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Out of sight
Fausto Coppi: Jacques Augendre. Bromley 1999. 155 pages large format (12" x
10"). £29.95. ISBN 0-9531729-6-1 From Sport & Publicity, 0171-794-0915.
In bright sunlight a heavily-tanned, thin man is riding a bicycle comfortably
up a twisting road high in the mountains. Just in front of him is a big open
car from which a man in the back is filming the cyclist on a 16 mm camera.
'Cinesport' is painted in a decorative script typeface on the car's side. More
cars and motorcycles follow, each carrying little plates inscribed 'Tour de
France 49'. You can see at least a kilometre, maybe two, down the mountain
road. No other cyclist is in sight.
The rider is, of course, Fausto Coppi; and the image could serve as an exemplar
of everything his name evokes: high mountains, easy dominance, media adulation,
solitude. There are a hundred and fourteen big pictures, some of them across a
double spread, 24" x 10". Coppi aged 17 after winning his first race;
be-goggled in the 1946 GP des Nations; getting a wheel change in the Tour;
climbing the Peyresourde with Hugo Koblet; at dinner; soaking his feet in the
bidet; in his room; with his wife, son, mistress, mechanic, friends, rivals and
team-mates; shaking hands with Gino Bartali who looks like a Borgia Pope in a
mechanic's overall; and thousands of mourners – though perhaps not the thirty
thousand of the caption – on a snow-covered January hillside at Castellania.
The text is perhaps 20,000 words – about as much as you get in one issue of
Cycle Coaching
– but it's enough. We know most of it anyway. The translation (no-one is
credited) is adequate. It's the pictures that count. They're all black and
white, of course – like pictures of World War II, it's what we expect. Wasn't
everything in black and white then? Coppi in colour? It would look
inappropriate for the era.
This is the ultimate in superlative cycling coffee table books – just the
thing to ask for from someone near and dear to you who's feeling guilty because
they didn't give you enough for Christmas. Put yourself first for once.
Ramin Minovi
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