Review: A Champion Cyclist Against the Nazis, by Alberto Toscano

Title: A Champion Cyclist Against the Nazis – The Incredible Life of Gino Bartali
Author: Alberto Toscano (with a preface by Marek Halter and an afterword by Gianni Mura, translator not acknowledged)
Publisher: Pen & Sword (originally published in France in 2018 by Armand Colin as Un vélo contre la barbarie nazie – L’incroyable destin du champion Gino Bartali)
Year: 2020
Pages: 184
Order: Pen & Sword
What it is: A brief biographical sketch of Gino Bartali, setting his life against some of the politics of the time
Strengths: It’s shorter than Road to Valour
Weaknesses: Toscano lacks critical distance and presents as facts things people simply want to believe happened, despite the lack of supporting evidence

The worst thing in the world is a hypocrite and a liar who hides behind religion. Ultimately we’re all responsible for our own actions not only to God but also to ourselves and to those affected by them. Here was a person who claimed to have profound faith yet spent his life lying and breaking promises.
~ Vito Ortelli

Gino Bartali, famously, had a big nose and short arms (they didn’t reach his pockets). Famous, here, is obviously being used in the loosest possible sense.

Other people think Bartali’s fame rests on his faith in God and the Catholic church, for being known as il Pio, the pious, for going to mass before Tour stages and for having a strange (yet almost appropriate) devotion to St Thérèse of Lisieux (as a young girl she dreamed of becoming a saint and the blessèd Gino is already a secular one and could yet gain entry to the Vatican’s VIP lounge). But Bartali is no more famous for that than he is famous for having won a couple of Tours, three Giri and a handful of Classics.

Bartali used to be famous for single-handedly saving Italy from Civil War, and then cleaving Italy in two, fans of him on one side, fans of Fausto Coppi on the other, each ready to take up arms against the other. But even those feats have fallen by the wayside and, today, Gino Bartali is famous for one thing and for one thing only: he spent the second world war saving Italy’s Jews from the Nazis.

In the last two decades or so, this last aspect of Bartali’s life has been a boon for creative types. Bartali has been the subject of a musical, Glory Ride (2023)….