Miraculously Fausto Coppi, the "Campionissimo", gains a postmodern light, atop a heartbeat, and a jealously preserved memory, and not just by us in Campania. And even without waiting for the hope of a future Sanremo in silk shirt, he is still dressed as they used to wear wool jerseys...

He returns ultimately unexplored, just after the end of World War II, that well-known Coppi who returned home in early December 1944 as a prisoner of war from the North African campaign, and collaborative attendant to English Lieutenant Towel at the RAF camp in Ercole di Caserta. And by an incredible Epiphany gift in '45, thanks to the appeal "A Bike for Coppi" by Gino Palumbo launched in Voce and the generosity of a carpenter from Somma Vesuviana, Giuseppe D'Avino, he had obtained a Legnano, mon dieu, he who only rode Bianchi, to start training again, or at least just pedaling...

But here begins the new Coppi, a Coppi who reappears in memory as an athlete, who among the rubble and torn streets like the hearts of the Naples hinterland, crosses pedals - and we arrive at the precious story and memory - with an independent cyclist from Grumo Nevano, not a champion, but a cyclist who had already brushed against the road in the "Campania" races, before the conflict. His name is Fortunato Cristiano, from Grumo Nevano, a territory devoted to cycling, the surnames Belardo Reccia Maisto race battling, proud of one of the first Clubs in Italy dedicated, for example, to Costante Girardengo... Thus a fraternity or a friendship is born in winter, in those times of incredible loneliness, for Coppi far from his Castellania and his double love as a son and fiancé, - he was only 24 years old -, in a suspended narrative that the faithful attention to an affectionate family story by Marino Cristiano, an entrepreneur and great-grandson of Fortunato, urges us to reinvigorate with non-fictitious light.

And so it happens that on February 25, 1945, 80 years ago, Fausto Coppi in "Nulli" uniform returns to race in Italy for the first time, not just in Campania, and precisely in Grumo Nevano: and he will do so in a cyclocross, a discipline not suited to him, a pursuer and climber, against strong local competitors like Giuseppe D'Amore from Brusciano, and Raffaele Abbate from Casoria who would become the national champion of the specialty in '47.

A race - as Marino Cristiano reminds us, and is vividly confirmed by newspaper clippings - that was interrupted one lap from the conclusion, "for public order reasons", so great was the crowd of fans who had rushed to applaud the new Coppi on the circuit: last Giro winner and current hour record holder...

Eighty years ago, we do not err in the decade, and also born was that incredible affection of Fausto Coppi for Grumo and the great Cristiano family, wood industrialists, who in their ancestral home at Corso Garibaldi 64 would find for a decade and more a buen retiro, and the password of memory, almost as an honorary citizen, even in his universal path of glory. "He would come to visit us with Biagio Cavanna, Ettore Milano and his court, every time he came down to the South...".

80 years ago, and Arcangelo had just been born, the son of his friend Fortunato, for whom Fausto would be godfather at Confirmation: sentiments and motions and regard, you never know, from another world.

And on such an occasion, who knows if his friend Marino Cristiano will one day find the photo among the precious archives of time, he wanted to donate the gold chronometer he had received as a prize for winning an alpine stage at the Tour. It might have been Gap, or Briançon, that success to come, or wherever you want it to be. What remains, what truly matters almost a century later, is the humble heart of a champion, and the perpetual love, so brief was his destiny here, of those in Campania, maternal and solidarity in effort after the pain of war, who offered him much more than a water bottle. A warm shared table, and at least one more smile. And that first, and perhaps only, cyclocross in his champion's life.

from tuttoBICI of March