CANTAGIRO: Coppi and Bartali guests of “Il Musichiere”

It’s 1959, guests of “Il Musichiere” by Mario Riva are the two champions Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi who undertake in a duet, giving this way a great demonstration of a fair play. Two special athletes who made the fortune of Italian Cycling. They kid lending themselves to the joke during the transmission. Invited from Riva to perform in singing, they parade in front of the kindly and amused sneer of the presenter, parodying the song “Come pioveva”. “We were rival but warmly, we were enemy but always honestly…”. Huge feats of the Big Champion and the Iron Man. We cannot forget the historic episode of the per excellence sport, which is still represented in the residence of the Gazzetta dello Sport: the most famous exchange of the water bottle, happened during the hard fought Tour of 1952, which have been won form Fausto thanks to his double after what he had to fight for in 1949. We’ll never know who of the two gave the flask to whom during that episode, certain is only that Bartali and Coppi, two honest and loyal men, exchanged that flask in many other occasions. By the way that notorious image owns something as a sporting poetry that never could be forgotten.