Road to Valour. Gino Bartali. Tour de France Legend and World War Two Hero. By Aili McConnon, Andres McConnon

Road to Valour. Gino Bartali – Tour de France Legend and World War Two Hero By Aili McConnon, Andres McConnon

Paperback, good + condition minor shelf/edge wear, 336 pages Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012 ISBN: 0297860003

Road to Valour is the inspiring, against-the-odds story of Gino Bartali, the cyclist who made the greatest comeback in Tour de France history and continues to hold the record for the longest time-span between victories. Yet what ensured his permanent place in Italian hearts and minds were his actions in between, when he secretly aided the Italian Resistance during World War II. Aili and Andres McConnon chronicle Bartali's journey, starting in impoverished rural Tuscany where a scrawny, mischievous boy painstakingly saves his money to buy a bicycle, and before long is racking up wins throughout the country. At the age of 24, he stuns the world by winning the Tour de France, becoming an international sports icon in the process. But Mussolini's Fascists hijack his victory for propaganda purposes, derailing Bartali's career, and as the Nazis occupy Italy, Bartali undertakes dangerous missions to help those being targeted. He shelters a family of Jews in an apartment he financed with his cycling winnings and is able to smuggle counterfeit identity documents hidden in his bicycle past Nazi checkpoints under the guise of being a national hero in training. After the gruelling wartime years, Bartali fights to rebuild his career as Italy emerges from the rubble. Despite numerous setbacks and a legendary snowstorm in the Alps, the chain-smoking, Chianti-loving, 34-year-old underdog comes back and wins the most difficult endurance competition on earth - the Tour de France. Bartali's inspiring performance helps unite his fractured homeland and restore pride and spirit to a country still reeling from war and despair. Based on nearly ten years of research in Italy, France, and Israel, including interviews with Bartali's family, former teammates, a Holocaust survivor.

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