large in the
north of Italy.
Bartali retired at the end of the 1954 season
after winning 158 races and riding 150,739 kilometers
in competition. Cycling did not make him a
rich man, and his efforts at building a career as a
TV cycling commentator and cycling entrepreneur
were not as successful as his cycling had been.
He died on May 5, 2000, a visionary. As the
Cardinal of Florence Silvano Piovanelli remarked
in his eulogy, a symbol for generations of cycling
fans . . . and, as the authors capture so well in
“Road to Valor,” a true Italian “champion in life.”
BOOKS
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