Piacenza is preparing for the Tour de France by rediscovering the most significant pages and characters in the great history of the yellow race. The new episode of the column is dedicated to the first Italian winner of the French race, the Venetian Ottavio Bottecchia, in 1924, exactly one hundred years ago. The previous published episodes were on Marco Pantani, Vincenzo Nibali, Gino Bartali, Giancarlo Perini, Fausto Coppi, Lance Armstrong, Bernard Hinault, Gianni Mura, Miguel Indurain, the leaks bin, Bradley Wiggins, Henri Desgrange, Tadej Pogacar, Fabio Casartelli and Raymond Poulidor.
We’ve already written and rewritten it. The Italian start of the Tour de France 2024 pays homage to some of our cycling champions who won on French soil: Gino Bartali, Fausto Coppi, Marco Pantani. Three legends that even very young people know by reputation, perhaps superficially. The last winner was also mentioned by the organizers: Vincenzo Nibali, ten years old. Before Nibali and Pantani, Felice Gimondi triumphed in ’65. But their names “say something” to everyone. But there is another great protagonist of the two blue wheels – who has fallen into oblivion – that the Grande Boucle wants to remember in this particular summer: Ottavio Bottecchiathe first Italian to win the French stage race, one hundred years ago: he ran the year 1924.
Ottavio (as the eighth child, he was from another Italy) was born in the province of Treviso and was a hero of the Great War, awarded with a bronze medal for military valor for his commitment on the Piave. He was taken prisoner three times by the Austrians, but always managed to escape. Returning to everyday life, he became a carter in his territory, San Martino di Colle Umberto. A job that some of his many brothers carried out.
Cycling quickly gave him popularity and changed his life. The French team “Automoto” needed an Italian rider to help their favorite Henri Pelissier to finally win the Tour. They chose the promising but already known one Giovanni Brunero, who refused but apparently suggested the name of the possible replacement himself. Just Bottecchia.
In the 1923 edition he immediately stood out, conquered stages and wore the yellow jersey. The correspondence of the Italian newspapers glorifies the exploits of this unknown Italian who brings the French into line on the streets of their home. The “Gazzetta dello Sport” decides to support him financially, launching a subscription among readers which also sees the contribution of the Duce Benito Mussolini.
However, in the stage between Nice and Briancon, in the Alps, Bottecchia was ill and had to say goodbye to his dreams of glory. He even gets off the saddle, he’s too sick, he can’t continue the race that he incredibly could have won. That Tour was supposed to be Pellissier’s: the Venetian was probably poisoned. The Belgian explained it Leon Scieur, victim of the same cowardice: he took a coffee from a spectator on the Tourmalet and remained unconscious and a guest in a clinic for a week. Pellissier, it goes without saying, she won.
The team, however, covered him with money. So Bottecchia remained racing for them in the following seasons too. And he triumphed in 1924, exactly one hundred years ago, at the Tour, at the age of thirty. The first Italian. We could have won before, but the greatest champions of our country, Costante Girardengo and Alfredo Binda above all, they always snubbed the yellow jersey, preferring to rest in Italy or obtain other jobs. And the French suffered enormously from blue snobbery.
Bottecchia became a myth for the French but above all for the Italians. We were at the beginning of the twenty years of fascism, his figure easily lent itself to exploitation: the Italian who won not one, but two Tours de France. Yes, because the Venetian, now rich and very popular, also won in ’25. A historic consecutive double for Boteshaas it was called by the transalpines, never achieved again by any Italian cyclist.
Up to this point a story of great success, in an Italy that is still very peasant and poor. But on June 3, 1927 everything suddenly changes. A few days earlier, on May 23, a car hit and killed his brother Giovanni, while he was going for a bike ride. That June 3rd the champion left home – he lived in Friuli – for training alone, because he had not found any companions available to accompany him.
It’s hot and the training isn’t going as it should, but he decides to continue. That day she had to “make distance”. Until she feels sick. He stops, throws himself into a meadow and bleeds from his mouth and head. A farmer helps him, but there is nothing left to do. In hospital it was discovered that he had suffered fractures to the base of the skull, the collarbone and multiple abrasions. All these things, just on one side. Will he therefore have fallen off his bike during the day? But this one is intact, it doesn’t have a scratch. Could he have fallen while standing still, suffering so many injuries? The mystery deepens, while the champion passes away on June 15th, twelve days after the crime.
There are many hypotheses. The pain of his brother’s death combined with health conditions that have already been in shambles for some time. A beating by the Black Shirts (thesis expressed by a priest on his deathbed). A farmer who hit him with a stone on the head for stealing his crop (another testimony offered by a farmer shortly before his death, many years later).
The French press embroidered on it and suggested other leads: strange sentimental affairs, a betting ring, a commissioned murder. The family didn’t believe any of this and supported the theory of illness and a fatal fall at low speed. Also because in the very few moments of clarity he had during the rescue operations, Ottavio Bottecchia, the two-time champion of the Tour, mentioned the word “illness”. “Bottecchia” in the collective imagination became, almost a hundred years ago, a mystery and also a bicycle brand, still in business today.
