Gino Bartali, (; 18 July 1914 – 5 May 2000), nicknamed Gino the Pious and (in Italy) Ginettaccio, was a champion road cyclist. He 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. After the war, he added one more victory in each event: the Giro d'Italia in 1946 and the Tour de France in 1948. His second and last Tour de France victory in 1948 gave him the largest gap between victories in the race.
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.
Early life and amateur career
thumb|left|upright|The house where Gino Bartali was born in Ponte a Ema, Florence
Gino Bartali was born in Ponte a Ema, Florence, Italy, the third son of four children of a smallholder, He earned pocket money by selling raffia to makers of covers for wine bottles. He began work in a bicycle shop when he was 13. He started racing at 13, became a promising amateur and turned professional in 1935 when he was 21. He was the Italian champion the next year. On 14 November 1940, Bartali married Adriana Bani in Florence. The wedding was celebrated by Cardinal Dalla Costa and was blessed by Pope Pius XII, to whom Bartali donated a bicycle.
Professional career
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. He was 20. In 1936, before he turned 22, he won the Giro and the Giro di Lombardia, although his season was marred when his brother, Giulio, died in a racing accident on 14 June. Bartali came close to giving up cycling.
He was persuaded to return and, in 1937, won the Giro again. His reputation outside Italy was that he was yet another Italian who could not ride well outside his country. There was some truth in the claim. The writer Tim Hilton said: "Bartali was essentially an Italian cyclist, a champion who rode within sight of his own people, and was uneasy when the Tour de France travelled north of Paris. He never disputed the northern classics."
Stung by the claim, he rode the Tour de France in 1937. He 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. He took the leader's jersey in Grenoble, with a 1m 14s lead. Later in the race, he and two helpers, Jules Rossi and Francesco Camusso, while crossing a wooden bridge over the river Colau, Rossi skidded, causing Bartali to ride into a parapet and fall into the river.
Roger Lapébie wrote: "In the valley that leads to Briançon, I saw the accident to the maillot jaune, Bartali. The narrow and bumpy road ran along the foot of a rock. Suddenly, Rossi, who was leading, took a bend badly, braked and his back wheel hit the parapet of a bridge. 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." Camusso pulled him out. Bartali was cut on his arm and knee and had trouble breathing because of a blow to the chest. He rode on to the end of the day, often pushed by his helpers. He finished 10 minutes behind the rest but kept his lead.
He got through the Alps, by then having lost his jersey, and retired in Marseille. In one account, before he dropped out, he notified the organiser, Henri Desgrange, who said: "You are the first rider to come to see me before dropping out. You're a good man [un brave garçon], Gino. We'll see each other again next year and you'll win."
thumb|left|The [[Bicycle gearing|4-speed bicycle Bartali rode to victory in the general classification of the 1938 Tour de France]]
He did return in 1938 and overcame the teamwork of the Belgians, the cold and rain and a puncture on the Col de l'Iseran. He won the hardest stage, from Digne to Briançon, by more than five minutes. The radio commentator Georges Briquet, after he had seen the crowds of Italians greeting Bartali with green-white-red flags, said: "These people had found a superman. Outside Bartali's hotel at Aix-les-Bains, an Italian general was shouting 'Don't touch him – he's a god.'" A public subscription was started in his name in Italy, and Benito Mussolini was among the contributors.
The approaching war led Italy not to send a team in 1939.
thumb|upright|Bartali c. 1945
Bartali won the Giro d'Italia twice before the war – in 1936 and 1937 – and once after it (1946). He won classics such as Milan–San Remo, the Giro di Lombardia and the Züri-Metzgete. His most famous victory was the 1948 Tour de France.
1948: Second Tour
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 (see below for Bartali's war record). He was so worried that he spent an evening memorising two dozen riders he did not know. The Tour started in a rainstorm, and Bartali found he could identify nobody because the whole field was wearing waterproofs. He took his chance and found he was with Briek Schotte. The two finished together at Trouville, and Bartali took the yellow jersey.
It was during that Tour that the leader of the Italian Communist Party, Palmiro Togliatti, was shot in the neck by a sniper as he was leaving the parliament building. The writer Bernard Chambaz said:
<blockquote>
History and myth united, and a miracle if you like because that evening Bartali got a phone call at his hotel. In a bad mood, dubious, he didn't want to answer. But someone whispered that it was Alcide de Gasperi, his old friend from Catholic Action, now parliamentary president, who told him that Palmiro Togliatti, secretary-general of the communist party, had been shot at and had survived by a miracle. The situation in the peninsula was very tense amid the ravages of the Cold War. Italy needed Bartali to do what he best knew how to do, to win stages. ran into the chamber shouting 'Bartali's won the Tour de France!' All differences were at once forgotten as the feuding politicians applauded and congratulated each other on a cause for such national pride. That day, with immaculate timing, Togliatti awoke from his coma on his hospital bed, inquired how the Tour was going and recommended calm. All over the country political animosities were for the time being swept aside by the celebrations and a looming crisis was averted.
1950: Tour de France
thumb|Gino Bartali
Bartali had a row during the 1950 Tour de France with the French rider Jean Robic. Newspapers made much of it, and the atmosphere was tense. Robic got clear of Bartali on the col d'Aubisque in the Pyrenees. Bartali made up ground over the Tourmalet, took the descent to Sainte-Marie-de-Campan and started up the col d'Aspin. There, he caught Robic and the two rode together. The two rubbed shoulders, and they fell.
Bartali said French fans by the road were so angry, accusing him of sabotaging Robic's chances, that they punched him, and one threatened him with a knife. Bartali remounted and won the stage. Fiorenzo Magni, leading the Italian 'B' team, the Cadetti, took the yellow jersey. The pair and their teams had barely returned to their hotel when Bartali said he was going home, and so, he said, were the two Italian teams.
The affair escalated to the national level when the French foreign minister, Robert Schuman, apologised to his Italian counterpart for what seemed to be no more than a man interrupted in the making of a sandwich. René de Latour said:
<blockquote>To say that Magni was sore is putting it very mildly indeed. When he spoke to men he could trust, he would say: 'Gino knows what his little game is. He 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. It was bad enough for him with Coppi winning last year.
Bartali used his fame to carry messages and documents to the Italian Resistance, hidden in the frame and handlebars of his bicycle. Bartali cycled from Florence through Tuscany, Umbria, and Marche, many times traveling as far afield as Assisi, all the while wearing the racing jersey emblazoned with his name. Neither the Fascist police nor the German troops risked discontent by arresting him.
Giorgio Nissim, a Jewish accountant from Pisa, founded by the Union of the Israelitic Communities to help Jewish Italians escape persecution. The network in Tuscany was discovered in autumn 1943, and all Jewish members except Nissim were sent to concentration camps. With the help of the Archbishops of Genoa Pietro Boetto and Florence Elia Dalla Costa, the Franciscan Friars of Assisi and others, Nissim reorganized DELASEM in Tuscany and helped 800 survive.
Nissim died in 2000. His sons found from his diaries that Bartali had used his fame to help. Nissim and the Oblati Friars of Lucca forged documents and needed photographs of those they were helping. 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. At Assisi Bartali was in direct contact with Rufino Niccacci. Bartali also used his position to learn about raids on safehouses.
Bartali was eventually taken to Villa Triste in Florence. The SD and the Italian RSS official Mario Carità questioned Bartali, threatening his life.
Bartali continued working with the Assisi Network. In 1943, he led Jewish refugees towards the Swiss Alps himself. He cycled, pulling a wagon with a secret compartment, telling patrols it was just part of his training. Bartali told his son Andrea only that "One does these things and then that's that".
In 2013, Yad Vashem awarded Gino Bartali the honour Righteous Among the Nations. He is a central figure in the 2014 documentary My Italian Secret: The Forgotten Heroes.
In 2017, research by Michele Sarfatti questioned Bartali's efforts to save Jewish lives, referring to the very limited sources and contradicting that Bartali would have described this in his diaries. In 2021, Marco and Stefano Pivato corroborated this stance by Sarfatti, calling the whole story 'invented' (una storia inventata<nowiki/>'). In 2021, an interview with Sergio Della Pergola, an Israeli-Italian academic who was involved in Yad Vashem’s investigation of Bartali’s role during the war, was published in the Corriere della Sera. Outlining some of the evidence regarding Bartali's efforts during the war, he disagreed with the argument put forth by Sarfatti and Marco and Stefano Pivato. He was quoted as saying: “To question whether Gino Bartali risked his life to save Jews is like denying that the Earth is round.”